Topic: Legitimate Darknet Marketplaces which Accept Bitcoin? (Read 343 times)

I was not aware about that. Thanks for letting me know. Sometimes I'd wish that OpenBazaar would accept a diversity of anonymous cryptocurrencies into its platform (like Monero or Grin) to provide better privacy to the buyer. I'm not saying that Zcash doesn't do its job well for preserving people's privacy. But there are far better coins out there with higher market capitalization than ZEC.

Anyhow, it's a good thing that OpenBazaar's code is open source. In the future, we could experience alternative versions of OB with that are much more oriented to privacy/anonymity. A forked version of OB that would use Tor (or I2P) by default, and would accept a greater number of privacy coins than the original version would be the next big thing for decentralized e-commerce.

Speaking of marketplaces, there are a plethora of decentralized solutions today that would prove to be highly beneficial for both the buyer and the seller. We've got Syscoin's Decentralized Marketplace, and the Origami Network (which runs on top of the ETH blockchain). I think this is more than enough for anyone looking to buy/sell items without the need to worry about government surveillance or paying hefty fees to a third party. With these solutions, both the buyer and the seller are in complete control (instead of a third party like it's the case with eBay and Amazon). This is much better than using or creating a marketplace within the darknet, in my own opinion

Yes, I imagine vendors selling books or garden supplies weren't making huge stacks of money so whatever they lost wasn't worth wasting their time and money on.

I remember there was a guy selling his art on there who raised a stink. He and everyone else of course got nowhere.

US law enforcement seems to enjoy stealing cash from grannies in broad daylight and daring them to sue so there was never a hope.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't remember anyone going through the courts to challenge the government. Maybe it didn't make sense with how broad powers US authorities seem to have when it comes to confiscating property.

OB can work over Tor. As for Zcash that depends if you have trust in how the multi-party computation of public parameters was conducted. IIRC, Zcash also had suffered from two inflation bugs, it is said no one managed to exploit them, but no one's 100% certain


Yes, there were quite a few legal things being sold there:

I seem to recall quite a bit of legitimate business was taking place on Silk Road which I guess makes some sense there was illegitimate profit ready to be spent. Unfortunately that didn't stop the legit money being stolen by the US government. And if it ain't law enforcement then it'll be the site operators themselves.

I can see now how you're thinking. I don't think many others feel the same.

It's a good point. If there's nothing to hide, then it's best to use existent marketplaces on the clearnet. There are too many shady marketplaces on the Darknet which mostly sell illegal stuff. The number of legitimate marketplaces are zero to none. OpenBazaar is a good alternative, though. But it doesn't rely on a privacy-preserving protocol/network like Tor. Not to mention, it uses Zcash where many people have claimed it has a backdoor (which goes against your privacy).

It would've been great to have a marketplace that would rely on the Tor network + Monero for truly private transactions between the buyer and the seller. The only downside would be the lack of a middleman for dispute resolution. I hardly doubt anyone would want to create a marketplace running on the Darknet that would accept Monero as payment method. Most people don't care about privacy when shopping, so this is more of an idea/dream than anything else.

I've wanted to buy/sell items in a completely anonymous way via the Darknet, but I've figured that I'd be losing my time. What I'd do is mix my Bitcoin to use it for OpenBazaar. Combined with a VPN, I'll be able to buy/sell items in the most anonymous way possible. At least, this will work until a truly private solution is designed (ZeroNet maybe?) in the future. 

No one took wex.nz down, the Russians themselves managed to do it after someone ran away with the money.

And Vinnik is still languishing in a Greek jail, 2.5 years after his arrest.

So your gist is that you want to do fully legitimate transactions on the darknet? Such as buying your weekly groceries? I thought you meant legitimate in the sense of dodgy site least likely to rape you.

Erm, why?

No one's ever going to bother setting up a market on there for any reason other than avoiding the law. I've had a fiddle with Tor and it was so slow I nearly passed away. If 0.1% of customers will consider a crypto transaction on the open internet maybe 0.00000000001% would try the darknet alternative.

