A couple days ago, I posted an article about the popular dark web marketplace AlphaBay closing their blinds. What many hoped to be just the maintenance several reddit users claimed, six days later with no other news is putting users in a bad mental state.
Many are discussing the possibility of authorities seizing the site’s servers. If law enforcement is truly involved and AlphaBay goes down, it will be an even bigger bust than the 2013 disintegration of the Silk Road.
Several dark web forums are home to dozens of theories on what might have happened to AlphaBay. If law enforcement isn’t involved, the next best guess is an exist scam. According to quite a few AlphaBay customers, the evidence points more towards a exit scam or law enforcement than it does simple maintenance.
For example, a reddit thread recently brought to light an interesting factor: literally dozens of “big boy” vendors went silent in the days leading up to the blackout.
One reddit user explains their experience,
“I also waited for a vendor “mrgreene” to return from vacation from the 4th of June. His sales where through the roof and level 10 on everything yet when he returned from vacation he went from sales of $10.000+ dollars of orders daily to “0” from the date he returned until the site went down.
Now a vendor with such great feedback never made a move, very sketchy indeed, why no sales before it went down for at least a week. It does seem like top vendors knew something as these are the people keeping the money coming in for these admins so them not bringing it in once they returned is very sketchy indeed!!!!!”
Another user on a dark web forum claims to be an AlphaBay vendor – and that shortly after the site went down, their Dream Market account was hacked using the same credentials as their AlphaBay account.
The possibilities are truly endless. One thing is for sure: if AlphaBay doesn’t come back up, consumers and vendors are losing anywhere from $10 to $300k.