Darknet hit an ATH of $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2020. The numbers for the revenue went up, but the number of individuals went down. So how did it happen?
It’s all because of Hydra, which grew exponentially in 2020. Hydra is actually responsible for around 75% of the darknet market revenue in 2020.
Hydra is a darknet marketplace that only services countries in which Russian is spoken. Unlike other darknet market places that work by mailing contraband to buyers, Hydra has a “drop-style” type of activity.
After someone made a purchase, the merchant for Hydra makes plans for the merchandise to be hidden in a location that is somewhere close to the buyer. This means that the transaction is even more anonymous, and the buyer has a lower chance of being caught or even tracked.
In fact, if we were to remove Hydra from this story, the revenue for the darknet market barely changed compared to 2019.
To Market, To Market
According to the Chainalysis 2021 Crypto Crime Report, it was discovered that most darknet markets aren’t, as expected, drug markets but fraud shops. These places sell stolen credit card info or similar data that one can use later for fraud.
It was also Chainalysis that discovered the fact that many of the funds dealing with the darknet marketplace have connections to digital currency exchanges.