Barratt, Monica J

Bruno, Raimondo

Mann, Nicola

Mathur, Anant

Peacock, Amy

National Documentation Centre on Drug Use

Authors: Anant Mathur, Nicola Man, Raimondo Bruno, Monica J. Barratt, and Amy PeacockNational Drug and Alcohol Research CentreUniversity of New South Wales Sydney • From 1st January 2019 to 31st January 2020, 13 cryptomarkets weremonitored, and 7 cryptomarkets closed down.• Dream Market was responsible for 80% of drug listings each week untilclosure on the 30th April 2019.• Cannabis, MDMA, cocaine, benzodiazepines and meth/amphetamine werethe five drugs accounting for the greatest percentage of listings (64%).• The market share of cannabis declined from 32% in January 2019 to 27% inJanuary 2020.1Funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the Drug and Alcohol Program. This work is copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce this materialin unaltered form only (retaining this notice) for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. All other rights are reserved. Requests and enquiries concerningreproduction and rights should be addressed to the information manager, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.Copyright © 2020 National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre.This bulletin series reports on trends in the availability and type of substances soldon the internet via cryptomarkets over the last 12 months (new bulletin releasedevery four months). The current bulletin focuses on analysis of listings from 1stJanuary 2019 to 31st January 2020.Drug Trends have identified, crawled (or ‘scraped’) , extracted, categorised andanalysed drug listings on cryptomarkets on a weekly basis since 1st January 2014,formerly using VBA programming processes, and since 9th August 2018 using arange of programmed automated processes in Python that operate with minimalmanual input. Further background and information regarding the methods areavailable for download.Our reporting focuses only on identified English-language cryptomarkets sellingdrugs which have ≥100 drug listings and ≥1 vendor. For a historical record ofmarketplaces monitored by DNeT, we refer the reader to our interactive timeline.Analyses are concentrated on listings on these marketplaces advertising the saleof illicit drugs (e.g., heroin), key licit drugs (e.g., alcohol, tobacco, e-cigarettes) andpharmaceutical medicines, as well as drug-related paraphernalia (e.g., needlesand syringes, reagent test kits).Following extraction of common text features across each listing (e.g., drug listingname, vendor name and the price in bitcoin or dollars), individual listings arecategorised according to a pre-specified classification structure using a rules-based approach through text-matching in the first instance, followed by a longshort-term memory (LSTM) artificial neural network (target predictive percentage90%) that has been trained on historically categorised listings for those notmatched through the former process (see methods for full details).2Cryptomarkets (‘darknet markets’) are anonymous online trading platformsthat facilitate the purchasing of illicit goods and services via multiple sellers.Number of listings is the sum of listings per single scrape each weekbelonging to a specific market or drug class. For this measure, duplicate listings(defined as listings with identical names and same quantity of drug by a singlevendor on a single market) within the same week are removed.Number of vendors is the sum of unique vendors per single scrape each weekselling a specific drug category. For this measure, a vendor is consideredunique only within the same market only; that is, the same vendor may becounted multiple times across different markets.An accompanying public online interactive data visualisation is available,allowing viewers to interact with data collected over the total monitoring period.Data presented here comprise number of listings and number of vendors observedin a given week (see Panel A). These data can be considered reasonableestimates for trends in drug availability, as we cannot guarantee immediateidentification and capture of cryptomarkets once they emerge. Further, dataprovided here can only be used as a proxy of drug availability on cryptomarkets:we have not translated to any metric that reflects the sale volume of a market orspecific drug. See here for further discussion of caveats to interpretation.There are various approaches to collecting, collating, categorising and analysingcryptomarket data, and inherent challenges in these processes. For this reason, we haveattempted to be as transparent as possible about our procedures. Our monitoring is anongoing process, requiring constant refinements to the various stages. We welcomefeedback and suggestions so that we can continue to improve utility of these data and ourreporting on them (drugtrends@unsw.edu.au ).The current bulletin reports for the time period 1st January 2019 to 31st January2020. In that period, 13 cryptomarkets were monitored (Figure 1). Of these, 7markets were closed for the following purported reasons (internet sourceshyperlinked on market name):• Wall Street – A German law enforcement operation resulted in the shutdown ofthe market on 23rd April 2019.• Dream Market – On 4th March 2019, Dream Market administers announced theshutdown of the market on 30th April 2019. In this announcement, Dream Marketdeclared they would move services to a partner market, however the providedonion URL to this marketplace was not operational. Due to a period of sustainedDistributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS; in which multiple sources are usedto generate a large amount of traffic to an online service, thereby overwhelmingits servers), resulting in the inability to run relevant automatic scripts, DreamMarket was last monitored on 28th March 2019.