The largest Western Darknet Marketplace Abacus Market, which supports bitcoin payment, has closed its public infrastructure on suspicion of a exit scam.
Exit scams occur when the operator of a marketplace decides to disappear with the funds kept in the escrow for various transactions among the platform users.
Blockchain intelligence firm TRM labs report Abacus has suddenly shut down, which are all signs of a exhaust scam or all signs of secret law enforcement operating activity.
Historically, there are “silent” Techdowns that were not with announcements from the authorities, to continue the investigation and allow more growing evidence or allowing them to identify the peers.
Source: TRM Labs
Major force
Abacus launched as ‘Alphabet Market’ in September 2021 and gradually increased its popularity, especially as the number of other markets on the dark web, as a result of most law enforcement operations.
In 2022, Abacus was used by 10% of users in Western dark markets. It rose by 17% in 2023 and reached a leading position of 70% last year.
Source: TRM Labs
TRM Labs reports that the market enabled transactions worth about $ 100 million of bitcoin, but the figure does not include Monroe (XMR) cryptocurrency, which requires special conditions to track the track and account for at least two-third transactions on AbeCus.
In view of the Monroe transactions, researchers estimate that the total sales on Abacus were close to at least $ 300 million. The best month for the Darkweb Market was in June, when the broker sales value was $ 6.3 million.
In anxiety of user depositing, TRM Labs reports that the platform was found in 1,400 transactions, on an average on an average $ 230,000 per day.
The figure dropped quickly in early July, up to just $ 13,000 per day in 100 deposits, as the user was influenced by delay in withdrawing the trust.
Exhaust scam unfolding
When the user’s complaints were revealed, the administrator of Abacus on the Darknet Forum, “Voo” said that there were sudden flows of new users due to the return problems, which recently combined with a distributed refund-service (DDOS) attack after the shut-down-down of the Arctype market.
Source: TRM Labs
Despite the assurance of the veto, the daily transaction activity fell on the site.
In the following days, the entire online infrastructure of the Abacus market, which includes its clearet mirror, became offline without a seizure banner or any signal that included law enforcement.
Community consensus and close users of the Abacus team denied an FBI operation as a possible reason, bending more towards the interpretation of a exhaust scam for the sudden Techdown of the platform.
There is no indication in the time of publication that Abacus has been taken down by law enforcement, but this landscape is yet to be rejected.
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