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Drug Trends has identified, crawled (or ‘scraped’), extracted, categorised and analysed drug listings on cryptomarkets on a regular basis since 1st February 2014. This bulletin series reports on trends in the availability and types of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets over a 12-month period. The current bulletin focuses on analysis of drug listings on cryptomarkets from October 2023 to September 2024.

An accompanying public is available, allowing viewers to interact with data collected over the total monitoring period.

Key Findings

• From 1st October 2023 to 30th September 2024, 17 cryptomarkets were monitored, of which 12 remained active at the end of the reporting period.

• Five markets (i.e., Kingdom, Cypher, Bohemia, Incognito and Nemesis) closed between December 2023 and March 2024.

• The four markets reaching more than 10,000 listings in a snapshot during this period were Incognito, Archetyp, Abacus and Bohemia.Ìý

• In the final month of monitoring, Archetyp, MGM Grand, Torzon, Dark Matter and Nexus were the largest cryptomarkets (excluding Abacus).

• There was an average of 27,397 drug listings per snapshot in September 2024, with an estimated average decrease in listings of -4.2% per month as compared to October 2023 (n=42,136). However, the data on overall number of drug listings excluded Abacus which increased in size to become one of the biggest markets still active at the end of September 2024.

• Cannabis comprised the greatest percentage of drug listings from October 2023 to September 2024 (27%), followed by MDMA (8.4%), benzodiazepines (8.0%), opioids (excluding heroin) (7.5%), cocaine (7.0%), and meth/amphetamines (illicit) (6.0%).

• The market share of PIEDs/weight loss drugs showed the highest rate of increase, from 5.4% in October 2023 to 5.7% in September 2024. The greatest rate of decrease in market share was observed for hallucinogenic mushrooms, from 2.9% in October 2023 to 2.4% in September 2024.Ìý

Recommended citation

Man N, Sutherland R, Sadaphale V, Barratt MJ, Bruno R, Peacock A. Trends in the availability and type of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, October 2023 - September 2024. Drug Trends Bulletin Series. Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney; 2024. Available from: Ìý

Funding and Copyright

Drug Trends is supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care under the Drug and Alcohol Program.

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©NDARC, UNSW SYDNEY 2024

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