Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs reported that both Abacus Market’s dark web and clearnet infrastructure are now inaccessible, a likely exit scam by its operators. After dominating the ecosystem with over 70% market share and recording $6.3 million in monthly sales, its sudden disappearance has shocked the community. Hudson Intelligence assists law firms, businesses, public agencies and investors with cryptocurrency investigations and due diligence. Every investigation is led by a Cryptocurrency Tracing Certified Examiner (CTCE) and Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE). If you would like to discuss a potential investigation, please complete the form below.
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Additional layers, such as two-factor authentication (2FA), encrypted PGP messaging, and built-in wallet security, significantly enhance protection against theft and hacking. While not based in Australia, Abacus Market gained strong traction with local darknet users by embracing cultural references, supporting Australian vendors, and featuring a dedicated moderator from the region. These efforts helped it become one of the most active platforms among Australian users.
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Additionally, transactions are made with cryptocurrencies, mostly Bitcoin, which also provide anonymity to the transaction parties6,36. While the Bitcoin blockchain is publicly available on Bitcoin core37 or other third-party APIs such as Blockchain.com38, a market or a user can generate a new address for each transaction. To track the transactions of markets and users as entities, the data need to be pre-processed in order to map groups of addresses into entities. The median net income is positive for sellers while negative for buyers throughout the whole period of observation. In fact, when we compute the total net income for each seller, a considerable fraction (16%) has a negative net income because they spend in markets where they are not classified as sellers, or in the U2U network. Moreover, we find a change of trend between the seller and the buyer median net income time series which reflects the dominance of markets, as detailed in the next section.
The Future Of Darknet Transactions
Since the demise of Silk Road, numerous markets have emerged on the dark web for transactions of hacked passwords, stolen credit cards, compromised accounts, money laundering and fraud-related services. TRM Labs analysis shows that nearly half of the marketplaces launched in 2024 accepted only Monero — a sharp increase from just over one-third in 2023. This signals a growing preference among darknet operators for obfuscation and anti-surveillance tools. Cryptocurrency-enabled drug sales also grew by over 19% from 2023 to 2024, reaching nearly USD 2.4 billion in volume.
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Binance, one of the largest global crypto exchanges, announced Monero’s delisting in February 2024, citing regulatory concerns and the need for compliance with financial monitoring standards. “Typically, illicit transactions constitute at or below 1% of total crypto activities. While addressing these issues is essential, broadly labeling crypto negatively is inaccurate and counterproductive.” Its share of the Bitcoin-supporting Western dark market ecosystem also spiked to over 70%, following ASAP’s closure and the law enforcement seizure of Incognito Market in March 2024.
- Additionally, where non-compliant cash out points are facilitating the movement of illicit funds from DNMs, regulators and law enforcement may take action to disrupt activity at the cash out point itself.
- It’s an ever-evolving ecosystem—constantly shifting, reinventing itself, and adapting.
- A balanced regulatory approach is essential to ensure security without stifling innovation.
- Our research shows that, like most legal commodities, stolen data products flow through a supply chain consisting of producers, wholesalers, and consumers.
- It was the first Darknet black market of its kind and was the precursor for many similar sites.
- The absence of uniform global guidelines creates regulatory arbitrage, allowing entities to relocate to lenient jurisdictions.
We developed Lunar to monitor the deep and dark web, including dark web marketplace sites. WeTheNorth is a Canadian market established in 2021 that also serves international users. It offers counterfeit documents, financial fraud tools, hacking and malware services. It has an active forum and community along with an extensive user vetting process. Abacus Market, the largest Bitcoin BTC-driven darknet marketplace in the Western world, has abruptly gone dark, bringing about suspicions of a major exit scam. H25.io is a premium directory in the Tor network, offering access to a diverse and meticulously curated list of onion sites.
