Darknet revenues have grown from $3.1 billion in 2021 to $1.5 billion in 2022. © Getty / Florian Gaertner / Photothek
Despite cybercrime continuing to escalate, there is some good news to eat. So after telling us that ransomware authors’ earnings fell by 40% last year, the 2023 Crypto Crime Report from Chainalysis reveals that revenues from the darknet and other fraudulent markets have collapsed in 2022. Indeed, the turnover of these markets amounted to 1.5 billion dollars, against 3.1 billion in 2021, in down nearly 50%.
This good news is not the result of magic, but of the dismantling of Hydra Market, the largest darknet market place. This was suspected by investigators of providing an ideal playground for criminal activities, such as money laundering and the drug trade. This illegal platform had attracted 17 million customers and 19,000 sellers, which helped fuel a transaction volume of $1.4 billion in 2021. As part of the dismantling of Hydra Market, 543 bitcoins worth 23 million euros were seized.
The dismantling of this platform dealt quite a blow to the activity of darknet users, since the average daily income of all illegal markets fell from $4.2 million just before the closure of Hydra Market to $447,000 following its dismantling. Chainalysis assures that this market place captured 93.3% of all the economic value generated by the darknet.