Bitcoin in the Headlines: Kingpins and Dark Markets
Despite a few high-profile stories, the bitcoin and blockchain industry ended the calendar summer on a down note, with media outlets mostly rehashing well-worn stories. Still, the notoriety of the publications providing coverage was of note, with The New Yorker and Rolling Stone adding to the conversation and exposing new audiences to topics such as the ongoing bitcoin fork debate and the fall of Mt Gox. Elsewhere, perceived issues with the technology were given ample airtime, with the dark web and controversial international markets garnering the remainder of the spotlight. A bitcoin....
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Ever since the Silk Road platform came to fruition, Bitcoin seems to become a favourite form of payment across dark web marketplaces. Kripos, the Norwegian Police Service’s specialized agency, is close to concluding their largest operation – dubbed Marco Polo – against a drug ring on the dark web. The dark web is attracting all types of Internet criminals these days, and online drug trafficking is just one of the many types of business taking place. A recent sting by Kripos in Norway led to the arrest of fifteen individuals, all of whom were involved in drug trafficking on the dark web.....
Dark Net Markets (DNM) are growing bigger than ever, with the Economist reporting over $50 million USD in transactions flowing through these marketplaces. The publication used data collected from Gwern Branwen’s dark web archive and broke down quite a bit of the behavior taking place in the Dark Net Market environment. Dark Net Markets are Booming. Since....
Paying a higher price can be annoying, but it is still worth it to the majority of deep web users. Plus, Bitcoin developers are working on adding privacy and anonymity to the protocol, which will benefit users of dark markets even more. The recent Bitcoin network congestion has been a topic of substantial debate on Reddit. But could it affect something as obscure as the dark markets? Despite the block reward halving, they should have no imminent need of switching to different forms of payments. It would be shortsighted to deny the success Bitcoin has on the deep web. Underground....
At least 400 dark net web domains have been reported seized and 17 individuals arrested in connection with Operation Onymous, an ongoing global cybercrime crackdown. A number of high-profile dark net markets, most notably Silk Road 2.0, have been shut down by law enforcement agencies in the US and Europe over the past 24 hours. The European Union's Judicial Cooperation Unit, or Eurojust, reported on 7th November that 414 dark web domains have been seized so far as part of Operation Onymous. All of the sites in question were accessible through the Tor network, which according to those....
In this concluding article of our series looking at Silk Road, a year after its closure, we examine the impact the Silk Road bust had on the dark markets and their most widely used digital currency, bitcoin. The FBI may have taken down the Silk Road in spectacular fashion, slapping a seizure notice on the dark marketplace's website and executing the high-profile public arrests of Ross Ulbricht, and later, bitcoin executive Charlie Shrem and digital currency trader Robert Faiella. According to academics and researchers studying dark web markets - which transact almost exclusively in bitcoin....