The reduced accessibility of Monero forced users to rely on a more liquid and widely accepted asset,” Jardine stated in an interview with CoinDesk. “Markets have sort of varying levels of sensitivity to fentanyl-related sales,” he said. “Some claim they don’t do it, then don’t police vendors; some claim they don’t do it, but then they do. Some will be selling precursor products but not finished products.” That prevents small dealers from participating in the market and a natural tendency towards fewer but larger dealers on those markets,” Fiedler told Decrypt. These numbers show that darknet customers are making fewer purchases in total, but these purchases are, on average, for larger amounts. Darknet markets have surpassed their 2019 revenue this year with a month to spare, according to a report published by Chainalysis yesterday.
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Freshtools is a unique marketplace in that it does not only provide the stolen data, but it allows criminals to purchase MaaS which can cause further damage to the victims. It is one of the most active and up to date markets and always provides new and updated malware and data. It has built a reputation for being a reliable source of stolen credit card data and PII. Renowned for its extensive inventory of financial data and sophisticated operating methods, Brian’s Club is a key player in the underground economy of financial cybercrime. Valued at approximately $15 million, Abacus Market is one of the most lucrative platforms in the dark web ecosystem. Some are looking for illegal stuff they can’t buy elsewhere, like drugs or counterfeit documents.
The pseudonymous nature and evolving tactics of criminals make regulatory oversight challenging. Crypto anonymity tools, such as mixing services (tumblers) and privacy coins, enhance transaction privacy by obscuring the origin of funds. These tools pool and redistribute transactions, making it challenging to trace senders and recipients. While they provide anonymity, they also pose regulatory challenges by complicating financial tracking and raising concerns about illicit activities. Cryptocurrency money laundering methods have dominated the development of blockchain technology, using privacy tools and decentralized infrastructure to conceal illicit financial transactions.
NFTs, DeFi, And The Next Wave Of Crypto Crimes
This can include everything from full names, email logins, and passwords to credit card details, social security numbers, and bank account information. The cybercriminals trade even sensitive documents, such as medical records, passport information, and driver’s licenses. But somewhere between production and purchasing, things can get dirty. For example, an insider or factory employee might quietly slip away with an unmarked gun and sell it online. Once it lands on a darknet marketplace, it becomes part of the illegal weapons trade.
Abacus’s exit follows the June 16, 2025 law enforcement seizure of Archetyp Market, marking the latest in a series of shutdowns in the Western DNM ecosystem. Saheed Aremu passionately advocates for digital privacy and cybersecurity in the modern digital age. As one of PrivacySavvy’s resident VPN experts, he guides readers on protecting their online information and anonymity. Saheed earned his degree in Technology and Ethics from the University of Lagos in Nigeria.
- The investigation uncovered a local criminal organization linked to a large international drug supply operation.
- So when someone like a private buyer or criminal group can’t pass the background checks or get the right permits, they usually turn to the dark web to sidestep the rules and get armed without drawing attention.
- As these platforms grow more secure, decentralized, and integrated into broader digital ecosystems, their influence expands.
- It is considered a go-to site for malware purchasing, providing keyloggers, trojans, and other Malware as a Service products.
- Often portrayed as the internet’s shadowy underbelly, the Dark Web hosts marketplaces offering everything from privacy tools and digital currencies to more questionable, or outright illegal, products and services.
For each entity, we keep track of the cumulative values of the six features for each transaction performed by the entity over time. To be classified as a seller, an entity must simultaneously satisfy the six feature threshold criteria, as follows. BidenCash and other exit-scam markets such as Torzon and Kingdom Market collapsed between 2022 and 2024.
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Then, between 2017 and 2018, there is a drastic structural change in the multiseller network structure due to operation Bayonet, after which the connections almost vanished. This change persists until the end of the observed period of the data set (also see Supplementary Information S4). The number of sellers in each category and multisellers as a function of time is shown in Fig. Until the end of 2013, when Silk Road is the dominant market (see Fig. 3), market-only sellers is the dominant category, and there are no multisellers.
