I don't follow the news but the demand for bitcoin is tremendous in relation to darknet markets. I am not involved but I know people getting rich on all sides and from my perspective the whole community is thriving.
I know people who are barely computer literate ordering stuff from the DNMs. A 19 year old model said to me recently, "everyone gets drugs off the darknet."
Of course, the fragmentation is there and if AlphaBay goes down that is rather bad but the reality is the transactions have just went private, one-on-one, etc. And OpenBazaar is coming, the beta looks awesome. There is also a Silk Road 4 and while I wouldn't recommend it, I know people who have used it successfully.
And this whole article seems wrong, it even says:
>All of that online turmoil hasn’t necessarily sent the dark web’s buyers back to street dealers, says Nicolas Christin, a computer science researcher at Carnegie Mellon who’s published some of the most thorough measurements of the dark net markets. He says that the overall revenue of the anonymous online drug trade has hovered around $100 million a year regardless of repeated scams or law enforcement takedowns. But that sales figure has plateaued after years of fast growth, he says, perhaps in part because dark web drug buyers aren’t as happy or confident as they once were.
I don't follow the news but the demand for bitcoin is tremendous in relation to darknet markets. I am not involved but I know people getting rich on all sides and from my perspective the whole community is thriving.
I know people who are barely computer literate ordering stuff from the DNMs. A 19 year old model said to me recently, "everyone gets drugs off the darknet."
Of course, the fragmentation is there and if AlphaBay goes down that is rather bad but the reality is the transactions have just went private, one-on-one, etc. And OpenBazaar is coming, the beta looks awesome. There is also a Silk Road 4 and while I wouldn't recommend it, I know people who have used it successfully.
And this whole article seems wrong, it even says:
>All of that online turmoil hasn’t necessarily sent the dark web’s buyers back to street dealers, says Nicolas Christin, a computer science researcher at Carnegie Mellon who’s published some of the most thorough measurements of the dark net markets. He says that the overall revenue of the anonymous online drug trade has hovered around $100 million a year regardless of repeated scams or law enforcement takedowns. But that sales figure has plateaued after years of fast growth, he says, perhaps in part because dark web drug buyers aren’t as happy or confident as they once were.