Altcoin News: The Current Year May Be a Record for the Amount of Bitcoin Spent on Dark Web

July 2, 2019, by Marko Vidrih on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE

The current year may be a record for the amount of payments made using Bitcoin on illegal trading platforms on Dark Web. Bloomberg referring to the forecast of the analytical company Chainalysis and writes that it is expected that this value will exceed $1 billion by the end of the year.

On the dark web markets, $515 million of Bitcoin transactions related to illegal purchases has already been spent this year, testifies company report. The maximum for this indicator was recorded in 2017 when $872 million was spent this way, and in 2018 there was a decline along with a decline in the price of the cryptocurrency.

Image credit: Bloomberg

According to Chainalysis, Hydra is the largest of all illegal marketplaces in the network. The analysts came to this conclusion on the basis of observations on the distribution of transactions in the bitcoin blockchain. The most popular product turned out to be narcotic substances, followed by child pornography and bank card data. Bitcoin is the most common cryptocurrency at these sites, ahead of Monero.

At the same time, the share of such transactions in the total volume of Bitcoin payments continues to decline. They now make up less than 1% versus 7% in 2012, said Hannah Curtis, senior product manager of data at Chainalysis.

Author: Marko Vidrih