Trends in the availability and types of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, June 2022 – May 2023. | NDARC - National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre

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Author: Nicola Man, Qingyuan Linghu, Raimondo Bruno, Monica J. Barratt, Rachel Sutherland , Amy Peacock

Resource Type: Drug Trends Bulletins, Drugs and New Technologies (DNeT) Bulletins

Crypto May2023_infographics.pdf, Cryptomarket bulletin_May 2023.pdf, Cryptomarket methods_May 2023.pdf

Key findings:

• From 1st June 2022 to 31st May 2023, 17 cryptomarkets were monitored, of which 14 remained active at the end of the reporting period.
• The four markets reaching more than 10,000 listings in a snapshot during this period were DarkFox, AlphaBay, ASAP and Bohemia, of which DarkFox and AlphaBay closed before May 2023.
• In the final month of monitoring, ASAP, Bohemia, Incognito and Nemesis were the largest cryptomarkets.
• There was an average of 47,042 drug listings per snapshot in May 2023, representing a -1.9% decrease in listings as compared to June 2022 (n=58,315) but the change was not statistically significant (p=0.259). Note that due to scraping difficulties, we lacked data for Tor2Door, which is a relatively large market that was active in May 2023.
• Cannabis comprised the greatest percentage of drug listings from June 2022 to May 2023 (31%), followed by benzodiazepines (7.5%), cocaine (7.5%), MDMA (7.3%), opioids (excluding heroin) (6.1%), meth/amphetamine (illicit) (5.6%), and PIEDs/weight loss drugs (5.6%).
• The market share of ketamine showed the greatest rate of increase from 3.9% in June 2022 to 5.1% in May 2023. The greatest rate of decrease in market share was observed for opioids (excluding heroin) from 6.7% in June 2022 to 5.4% in May 2023.