By Andy Greenberg  11.04.14

 

 

When the cryptocurrency darkcoin launched earlier this year, it distinguished itself from dozens of bitcoin copycats by promising to keep users’ transactions far more anonymous than its predecessor. Now that promise is being tested in the Internet’s fastest-growing proving ground for privacy technologies: the online black market for drugs.

 

Over the last month, two of the dark web markets selling an anonymous, mail-order catalog of narcotics and other contraband have begun supporting darkcoin transactions. On a site called Nucleus, visitors can now use darkcoin to buy LSD, MDMA, and marijuana. On the competing market Diabolus, dealers accept it for cocaine, synthetic stimulants like ethylone and alpha-PVP, and even counterfeit Euros. Those two markets still represent only a tiny fraction of the growing dark web drug economy—most of which uses bitcoin exclusively. But darkcoin’s entrance could signal a new means of transaction in that underground industry, and one that’s far harder for law enforcement to trace.

 

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