The Hidden Thriller Behind World Market Onion

The darknet – a wild west for fake coronavirus ‘cures '? The stark reality is harder (and regulated)

The coronavirus pandemic has spawned reports of unregulated health products and fake cures being obsessed about the dark web. These include black market PPE, illicit medications such as the widely touted "miracle" drug chloroquine, and fake COVID-19 "cures" including blood supposedly from recovered coronavirus patients.

These dealings have once again focused public attention on this little-understood element of the internet. Nearly 10 years as it started being utilized on a substantial scale, the dark web continues to be a lucrative safe haven for traders in a variety of illegal goods and services, especially illicit drugs.

Black Darkode Market trading on the dark web is carried out primarily through darknet marketplaces or cryptomarkets. They are anonymised trading platforms that directly connect buyers and sellers of a range of illegal goods and services – just like legitimate trading websites such as for instance eBay.

So how can darknet marketplaces work? And how much illegal trading of COVID-19-related products is happening via these online spaces?

Not really a free-for-all

There are currently more than a dozen darknet marketplaces in operation. Protected by powerful encryption technology, authorities all over the world have largely failed to contain their growth. A steadily increasing proportion of illicit drug users around the globe report sourcing their drugs online. In Australia, we've one of the world's highest concentrations of darknet drug vendors per capita.

Unlike popular belief, cryptomarkets are not the "lawless spaces" they're often presented as in the news. Market prohibitions exist on all mainstream cryptomarkets. Universally prohibited goods and services include: hitman services, trafficked human organs and snuff movies.

Although cryptomarkets lie away from realm of state regulation, every one is initiated and maintained by a central administrator who, alongside employees or associates, is accountable for the market's security, dispute resolution between buyers and sellers, and the charging of commissions on transactions.

Administrators may also be ultimately in charge of determining so what can and can't be sold on their cryptomarket. These decisions tend informed by:

the attitudes of the surrounding community comprising buyers and sellers
the extent of consumer demand and supply for certain products
the revenues a niche site makes from commissions charged on transactions
and the perceived "heat" that may be attracted from police force in the trading of particularly dangerous illegal goods and services.

Experts delve into the dark web

A report from the Australian National University published the other day talks about several hundred coronavirus-related products available across twelve cryptomarkets, including supposed vaccines and antidotes.

While the analysis confirms some unscrupulous dark web traders are indeed exploiting the pandemic and seeking to defraud naïve customers, these records should be contextualised with several important caveats.

Firstly, the amount of dodgy covid-related products for sale on the dark web is relatively small. According to the research, they take into account about 0.2% of most listed items. The overwhelming most products were those we are already knowledgeable about – particularly illicit drugs such as cannabis and MDMA.

Also, while the research focused on products listed for sale, these are usually listings for products that either do no exist or are listed with the precise intention to defraud a customer.

Thus, the specific sale of fake coronavirus "cures" on the dark web is probable minimal, at best.