COVID-19 did not stop illicit trades: dark markets hit a new record

A new blog report by blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis reveals that dark markets, where cryptocurrency is used to buy and sell illicit goods online, generated a record in trading of illicit goods in 2020. Illicit trade revenue rose by 23% to 1.75 billion United States dollars (USD) of cryptocurrency in 2020, despite that COVID-19 related restrictions have caused major shipping delays.

The rise of dark markets is led by the Russian bazaar Hydra, which serves Russian-speaking countries only and jumped by 33% to 1.37 billion USD (75% of total trades worldwide). Hydra dominates the dark market because Ukraine and Russia are the top two adopters of cryptocurrency in the world.

Sources:

Chainalysis Team. Covid is Causing Shipping Issues, But Natural Competitive Forces Are Causing Darknet Market Consolidation. Chainalysis blog (2020)

M. Leising. Darknet Market Had a Record 2020, Led by Russian Bazaar Hydra. Bloomberg (2021)

Image: from Chainalysis blog

Fri Feb 05 2021

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COVID-19 & DARKNET MARKETS
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The research presented in the website is supported by the "COVID-19: Monitoring the effects of the pandemic on illicit online trade" project funded by the ESRC. Content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) unless otherwise specified in single posts.