Bitcoin’s most notorious use has been as a facilitator of online drug transactions. For years now, the cryptocurrency has allowed anonymous purchasers to pay anonymous vendors on e-Bay like markets, avoiding the use of the formal financial system and thus federal authorities. But now, seven years after the rise of Bitcoin on the dark web — The Atlantic describes it as a kind of mirror internet that uses encryption to ensure its participants’ privacy and features websites that are not accessible from standard browsers — people are having issues with the cryptocurrency. Purchases and vendors are canceling orders, losing money, and starting to use other forms of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is still in wide use for drugs and other illegal goods, but the markets that made it famous, and infamous, are turning on it. The first issue is the volatility of the price of bitcoin. It is highly unstable, and its price surges and collapses much like that of a penny stock. The second reason has to do with the sudden increase in the cost of transacting in bitcoin, writes The Atlantic. And the third issue is anonymity, or really, lack of it, as law-enforcement and regulatory agencies have become more interested in and sophisticated about monitoring cryptocurrencies.
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
