"The closure of the Silk Road: what has this meant for online drug trading?", Van Buskirk et al 2014

"The closure of the Silk Road: what has this meant for online drug trading?", Van Buskirk et al 2014

Two alternative market-places in particular were identified: 'the Black Market Reloaded (BMR)' and 'Sheep Marketplace'. In addition to these, 6 November saw a new version of the Silk Road (Silk Road 2.0) also commence trading.

...Commissioned by the Federal Government Department of Health, the Drug Trends team at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) in Sydney, Australia has been monitoring the Silk Road marketplace for changes in the online availability of illicit and emerging substances since September 2012 [3]. This ongoing monitoring provides a unique opportunity to assess the impact of the recent closure of the Silk Road.

...In the wake of the closure, monitoring turned to alternative market-places and a count of total active retailers was recorded on 3 October 2013, with subsequent counts conducted weekly. From 7 November 2013, retailers operating on Silk Road 2.0 were also counted. Figure 1 shows that BMR recorded a more than twofold increase in the number of active retailers over the 6-week period, although this increase plateaued at the most recent time-point. Retailer numbers on the Sheep Marketplace, however, saw a 461% increase over the time-period, and overtook BMR as the market-place with the highest number of active retailers in the most recent time-point. The initial count of Silk Road 2.0 retailers revealed 92 active sellers, although a large amount of promotion of the new market-place on Twitter was observed following its opening that will likely lead to an increase in retailers in subsequent counts.

See also http://www.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/21zelp/australian_sr_usage_research/


Comments


[2 Points] gwern:

Media discussion includes https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/news/australian-use-underground-illicit-drug-websites-jumps and http://www.examiner.com.au/story/2185778/hidden-drug-site-use-increasing/ and http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-31/online-drug-trade-soaring-experts-say/5354930


[1 Points] Lice00:

Like they will ever stop any of this lol