The transaction of illegal drugs is rapidly shifting from the real world to the Internet "Dark Web" of the dark world

ByJonathan Silverberg

Websites that can not be accessed by common browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox are called "Dark Web" and can only be viewed using special software such as Tor. Illegal transactions are taking place in such a dark web, and among them, dealing with illegal drugs such as drugs and stimulant drugs is actively performed. There is a firm reason for the prosperity of drug trading on the dark web, and there is also a possibility that it may have a big impact on the real world drug trafficking organization.

Shedding light on the dark web | The Economist
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21702176-drug-trade-moving-street-online-cryptomarkets-forced-compete

The market for illegal drugs in the dark web has grown rapidly in recent years. The market size from $ 15 million to $ 17 million (about 1.6 billion to 1.8 billion yen) in 2012 will be between $ 150 million and $ 180 million in 2015 (about 16 billion to 19 billion Yen) and expanded ten times in just three years. The survey shows that the proportion of dark webs in the US drug market is 8% in 2014 to 16% in 2016.

This is a major illegal drug placement place in the dark webSilk road 2.0, Evolution, Agora, showing the transaction size during the period from December 2013 to July 2015. While non-drug transactions such as counterfeit bills, fake credit cards and hacking contractors are $ 800,000 (about 85 million yen), the transaction of illegal drugs is 27 million dollars (about 2.9 billion yen), the largest trading genre and It is getting.


In the dark web, the anonymity of sellers / buyers is thorough so that the hands of investigators will not be handed over, and transactions are not cash but virtual currency "Bitcoin (bit coin)"Is used. Furthermore, the trading market exclusively for dark web called "Cryptomarkets" is mediating illegal drug trade. By the way, in Cryptomarkets which is Amazon and eBay in the dark web world, drug sellers arrange items as "exhibitors" and recruit customers. Amazon in the dark world is extremely important for sellers, and popularity concentrates on sellers who gather ratings from customers as "good". Therefore, the seller collectively increases the quality of service.

In Cryptomarkets, the service competition is fierce as there are cases in which the reputation of the seller has fallen off due to claims from only one customer and it is forced to withdraw from the black market. In order to counter the old stock that keeps high evaluations and keeps customers, new sellers often sell illegal drugs, which are products, at low prices and are prepared for the deficit.


In addition, Cryptomarkets offers escrow services to ensure smooth, "safe" transactions between sellers and buyers. In the escrow service, a mechanism in which a bit coin is not remitted to a seller until a drug is delivered from a seller and the buyer issues a sign of "OK". By doing this, the buyer no longer has to pay the bit coin but the goods will not arrive, so we can get illegal drugs with peace of mind. The organizer of Cryptomarkets collects a fee of 5% to 10% of the transaction value for each transaction, but said that the funds are pooled to handle transactional complaints.

When a contract is established in the black market, the seller packs the product with a vacuum glove so that fingerprints and DNA do not adhere, pack the product in a vacuum pack. To make thoroughly the possibility of getting more legs, let's keep in mind that vacuum packs can be dipped in bleach. Also, the invoice is always printed. This is because there is a high possibility that customs officials will be suspected of being drafted by handwritten international mail.

And the place to ship drugs, which are products, is limited to specific mail posts. The conditions are posts where no surveillance cameras are installed, and the sellers always keep information on "good" shipping locations. There is also a suspicious seller who asks a new buyer to send an empty package to see if it is not an investigation agency.

Although it is an illegal drug market of such a precautionary state, Cryptomarkets' life expectancy does not last so long. The "Silk Road" of the former ancestor · Cryptomarkets who colored the early dark web was shut down in 3 years after the administrator Ros Urbricht was caught by the FBI and was founded. I took over the Silk Road.Silk road 2.0 also falls before FBI's high-tech investigation. It came into the history of only one year. After the collapse of the Silk Road 2.0, many buyers were dispersed in Evolution and Agora, but the former cheated the customer out of the customer with a market price of 12 million dollars (about 1.3 billion yen) by a massive fraud. The latter was closed due to security restoration. At the time of writing the article, Alphbay as the fourth generation Cryptomarkets is said to be the momentum to see the top position. Cryptomarkets' rich flourish seems to be an incredibly fast cycle.

ByKaty Levinson

Background to the growing illegal drug trading market in the dark web is pointed out that drug transactions are less likely to be outraged and there is a big advantage other than being able to trade with both the seller and the buyer safely. The seller who sells drugs in a real black market is not only caught by an investigative agency but also the dangers of being killed by rival sellers and organizations are next to each other. Furthermore, it seems that the risk of being targeted not only by hostile drug organizations but also by drug addicts who are customers, is that drug sales are just deeds of deeds for sellers. On the other hand, there is no danger of life on dark web trading online. Therefore, for sellers who sell drugs, the dark web is more attractive than real sales.

On the other hand, drug prices on the dark web are found to be higher than the price on the real black market. The graph below shows transaction prices of cocaine, heroin, marijuana in each country. The blue line is the dark web price, the orange line is the real price, and in most countries except Australia, the drug price is higher in the dark web. In Australia, the end price of heroin of 75 dollars per gram (about 8000 yen) in the Netherlands, for example, is 288 dollars when exported to Australia (about 30,000 yen It seems there is a circumstance that it becomes high.


Cartels that have dominated narcotics trading in the real world so far are not interested in dark web at the moment. The reason for this is believed to be that drug cartels have established a solid supply chain and do not feel the need for a sales channel on the dark web. However, in the dark web, there is no entry barrier like the real world because there is no need for skills on smuggling, intimidation and violence cultivated by drug cartels. For this reason, in the 1990's when the Internet arrived, as the major retailers lost their power by accidently missing the threat of e-commerce, by increasing the number of traffickers in the dark web in the future, There is also a view pointing out the possibility that the power of a large drug crime organization is relatively lost.