• Berlusconi – An Italian law enforcement operation resulted in the shutdown ofthe market on 26th September 2019.• Cryptonia Market – For reasons unknown to the authors, Cryptonia Marketceased operations on 14th November 2019.• Tochka – Due to an exit scam, Tochka shutdown on the 28th November 2019.• CGMC – Due to market issues in undertaking withdrawals, CGMC endedoperations on 2nd May 2019.• Apollon - Due to an exit scam, Apollon ended operations on 28th April 2019.An additional market, Nightmare, was identified in this period but we were unableto monitor manually or via establishing scripts for automated scripts. Nightmarewas closed on 26th July 2019 due to an exit scam.3Note: See our interactive timeline for a complete historical record of all cryptomarkets monitored sinceJanuary 2014. Breaks indicate period where market crawling was not achievable. Width of bar is proportionalto log of average listings. The width of the bar is proportional to the log of the number of drug listings observedin each week for each market.The longest-established market in this monitoring period was Dream Market. Ourmonitoring of Dream Market commenced in November 2014. Over the totalmonitoring period of the market, it has had the greatest number of listings andnumber of vendors of all markets monitored until ceasing operations in April 2019(see Figure 1 and 2). At its peak, the market hosted 68,179 drug listings and2,823 vendors (scraping on 28th March 2019).The shutdown of Dream Market resulted in a drop in the number listings, from86,424 listings across markets monitored in final week of monitoring (28th March2019) versus 22,089 listings across markets in the first week following cessation(4th April 2019). However, over time, smaller markets such as Empire Market,Apollon and Cryptonia Market increased in size (see Figure 2). For example, theaverage number of listings observed on Cryptonia Market increased by 12.9% inthe month of September 2019 to the month of October 2019 before closure on 14thNovember 2019. Apollon hosted 21,282 drug listings on the 23rd July 2019 beforeits closure on 28th January 2020, an increase from 4,759 (or 520%) sincemonitoring of this market commenced in 26th September 2019. The averagenumber of listings observed on Apollon increased by 41.1% in the month ofDecember 2019 to January 2020, with market closure at the end of January.4In the final week of this monitoring period (24th January 2020 – 31st January 2020),six marketplaces were monitored. The largest marketplace remaining was EmpireMarket (31,620 listings, 1,780 vendors at 23rd January 2020), despite experiencingprolonged periods of downtime (explaining interpolated data in Figure 2 below),followed by Dark Market (5,324 listings, 517 vendors on 30th January 2020). Thisdowntime was due to DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks.In total, there was a 12.6% change in the average number of drug listings acrossall marketplaces monitored observed in the months of December 2019 versusJanuary 2020 (48,769 average listings per week from 3 markets versus 54,900average listings per week from 7 markets, respectively), and -25.2% change in theaverage number of drug listings observed in January 2019 (73,434 averagelistings per week from 6 markets) versus January 2020.Note: Complete interactive visualisation available here. Shaded area displays the total number of drug listingacross all markets monitored at a given time. Caveats to this metric are outlined in the methods. Dashed linesindicate interpolated data over periods where a market could not be monitored. Note that the commencementand discontinuation of the coloured lines indicates the opening and closure of the named market.5Market listings captured through cryptomarket monitoring have been categorisedinto drug classes according to this methodology.Cannabis comprised the bulk of the listings identified across all markets over thetotal period of monitoring (32.3%), followed by MDMA (12.4%), cocaine (7.7%),benzodiazepines (7.3%), meth/amphetamine (5.7%) and opioids (excluding heroin;5.6%) (see Table 1, Figure 3 and Figure 4). As evident from these figures, illicitsubstances (e.g., cannabis, MDMA, cocaine, meth/amphetamine) comprised themajority of substances listed on cryptomarkets. New psychoactive substancescomprised 4.2% of listings, although challenges in their categorisation must benoted (see methods for further detail).Note: Complete interactive visualisation available here. Black vertical line indicates last date of monitoring forDream Market before closure (28th March 2019). Missing data are interpolated in this figure. See here forinformation on how interpolated data were computed.6In terms of change in the percentage of drug listings across all marketsdisaggregated by drug (i.e., the ‘market share’ for each drug), there was <1%difference in the market share for each drug class across all markets whencomparing the percentage of all listings observed in the months December 2019and January 2020 (greatest magnitude -0.6% decline in PIEDS1/weight loss drugsmarket share).There was <5% market share percentage change for each drug across all marketswhen comparing the percentage of all listings observed in January 2019 andJanuary 2020 (greatest magnitude -4.9% decline in cannabis market share).In terms of change in the absolute number of listings per drug across all markets(i.e., the ‘market size’ for each drug) from the month of January 2019 to January2020, there were notable declines in some of the larger categories includingPIEDS/weight loss drugs (-43.4% decline in average number of listings to 2,232 inJanuary 2020) and cannabis (-36.6% decline in average number of listings to14,964 in January 2020) (see Figure 4 and Table 1).Note: Black vertical line indicates last date of monitoring for Dream Market before closure (28th March 2019).Missing data are interpolated in this figure. See here for information on how interpolated data were computed.MDA, tobacco, paraphernalia, e-cigarettes, PCP, inhalants and alcohol have not been included in the figure.To view these data see our interactive visualisation.1PIEDS: performance and image enhancing drugs.7From the month of December 2019 to January 2020, there was a 121.0% increasefor listings for drug paraphernalia, 68.7% increase in number of listingscategorised as ‘other drugs’ (mostly comprising precursors (e.g., ephedrine) anddrug listings with multiple drugs), and 49.9% increase for hallucinogenicmushrooms (see Table 1). These findings must be caveated, as these changesonly reflect variation in a small number of listings (i.e., each category <1000listings per week).Figure 5 shows the breakdown of listings by drug type per market. Theseanalyses show that most markets monitored listed an array of different drugs,although listings for two cannabis markets (CGMC and Cannazon) comprised>90% cannabis. There was also variability in the market share attributed to eachdrug across markets. For example, Dark Bay and Tochka had a greater marketshare of opioid listings relative to other markets, while Wall Street had a greatershare of PIEDS/weight loss listings relative to other markets.Note: See Figure 1 and our interactive timeline for the duration of monitoring each market. This figure displaysdrug class percentage of all listings observed from 1st January 2019 to 31st January 2020) for eachmarketplace monitored. Missing data are interpolated in this figure. See here for information on howinterpolated data were computed. Cannazon and CGMC are cannabis-specific cryptomarkets.8Note: Alcohol, e-cigarettes and tobacco and inhalants not shown due to small values. – Per cent suppressedfor values <0.05. All values in table have been calculated using interpolated data. See here for information onhow interpolated data were computed. aThis column displays the percentage of total listings across allmarketplaces observed in the month of January 2020. bThese columns display the change in percentage oftotal listings attributed to each drug across all marketplaces in the stated months (e.g., from January in oneyear to January in the next year). cThis column displays the average number of weekly listings observedacross all marketplaces in the month of January 2020. d These columns display the the relative change in theaverage number of weekly listings observed in the stated months (e.g., from January in one year to January inthe next year).9% total listingsa Market share % changeb Market sizecRelative market size change (%)dDrug CategoryJan 2019 –Jan 2020Jan 2020Dec 2019 –Jan 2020Jan 2019 –Jan 2020Jan 2020Dec 2019 –Jan 2020Jan 2019 –Jan 2020Benzodiazepines 7.3 6.6 - -0.2 3601 12.8 -27.3Cannabis 32.4 27.3 -0.5 -5.0 14964 10.5 -36.6Cocaine 7.7 8.5 -0.2 0.1 4656 10.0 -24.2DMT 1.0 1.3 0.1 0.6 729 25.5 36.5GHB/GBL/1,4-BD 0.4 0.5 - 0.1 249 7.6 9.2Hallucinogenic mushroom1.1 1.3 0.3 0.2 726 49.9 -11.8Heroin 2.7 3.0 - 0.5 1660 14.1 -12.1Ketamine 3.4 4.8 0.4 1.7 2648 22.2 15.7LSD 4.1 4.8 0.2 0.1 2645 16.6 -6.8MDA 0.1 0.1 - - 53 16.6 -27.3MDMA 12.4 14.4 -0.1 0.9 7887 11.8 -20.3Meth/amphetamine 5.7 6.8 -0.2 0.5 3756 9.0 -18.8New psychoactive substances4.2 4.5 0.2 0.3 2486 16.7 -22.1Opioids (excluding heroin)5.6 5.3 0.4 - 2903 20.8 -24.9Other drugs 0.4 0.6 0.2 0.3 353 68.7 38.6Other medicines 3.6 3.3 -0.6 -0.1 1802 -4.8 -27.5Paraphernalia 0.2 0.1 - -0.1 71 121.0 -59.2PCP - - - - 4 - -PIEDs/weight loss 4.9 4.1 -0.6 -1.3 2232 -0.8 -43.4Psychostimulants & nootropics2.6 2.5 0.3 0.4 1388 29.8 -9.4The National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC) and the Drug Trends program are funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the Drug and Alcohol Program. We would like to acknowledge the following individuals for their contribution to this project: Dr Amanda Roxburgh, Joe van Buskirk, A/Prof Lucinda Burns, A/Prof Timothy Dobbins, Dr Courtney Breen and Sundresan Naicker.  Mathur, A., Man, N., Bruno, R., Barratt, M. J., & Peacock, A. (2020). Trends in the availability and type of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, January 2019 - January 2020. Drug Trends Bulletin Series. Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney.• Data visualisations: https://drugtrends.shinyapps.io/cryptomarkets• Methods document: https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/resource/methods-trends-cryptomarket-drug-listings• For more research from the Drug Trends program go to: https://ndarc.med.unsw.edu.au/program/drug-trendsEmail: drugtrends@unsw.edu.au10

Trends in the availability and type of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, May 2019 - May 2020.

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Trends in the availability and type of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, May 2019 - May 2020.

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