Bitcoin also lost his throne in Darknet
A new study by Recorded Future has shown that Bitcoin is no longer the number one cryptocurrency in the Darknet markets. The Internet technology company analyzed 150 of the most requested markets and illicit service providers to see that the sympathy they had in the communities of Darknet has changed considerably, so the question forced: Darknet has finished with Bitcoin?
The Darknet economy
Darknet is an Internet that uses non-standardized communication protocols and ports that notoriously complicate the identification of users. Darknet requires special software to be used, the most popular being TOR, to be able to connect to the Internet. The main idea of using Darknet is to keep the user's identity as private as possible.
Thanks to this tool for privacy, Darknet has many famous markets such as Silk Road that allows users to exchange anything, legally or illegally, in a digital market similar to Amazon. The anonymous internet is also used by criminals or people who need to use the black market.
A backward network
In mid-2016 Recorded Future noted that 150 entities were analyzing certain concerns regarding the functionality, usability and security of Bitcoin in the Darknet economy. After the increased interest in the Bitcoin market in 2017, the Bitcoin network was overpopulated with traffic, which represented a growth in the rates for those who use the Darknet markets. For December 23, 2017, the transaction fee was $ 52.18.
Recorded Future found that Darknet's standard transaction size ranged from $ 50- $ 300. If a user made a transaction on December 23, 2017, it could have been possible that the transaction fee was higher than the amount of the transaction itself. A member of Darknet claimed in a forum the following:
"What is happening right now is incomprehensible, although I have used the recommended commission rates, my transactions have been pending in the last three days, and my work is paralyzed. Dear sellers, please use other payment options, or else, I will not be in this Christmas season. "
A Christmas miracle
This significant delay of Bitcoin led to some people from the "underworld" could not conduct their business. This user transaction was so late that it took days to verify.
To counteract the double-spending attacks, many of the Darknet vendors agreed to a rule consisting of three confirmations before attempting to complete transactions. Since a transaction can not be completed until the payment has been confirmed, this user was effectively paralyzed because he could not complete his "business".
Although this user was worried that he could not "be in the Christmas season", his miracle of Christmas was about to happen. To counterbalance the transaction fees that were increasing daily, sellers used alternative payment methods.
The study found that Litecoin was the second most famous cryptocurrency to use after 30% of sellers were accepting LTC, and Dash was the third when 20% was accepting payments with DASH.
Other studies by Darknet
In 2016, the economist Tuur Demeester was in the process of researching the Darknet markets. The economist was looking with his study: What percentage of transactions in Darknet were made with BTC? The DarkCoin was used and how much? How many Bitcoins were used in Darknet on a daily / monthly / annual basis? But Demeester did not find any good response with the community.
Prior to Demeester's research, The Digital Citizens Alliance released a table with statistics reflecting the number of drug listings in the Darknet markets in August 2014, but this table did not provide other information other than prices, transaction volume and methods. of preferred payment.
Similarly, Nicolas Cristin, professor and researcher at the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and Dr. Kyle Soska established a study from 2013 to 2015 to have a much more accurate idea of the functioning of the Darknet markets.
When Silk Road was closed in October 2013, Cristin and Soska detailed that the fall of that market had spawned the development of anonymous markets on the Internet, which continues to evolve to this day. For two years, both researchers used measurement mechanisms in 16 different markets to study the behavior of the online anonymous market ecosystem. We documented types of goods sold, the effect or lack of adverse events such as police actions and large frauds compared to the general size of the economy. They also obtained diversification information from suppliers and their security practices.
Payment methods are evolving
The Recorded Futures study showed that suppliers will continue to strive to make diversified and accepted payments in the Darknet markets. Although Litecoin and Dash are quite popular in the community, they expect Bitcoin to remain popular within Darknet, getting lower market shares than they do now. Recorded Future also warned that with the excessive growth of the popularity of cryptocurrencies, this will bring an increase in malicious tools such as ransomware that will try to take advantage of these growing trends.