German authorities take down DarkMarket, allegedly the world’s largest Dark Web marketplace

German authorities have taken the alleged operator of underground internet marketplace DarkMarket into custody.

The investigators also deactivated the servers of the marketplace, which claimed to have over 500,000 users and 2,400 vendors among its user base.

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DarkMarket processed at least 320,000 transactions, moving around 4,650 BTC and 12,800 XMR, according to a statement published today from Germany’s General Public Prosecutor Office in Koblenz. Total transaction worth is estimated to be around 140 million Euros ($170 million USD). 

The suspected operator is a 34-year-old Australian citizen who was arrested near the Germany-Danish border. Authorities seized more than 20 servers from Moldova and Ukraine at the time of arrest, and they plan to use the stored data to investigate DarkMarket buyers, sellers, and moderators. 

DarkMarket was primarily used as a market for narcotics, though other illegal commodities like counterfeit money, stolen credit cards, anonymous SIM cards, and malware were sold by vendors.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.