I had tried to search few days back about darknet marketplace where accept bitcoin. There is so many, but when I search more deeply then I realised that they are scammers. So it would be high risk for you to deal on darknet. Darknet is anonymous, but its advantage of scammers and disadvantage for general users like us. I am agree with @BitMaxz, you may take a look on OpenBazaar. You may mix your coins if you need more privacy if you are a buyer, if seller then I don't think there is big issue when you will brand new address.

Well, I'd have to admit that it's hard to find a darknet marketplace that's legitimate and able to survive for a long time. I'm surprised to know that a marketplace like "Hydra" is still alive after a long time since inception. Still though, I'm quite skeptical about it since it comes from Russia. I know that most hackers come from there, so it'll be somewhat risky to send my hard-earned Bitcoin to a marketplace that's based on Russia.

I'd be surprised to see recognized companies like eBay or Amazon launching an alternative version on the darknet that would accept Bitcoin or privacy-oriented coins like Monero or Grin. This seems more like a dream than anything else, considering that the darknet has a lot of bad reputation. But in crypto land, anything could happen. If there's demand from people in the mainstream world into marketplaces which rely on alternative networks, then we'll be able to see more legitimate services over time. Otherwise, marketplaces using the clearnet (public Internet) will still be the norm of e-commerce.

All in all, thanks for the links. I'll be sure to check into them for more info related to marketplaces on the darknet.



That's certainly true, mate. Most (if not all) darknet marketplaces are a complete scam. It's hard to find a legitimate marketplace that would make use of the darknet today. I would use OpenBazaar, but it's not anonymous by the protocol level. It still accepts Zcash for privacy, but it's not as good as Monero or Grin (most people claim that ZEC has a backdoor which defeats privacy). To find a trusted merchant on OpenBazaar is like finding a "needle in a haystack".

There's a reason why OP wants to find a trustworthy darknet marketplace-buying something illegal.
Do you think that you can buy something illegal on OpenBazaar?Sellers might try to list something illegal there,but they will get busted by the authorities in seconds.
The Tor browser isn't safe and anonymous -almost all the Tor exit-nodes are controlled by the FBI.
I'm glad I didn't made a mistake by using a darknet marketplace 3 months ago.

These Russians are always overconfident. They have managed to stay alive for so many years. Now what is the need for them to go for a global expansion? They should stay under the radar or the FBI. Even earlier, there were a number of Russian dark markets which managed to stay alive for many years. Some of them tried to expand into the United States and that was when they got whacked.

Even the BTC-e exchange was going strongly, when the US authorities wanted them to conduct KYC for the American users. The BTC-e guys bragged that they are not going to do any KYC and challenged the American authorities. Their exchange got nuked in a few weeks. Even after that these guys didn't stopped provoking the Americans. They came online with Wex.nz and once again challenged the Americans. And this time the FBI finished them off permanently and put Alexander Vinnik behind bars for the rest of his life.

Hackers and cyber criminals have discarded the use of bitcoin becauce its not really secured, as we know Bitcoin is only pseudo-anonymous you can still records of your transaction in the blockchain that can be cross reference in trading exchanges through api's, and darknet is mostly owned by feds now.

I saw  it in the Cointelegraph.
Idea is cool, and a good purpose. Unlike most Icos.

Well, unlike almost everything in cryptoland they no doubt do make substantial amounts of profit. You'd have to be nuts to go for it but less nuts than people who poured millions into projects with a plagarised one page white paper and a one line website.

There are lots of Darknet marketplaces that accept bitcoin but most of them are a scam.
If you are looking for a trustworthy marketplace you can not find them on the darknet.

If your concern is privacy why not deal p2p marketplace like OpenBazaar?

The OpenBazaar is safe just make sure that you are dealing with trusted merchant.

Wow, I didn't know that. ICO, that's too cheeky even for Hydra

They're all trustworthy until they're not.

Maybe the oldest and biggest still going is Hydra, a Russian one. They're the cheeky chappies who recently proposed an ICO.

https://www.coindesk.com/russias-largest-darknet-market-is-hawking-an-ico-to-fund-global-expansion

r/darkmarkets used to be the place to keep abreast of them but that was shut down. This looks like the closest equivalent but a bit more general - https://www.reddit.com/r/darknet/

This too - https://www.darknetstats.com

the landscape is constantly changing. one of the most popular DNMs (apollon) just exit scammed not 2 weeks ago.

here is the best analysis i can find: