Secrecy is warranted and so people involved in the trade are naturally finding out new ways to avoid detection.
This has led to online drug sellers at least, adopting crypto-currency as a means of payment.
It is cashless, fast and the one currency being accepted currently is especially secretive.
It was launched earlier this year with the main goal of being more secretive than Bitcoin.
Over the past month, drug dealing websites have been putting this claim to test.
Websites exist that use Bitcoins almost exclusively also, but there is a way to trace bitcoin transactions.
Darkcoin allows you to hide your money trail.
Currently, two underground websites have been found using Darkcoin as a medium of exchange for drugs.
Bitcoin offered users to make Paypal like swift payments and was a good substitute for cash.
The only problem arose was that all bitcoin transactions were recorded in the ledger called blockchain.
Every transaction could be traced back- if not to a name then to an alias of the bitcoin holder.
Protecting oneself takes a lot of pain staking effort for those dealing in drugs.
Darkcoin is designed to scramble any attempts at blockchain tracing.
And to be fair, everything has negatives.
Its not his fault that his creation is being used for less noble activities.
Early on with bitcoin the only thing you could do with it was gamble and buy drugs.
Then it got past that and was accepted on many sites all over the internet, says Duffield.
The same thing is happening with darkcoin.
But since then, a steady decline has followed suit with valuation down to just $2 now.
The creator hopes this new found acceptance will result in an increase in valuation.
That may be even more true of darkcoin, which is specifically designed to allow anonymous transactions.
And the lack of privacy is being tackled head on my Darkcoin and the yet to be released Zerocoin.
Analysts are expecting darkcoin acceptance to only grow based on the privacy concerns people have.
source: www.techworm.net
