There's no longer much of a sense of camaraderie."Īs so often happens with revolutions, reality caught up with utopia.Ĭhristin argues that the dark web markets have been in a state of ethical decline since the moment Ross Ulbricht was arrested in late 2013.
"Economically, it's stable: it seems like whenever a marketplace goes down, another one picks up the pieces. "We’re starting to find the limits of these anonymous marketplaces," Christin says. But that sales figure has plateaued after years of fast growth, he says, perhaps in part because dark web drug buyers aren't as happy or confident as they once were. He says that the overall revenue of the anonymous online drug trade has hovered around $100 million a year regardless of repeated scams or law enforcement takedowns. "An expensive lesson learned."Īll of that online turmoil hasn't necessarily sent the dark web's buyers back to street dealers, says Nicolas Christin, a computer science researcher at Carnegie Mellon who's published some of the most thorough measurements of the dark net markets. "Should have listened when people said AlphaBay is a scam site," wrote another user whose bitcoins disappeared. "There are numerous reports of AlphaBay funds going missing and shady behavior from AlphaBay administration," writes one popular online drug vendor known by the name GrandWizardsLair, explaining his decision to no longer sell on the site.
0 kommentar(er)
