Dark markets have evolved to use encrypted messengers and dead-drops

Cryptocurrencies and Tor hidden services ushered in a new golden age for markets in illegal goods, especially banned or circumscribed drugs: Bitcoin was widely (and incorrectly) viewed as intrinsically anonymous, while the marketplaces themselves were significantly safer and more reliable than traditional criminal markets, and as sellers realized real savings in losses due to law enforcement and related risks, the prices of their merchandise plummeted, while their profits soared.

But much of the security of dark markets was an illusion. The anonymity of cryptocurrencies could often be pierced; the services themselves could be subverted by law enforcement in order to roll up many sellers and buyers at once; and the "last mile" problem of shipping illegal substances through the mails exposed buyers and sellers to real risks.

The buyers and sellers in dark markets have responded to these revelations and new facts on the ground with a range of ingenious, high-tech countermeasures.

Buyers are now more likely to conduct sales negotiations through encrypted messenger technologies, and each customer is assigned their own unique contact, staffed by a bot that can answer questions on pricing and availability and broker transactions. Many of these transactions now take place through "private cryptocurrencies" that have improved anonymity functions (there is a lot of development on these technologies).

Delivery is now largely managed through single-use "dead drops" -- hidden-in-plain-sight caches that are pre-seeded by sellers, who sometimes use low-cost Bluetooth beacons to identify them (these beacons can be programmed to activate only in the presence of a wifi network with a specific name: a seller provides the buyer with a codeword and a GPS coordinate; the buyer goes to the assigned place and creates a wifi network on their phone with the codeword for its name, and this activates the Bluetooth beacon that guides the buyer to their merchandise). Read the rest