DarkNet

At least 129 million Russian motorists now have their information with an unknown hacker group that is attempting to sell it on the darknet for cryptocurrency.

As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world, the demand for medical supplies such as test kits, reagents, masks etc. skyrockets. In its turn, the growing deficiency has pushed a growth in counterfeit products.

Darknet shops that sell drugs and stolen credentials are now offering N95 respirator masks and anti-malaria medicines. To stay anonymous, these underground entrepreneurs accept bitcoin payments.

Most people use bitcoin for investment rather than for payments, it is a currency, after all. And some users perform transactions with it just like with ordinary money, which it is, in fact. However, as the price of bitcoin has become highly volatile, the number of people willing to spend it has decreased sharply.

Prices were falling all last year but this fact didn’t prevent people from conducting transactions on the darknet.  Moreover, reliable sources claim that the number of bitcoin payments on darknet by the end of 2018 doubled since the beginning of the year.

Authorities in South Korea arrested 9 drug dealers who sold narcotics through an obscured online platform using crypto, according to a report by Korea Herald. The office of Seoul Central District Prosecutor revealed on December 23, 2018, that the purported criminals used the darknet and even developed a website purposely to sell drugs.

US authorities have announced that most of their agents had been working clandestine on the Darknet a year ago. This bullish operation disclosed the correct identity of more than 50 vendors on various sites such as Hansa, Silk Road, Dream, Alpha Bay and many more, with more than 35 suspects arrested plus goods worth $23.6 million or more seized.

While surfing the Web, not everyone realizes that actually, two parallel worlds exist there: the usual Internet and the darknet, an area much deeper and much more mysterious.  

The darknet is the space where off-the-grid transactions occur. Commodities there range from drugs, and smuggled goods to human organs. Cryptocurrency has aided the flourishment of the darknet since it provides an undetectable payment system.