Survey: 61 dark net payment status, who is favored outside of Bitcoin

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• The Block analyzed a total of 31 dark market segments, of which approximately 93% supported bitcoin transactions.

• The average type of cryptocurrency supported by each dark network is approximately 2.4

• The most cryptocurrencies selected by the Darknet are: Bitcoin, Monroe and Litecoin

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The dark market is an e-commerce market that can only be accessed through networks such as I2P and TOR. Since the “Silk Road” has raised its use of bitcoin to trade illegal goods and services in its online marketplace, cryptocurrency has become the preferred asset of the dark-net economy.

Some cryptocurrencies have irrevocable and unreviewable characteristics and are therefore suitable for transactions that are considered illegal by local regulators, such as illegal weapons or narcotics transactions. According to a study by Chainalysis, it is estimated that by the end of 2019, the total consumption of cryptocurrencies in the dark network will reach 1 billion US dollars.

Since the advent of Bitcoin in 2009, there have been thousands of competing coins with excellent self-defeating features, such as built-in privacy features not currently available on the underlying Bitcoin. This article will analyze the use of cryptocurrency in the dark-net market to explore whether Bitcoin is still the main trading medium in markets where Monroco, Litecoin, and Zcash coexist.

The Block surveyed a total of 61 dark networks, and only 31 were accessible . Some of the rest of the websites were seized by law enforcement agencies, some were inaccessible due to DDOS attacks, and some were completely closed. Therefore, this article will be based on the analysis of these 31 accessible dark networks. The following chart highlights the support for cryptocurrencies in these dark-net markets.

Number of dark net markets

According to research, Bitcoin is still the most cryptocurrency currently selected by the Darknet, followed by Monroe and Litecoin. According to calculations, about 93% of the dark nets we surveyed accept bitcoin payments, and more than 44% of websites offer exclusive support for Bitcoin. In addition, the average number of cryptocurrencies supported by each market is approximately 2.4.

Monroe is the only asset in addition to Bitcoin that has exclusive support in the dark market . For example, Whitehouse Markets and Monopoly Market are markets that only support Monroe. They say that the reasons for this are:

• Whitehouse Markets: “Bitcoin lacks the necessary privacy. Some users don’t know how to clean their coins, or they don’t realize it.”

• Monopoly Market: “When dealing with government agencies, we must assume that they have a complete database or have the ability to contact the exchange to get any information they want. After all, this is what KYC regulators hope to achieve, that is, tracing In the end, see who bought what. And Monroe is a countermeasure to solve this problem. With Monroe, you can safely buy Bitcoin in any necessary channels, including providing ID cards to the exchange. It's simple, and the price is more affordable, because sellers who don't need proof of identity tend to raise prices because of risk factors.

Of the eight assets supported by the Darknet , three have privacy features, namely Monroe, Zcash and Dash (PANews has also investigated the market perception of anonymous currency). From the dominance of Bitcoin in these assets, the choice of Bitcoin by dark-net merchants has also been weighed. They chose to sacrifice certain privacy to get better liquidity and the network effect of Bitcoin. We also noticed that some sites also encourage users to use Bitcoin to increase anonymity, which seems to be a good alternative to spending more energy on accepting private currency payments.

The Block also found other interesting things in the study:

• Although Litecoin’s daily trading volume is not as good as Ethereum, the number of merchants accepting Litecoin in the dark network is twice that of the latter.

• Nightmare Market is the only website in all markets that supports Vertcoin

• Nearly one-third of the dark market offers multi-sign managed transaction support

It should be noted that the acceptance of cryptocurrency in the dark market is not completely fair to its use. In the future, The Block may publish another report analyzing individual sellers and the cryptocurrencies they receive to better understand the economic activities of cryptocurrencies. PANews will also immediately report on the news.

Author: Steven Zheng

Source: PANews

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