Elliptic: "Hydra is offering to cash out BTC with underground caches on the darknet market." – Bits Media

Elliptic analysts have discovered a new way to cash out BTC on the Hydra darknet market. A treasure with fiat money is buried underground in a certain place, where does the buyer pick it up.

According to a new study by analytical company Elliptic, in the largest market Darknet Hydra has a new way to exchange cryptocurrency for fiat money. The treasure with money is buried in a certain place, where does the customer of the service find it. The same method has long been used to sell illegal substances.

According to the description of one of these services on HYDRA, In exchange for payment in cryptocurrency, the seller burns physical money in vacuum packaging “ 5-20 see underground ". Accurate GPS coordinates are reported to the buyer, which can dig up the "treasure". The commission for the service is high - about 7% from the exchanged amount. As analysts note, This is a risky way - thieves, known as "seekers", sometimes they pursue the tucking trees of customers and steal parcels.

“This is an interesting way of cashing, which people begin to use ", - said in an interview the general director of Elliptic Tom Robinson (Tom Robinson). “It is difficult to implement on a scale and required, So that you are in Russia, But it is there that many Hydra users are based ".

In the first years of the cryptocurrency market, when many exchanges did not identify customers, And the tools of blockchain analysts were just beginning to appear, Cashing income from criminal activity in cryptocurrency was a fairly simple task. As Robinson notes, Today, Taking into account more and more stringent AML rules from regulators and transactions tracking capabilities, The situation has changed.

According to Elliptic, There are several options for cashing cryptocurrencies through Hydra. In exchange for a payment in BTC, users propose to replenish an account with a prepaid debit card, and others - send rubles to an electronic wallet or bank account.

At the moment, Hydra is the largest site of Darknet from ever existing, where transactions take place in the amount of about $125 million per week. Recall, that last spring employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia revealed scammers, who managed to sell fake bills on darknet on a darknet 1 billion rubles for cryptocurrencies via Hydra.

As noted by the Darknet market expert from Manchester University Patrick Shortis (Patrick Shortis), Darknet Russian sites are focused on innovation.

“The Russian Darknet markets differ from their Western analogues, that the postal service in Russia is not so reliable, And therefore, preference is given to the method of hiding places ", - said Shortis in an interview. "Besides, In the West, we often use PGP, more interested in cleaning our coins, using Monero and the like. In Russia, people are usually more relaxed, When it comes to the threat from the state ".

According to the published c 2020 year to study Chainalysis, Eastern Europe leads on the use of Darknet sites, And the Hydra Marketplais was one of the largest cryptocurrency services of the region.