The bitcoin transactions on the dark web, underground illegal marketplace have doubled in the last year (2018) in comparison to 2017 while the value of the transactions has decreased from around $700 million in 2017 to $600 million in 2018 as revealed by Chainalysis’s report.
Dark web not affected by the bear market:
It seems that the dark web is not affected by the bear market trend which led to the price of bitcoin to fall from over $19000 to around $3200 last year. Even during the bear market, the transactions on the dark web have been rising.
According to the report by Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis company, the value of the total transactions on the dark web was around $700 million in 2018 while the value of bitcoin transactions in 2018 was around $600. This was probably due to the shut down of dark web markets such as AlphaBay and Hansa in 2017.
The dark web websites have been experiencing massive growth in terms of the number of cryptocurrency transactions even though the prices of these cryptocurrencies have seen a tremendous decline over the past year. According to Kim Grauer, the senior economist at Chainalysis, the buyers and sellers on these dark web marketplaces really do not care about the price of bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies while transacting. She also believes the in the coming time, the value of these transactions may further decrease as the governments are taking strict measures in order to shut down these markets.
Binance using Chainalysis:
Binance, which is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges revealed last year that it was using Chainalysis’s KYC and anti-money laundering software to prevent any illicit transactions on the exchange. The software by Chainalysis is used by companies to perform investigations in terms of financial transactions. The same software is also being used by many institutional clients of security firms for compliance.
