![]() ![]() ![]() More credible is Tor Market’s purported business strategy of purposely seeking to maintain a low profile compared to larger international sites. And it’s not clear whether Tor Market is really offering any superior security features or coding infrastructure compared to other sites. This kind of boasting is not uncommon among darknet operators as a marketing strategy to attract new vendors to a site. Perhaps darknets offer a familiar online shopping experience.įor their part, the Tor Market administrators claim (based on their own site’s help manual) to offer a range of design innovations and features that ensure the security of Tor Market. They also have a relatively high level of digital engagement and online shopping habits by international standards. New Zealanders have a history of innovative solutions to the so-called “tyranny of distance”. How the world's biggest dark web platform spreads millions of items of child sex abuse material - and why it's hard to stop Darknets solve this problem by offering retail quantities of drug types that are traditionally difficult to source, such as MDMA, directly to buyers. Usually, buyers and sellers would have trouble connecting and hence justifying large-scale international trafficking. Inside a ransomware attack: how dark webs of cybercriminals collaborate to pull them offīy providing offerings from dozens of international drug sellers and a centralised forum for buyers, Tor Market solves the very real economic problem of “thin markets” in the New Zealand drug scene, where there are simply not enough buyers to sustain sellers for some drug types. These international sellers are otherwise unlikely to have any interest in supplying such a small, distant market. Yet these factors may be exactly what has driven this market innovation.ĭarknets provide anonymous and direct access to international drug sellers who have MDMA, cocaine and opioids for sale – drug types not easily accessed in physical drug markets in New Zealand. Its geographical isolation from large European and US drug markets, small population, and historical absence of any substantial cocaine and heroin supply should all work against it. On the face of it, New Zealand may seem an unlikely location for a rising international darknet drug market. This expansion was driven by a steady increase in international sales, which grew to outnumber domestic New Zealand sales by early 2022. This saw over a thousand products being listed on Tor Market by mid-2022 (see graph below). Its listings grew from fewer than ten products in the months prior to Dream Market’s closure in early 2019 to over 100 products by July that year.Īfter a steady period where there were, on average, 255 listings across 2020 and 379 across 2021, another period of growth happened in early 2022. This makes Tor Market’s performance over the same period even more remarkable. While total sales on all darknet markets increased in 2020, and again in the first quarter of 2021, data for the fourth quarter of 2021 suggest sales declined by as much as 50%. The darknet is not a hellhole, it's an answer to internet privacy And there appears to be a general loss of confidence in darknet drug supply due to those enforcement shutdowns and exit scams. No dominant international darknet market has emerged since the “voluntary shut down” of Dream Market in 2019. Getty Images The fragmented darknet ecosystemĭarknet marketplaces have disappeared as a result of increasingly sophisticated and successful law enforcement operations, including clandestinely taking over sites for extended periods to gather evidence on vendors and buyers.Īlternatively, site administrators pull off opportunistic exit scams and abscond with cryptocurrency held in accounts. US authorities announce the arrest of 179 people and seizure of more than US$6.5 million in a worldwide crackdown on darknet opioid trafficking in 2020. ![]()
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