If you’ve heard of dark web black markets, chances are you’ve heard of AlphaBay. After online black market the Silk Road was taken down by authorities, AlphaBay was one of the hundreds to pop up in its place.
Over the course of the last few years, AlphaBay has only continued to grow. The black market has influenced drug abuse, hacking, the purchase of firearms, and even the circulation of counterfeit money.
The site is assumed to profit up to $800,000 on a daily basis, as stated by associate research professor Nicolas Christin, of Carnegie Mellon University.
If true, the unpublished statistics prove that AlphaBay is now twice as large as the Silk Road had been when it was shut down in 2013. This is why black market customers are panicking after the website was taken offline nearly two days ago.
In the beginning, there was no update from administrators/staff explaining the situation. This caused many online users to suspect an exit scam, as the website still held an unofficial estimate of $3.7 million in digital currency.
“One user on Reddit claimed that law enforcement had raided the houses of two AlphaBay vendors, but provided no evidence to prove this had occurred.
Furthermore, some users have posted Bitcoin addresses to which large transactions had been made or withdrawn on 05 Jul 2017. These addresses were claimed as evidence the owners of AlphaBay had stolen the money deposited to the site.”
Quite some time after the black market was taken offline, several reddit users claiming to be admins of AlphaBay made posts claiming the market was down for updates. So really, the possibilities are endless.
For starters, the black market could just be under construction – or maybe it really is an exit scam. On the other hand, authorities could have taken it down too. Regardless, is AlphaBay being offline really a bad thing . . . ?
The war on drugs says no: it’s not a bad thing.
