Directors and sellers on darkish internet marketplaces had a greater 2023 than the earlier 12 months, pulling in an estimated $1.7bn in cryptocurrency-based revenues, in accordance with new Chainalysis knowledge.
The blockchain evaluation firm studied cryptocurrency flows from these underground marketplaces and fraud outlets over the previous 12 months.
The rise in income got here after a torrid 2022 for the trade after its largest participant, Hydra, was shut down by the German authorities.
As an alternative, Mega Darknet now leads the pack with over half a billion {dollars} of crypto inflows, adopted by Kraken Market and Blacksprut.
Nevertheless, general the sector has fragmented considerably from the times when Silk Street, AlphaBay, Wall Avenue Market and Hydra dominated the roost. Right this moment, no single participant is dominant like these marketplaces have been earlier than their takedown, with directors preferring to concentrate on specific kinds of items and providers.
“Over time some markets … developed a strong catalog of illicit providers like cash laundering, fiat offramping, and merchandise that allow cyber-criminal actions like ransomware and malware assaults. One such refined darknet market, Hydra, supplied all that and extra,” Chainalysis defined.
“Against this, it seems immediately’s darknet markets largely serve particular niches and have individually organized themselves into distinctive prison capabilities, which we decided when inspecting the origin factors for darknet market inflows final 12 months.”
These capabilities are:
- Cybercrime enablement associated to ransomware, malware, stolen funds and different kinds of cybercrime. It might embody the sale of root kits, entry to personally identifiable info (PII) and offramping for stolen funds
- Drug sourcing and provide: promoting medicine to distributors on different darknet markets
- Different illicit laundering/shopping for: transfers made to darknet markets with a view to obfuscate on-chain exercise or buy unlawful merchandise
- Relaxation-of-world drug trade: drug purchases made on darknet markets serving a world buyer base
- Russian-serving drug trade: drug purchases made by Russian prospects
- Western-facing drug trade: drug purchases made by prospects primarily based within the US and Western Europe
Chainalysis additionally famous that some markets are overtly promoting their wares in Russia, with big 3D billboards (Kraken Market) and QR codes on subway trains (Mega Darknet Market).
It added that many fraud outlets are more and more providing third-party crypto-payment processors like UAPS through API calls, as a solution to cut back their very own prices, enhance operational effectivity and enhance safety.
