by Ciphas

DISCLAIMER: This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only. I do not condone the use of illegal substances and/or services. Anything you do on the dark web is at your own risk!!

Good morning, readers! In my earlier post Interview: Eileen Ormsby, Author of Silk Road & All Things VICE, I thought of one of Ms. Ormsby’s answers to the question: “Have you explored some of the darknet markets that are still in business?”

Her answer began with: “Yes, all of them. And they are boring. Which is exactly what a market should be to stay in business.” Ormsby was making this statement in comparison to the Silk Road market, which attracted a lot of buzz and public interest. I see her point, but I still wanted to find out for myself if some of these markets were as “boring” as she claimed.

So, one of the markets I chose to look into was Dream Market, which is currently one of the top darknet markets. (And as I always say, I’m sure you dark web veterans already know about it.) It’s an escrow market (established in 2013) that can be accessed via the Tor network.

What I’m tending to notice as I explore more of these markets is that they look very similar (as far as site design goes). On the sidebar are usually the various categories of goods, and within those, you can navigate to specific products and vendors. The difference, often, is with the individual vendors and products.

As I’ve said before, I haven’t exactly gone through and snorted all the coke and GHB to see if it was high-quality.

Drugs seem to be the most popular product by far, which isn’t really that surprising – but they aren’t the only thing for sale, believe it or not. Also popular are drug paraphernalia (pipes, needles, etc.), and then, of course, there are many non-drug-related products as well (even…gasp!…legal things).

Register, Please

In my opinion, the registration process for Dream Market was very easy – but if you want a more in-depth guide (that you can access without Tor), look at How To Access Dream Market.

Basically, like most sites where you have to register, you create a username and password, and also a security PIN. Unlike markets such as Python, Acropolis, and Apple Market, you don’t need an invite or referral to join this one; you just sign up and boom!

You also need to have a bitcoin wallet of some kind in order to purchase the goods (hey…tell something I don’t know!). There are various bitcoin mixers (a.k.a. tumblers) that help obscure the transactions, such as Grams Helix or BitCloak.

So, that’s the easy part. The question is – how does it compare to other markets? Well, if you go by the reviews on Deepdotweb: Dream Market, it’s a very good site (although sometimes these reviews are made by the vendors themselves). You can’t trust anyone, can you? (Well, sometimes you can; other times, you just learn the hard way.)

Short of trying the products yourself, it can also be helpful to visit the official Dream Market Forum, in which customers often share their experiences. If there are scammers within the market (and this seems to be a frequent occurrence), they usually get outed sooner or later.

I Don’t Like the Drugs…

As I mentioned before, drugs aren’t the only product available, even if they are the most popular. Though I have yet to actually purchase any goods, I’ve half-considered buying some of the legal goods (like the books on hacking), to see if I would actually receive the product.

If I succeed at this in the near future, I’ll definitely post about it. Other products you might come across include include pornsite accounts (that you would normally pay a fortune for), hacked accounts (PayPal, etc.), skimmed credit cards, computer equipment, and other things.

For those of you who’ve never ventured into any of these markets (but might be curious), feel free to visit Dream Market and experience it for yourself. As Eileen Ormsby said, the site itself might be boring, but if you’re the type to do drugs (or what-have-you) anyway, this is probably a safer alternative than buying them on the street.

Some people do get scammed out of their bitcoins, and others do sometimes get arrested in the process, just to warn you. On the other hand, that seems a bit less common than it used to be with the “Silk Road” markets.

So…if you do decide to shop at Dream Market, just know what you’re getting into. And don’t tell them I sent you.