Darknet market

A darknet market or cryptomarket is a commercial website on the dark web that operates via darknets such as Tor or I2P. They function primarily as black markets, selling or brokering transactions involving drugs, cyber-arms,weapons, counterfeit currency, stolen credit card details, forged documents, unlicensed pharmaceuticals,steroids, and other illicit goods as well as the sale of legal products. In December 2014, a study by Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth suggested the second most popular sites on Tor were darknet markets.

Following on from the model developed by Silk Road, contemporary markets are characterised by their use of darknet anonymised access (typically Tor), Bitcoin payment with escrow services, and eBay-like vendor feedback systems.

Vendor product breakdown 3 June 2015

Though e-commerce on the dark web only started around 2006, illicit goods were among the first items to be transacted using the internet, when in the early 1970s students at Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology used what was then called the ARPANET to coordinate the purchase of cannabis. By the end of the 1980s, newsgroups like alt.drugs would become online centres of drug discussion and information; however, any related deals were arranged entirely off-site directly between individuals. With the development and popularization of the World Wide Web and e-commerce in the 1990s, the tools to discuss or conduct illicit transactions became more widely available. One of the better-known web-based drug forums, The Hive, launched in 1997, serving as an information sharing forum for practical drug synthesis and legal discussion. The Hive was featured in a Dateline NBC special called The "X" Files in 2001, bringing the subject into public discourse. From 2003, the "Research Chemical Mailing List" (RCML) would discuss sourcing "Research Chemicals" from legal and grey sources as an alternative to forums such as alt.drugs.psychedelics. However Operation Web Tryp led to a series of website shut downs and arrests in this area.

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