In a recent statement released by Europol, we learn the news of the closure of yet another site dedicated to the black market on the darknet which involved over half a million users worldwide and where Monero (XMR) was used as a payment method.
In black markets you can buy and sell practically anything, including illegal things and they have been the number one vehicle for using crypto since the beginning of Bitcoin and this unfortunately has led to crypto and the sector being branded as something only useful. to criminal activities.
We recall for example the famous case of Silk Road whose founder Ross Ulbricht is still in prison.
In this case, the offending platform was stopped thanks to the intervention of the police of several nations such as Germany, Australia, Denmark, Ukraine, England and even the United States, and the cooperation of various agencies such as the NCA, the DEA, the FBI and the IRS.
Monero and Bitcoin in the darknet market
Thus, thanks to investigations led by the German police, a series of servers was discovered in which a real treasure of information was found, which made it possible to recover various information on the movement of the crypto involved.
Over 500 thousand users, over 2400 sellers, over 320 thousand transactions were controlled throughout the operation, of which 4650 in Bitcoin (BTC) and 12800 in Monero (XMR): about 5% of all transactions were carried out with other methods of payment, demonstrating how the use of these crypto assets is not at the top of the list for criminals.
All sorts of illegal services and goods were sold on the black market, such as hard drugs, weapons, credit cards, counterfeit currencies and even SIM cards.
Surely this is a severe blow to the black market, even if it is not enough to counter the phenomenon, given that at each closure several portals on the darknet open, precisely because the turnover is monstrous, especially with regard to drugs.
