Agreed there, but what options are there now that BTC-e is gone? To hear the US government tell it, BTC-e was literally operated to facilitate money laundering for cybercriminals and other darknet market participants. It's amazing to look back at how prominent that exchange was given everything in the indictment -- including laundering the Mt. Gox hack coins. I had used BTC-e myself for years ever since 2013 or so.
I figured that must have been a big blow to the darknet economy. AlphaBay and Hansa were taken down at the same time. What do people use these days?
230 exchanges listed on coinmarketcap..and probably another 200 that are not on that list.
Just last month one exchange in Romania was closed and the owner sent to the US for money laundering and that exchange had never published any numbers.
As for dark markets...no info here
From 2013 when SR went down I stayed out of the area, not even curious what's happening there now.
And no, I wasn't a merchant there
If the TXs numbers doubled in 2018, the article isn't saying how it is compared to 5 years ago. Just an excuse to be able to say BTC is for criminal activities. I do remember a study last summer, the number of BTC transactions used for illegal activities failed by over 50% within the last 5 years. What does it mean? People aren't using BTC anymore on the darknet markets.
It's the value in USD than doubled.
The number of tx or the volume in BTC is irrelevant in this case as long as the overall value of the goods there has doubled.
