By the most conservative estimates, 2 million people worldwide use the “dark web”—a marketplace for illegal trade—anonymously every day. Using cryptocurrency and the Tor browser, you can buy anything here: from marijuana to documentation for American drones. At the same time, purchases and transactions cannot be traced, which means charges cannot be brought. Administrators and sellers of online shops earn up to half a million dollars monthly on the underground market. Government law enforcement agencies are trying to do something about it, but they can’t: blocking “dark web” sites is technically impossible. In 2015, after two years of unsuccessful attempts, the FBI arrested Ross Ulbricht, the administrator of the first known underground marketplace, Silk Road. The court sentenced him to life in prison. However, things did not improve: illegal trade became decentralized, and hundreds of other marketplaces sprang up in place of Silk Road. In addition, separate movements inspired by the idea of the “dark web” emerged. One of the oldest is the cryptopunk movement
Bitcoin is the alternative economy of an alternative society. Combining Bitcoin with Tor is like having sex with two condoms: not only are you conducting transactions on a secure network, but you’re also doing so in your own currency, over which banks have no control. Now, following the closure of this platform, it is difficult to estimate the total global turnover of the “dark web.”
