Collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces
Dark markets are commercial websites that use Bitcoin to sell or broker transactions involving drugs, weapons, and other illicit goods. Being illegal, they do not offer any user protection, and several police raids and scams have caused large losses to both customers and vendors over the past years....
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Nature Research
2020
|
| _version_ | 1826262210022735872 |
|---|---|
| author | ElBahrawy, A Alessandretti, L Rusnac, L Goldsmith, D Teytelboym, A Baronchelli, A |
| author_facet | ElBahrawy, A Alessandretti, L Rusnac, L Goldsmith, D Teytelboym, A Baronchelli, A |
| author_sort | ElBahrawy, A |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Dark markets are commercial websites that use Bitcoin to sell or broker transactions involving
drugs, weapons, and other illicit goods. Being illegal, they do not offer any user protection, and
several police raids and scams have caused large losses to both customers and vendors over the past
years. However, this uncertainty has not prevented a steady growth of the dark market phenomenon
and a proliferation of new markets. The origin of this resilience have remained unclear so far, also due
to the difficulty of identifying relevant Bitcoin transaction data. Here, we investigate how the dark
market ecosystem re-organises following the disappearance of a market, due to factors including raids
and scams. To do so, we analyse 24 episodes of unexpected market closure through a novel datasets
of 133 million Bitcoin transactions involving 31 dark markets and their users, totalling 4 billion USD.
We show that coordinated user migration from the closed market to coexisting markets guarantees
overall systemic resilience beyond the intrinsic fragility of individual markets. The migration is
swift, efficient and common to all market closures. We find that migrants are on average more active
users in comparison to non-migrants and move preferentially towards the coexisting market with
the highest trading volume. Our findings shed light on the resilience of the dark market ecosystem
and we anticipate that they may inform future research on the self-organisation of emerging online
markets. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T19:32:47Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:1e0b2afa-1007-4e7b-bf16-dc0a37ed59cf |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T19:32:47Z |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publisher | Nature Research |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:1e0b2afa-1007-4e7b-bf16-dc0a37ed59cf2022-03-26T11:14:12ZCollective dynamics of dark web marketplacesJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:1e0b2afa-1007-4e7b-bf16-dc0a37ed59cfEnglishSymplectic ElementsNature Research2020ElBahrawy, AAlessandretti, LRusnac, LGoldsmith, DTeytelboym, ABaronchelli, ADark markets are commercial websites that use Bitcoin to sell or broker transactions involving drugs, weapons, and other illicit goods. Being illegal, they do not offer any user protection, and several police raids and scams have caused large losses to both customers and vendors over the past years. However, this uncertainty has not prevented a steady growth of the dark market phenomenon and a proliferation of new markets. The origin of this resilience have remained unclear so far, also due to the difficulty of identifying relevant Bitcoin transaction data. Here, we investigate how the dark market ecosystem re-organises following the disappearance of a market, due to factors including raids and scams. To do so, we analyse 24 episodes of unexpected market closure through a novel datasets of 133 million Bitcoin transactions involving 31 dark markets and their users, totalling 4 billion USD. We show that coordinated user migration from the closed market to coexisting markets guarantees overall systemic resilience beyond the intrinsic fragility of individual markets. The migration is swift, efficient and common to all market closures. We find that migrants are on average more active users in comparison to non-migrants and move preferentially towards the coexisting market with the highest trading volume. Our findings shed light on the resilience of the dark market ecosystem and we anticipate that they may inform future research on the self-organisation of emerging online markets. |
| spellingShingle | ElBahrawy, A Alessandretti, L Rusnac, L Goldsmith, D Teytelboym, A Baronchelli, A Collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces |
| title | Collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces |
| title_full | Collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces |
| title_fullStr | Collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces |
| title_full_unstemmed | Collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces |
| title_short | Collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces |
| title_sort | collective dynamics of dark web marketplaces |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT elbahrawya collectivedynamicsofdarkwebmarketplaces AT alessandrettil collectivedynamicsofdarkwebmarketplaces AT rusnacl collectivedynamicsofdarkwebmarketplaces AT goldsmithd collectivedynamicsofdarkwebmarketplaces AT teytelboyma collectivedynamicsofdarkwebmarketplaces AT baronchellia collectivedynamicsofdarkwebmarketplaces |