AlphaBay Is Taking Over the Dark Web—Again

For years, dark web markets and the law enforcement agencies that fight them have been locked in a cycle of raid, rinse, repeat: For every online black market destroyed, another has always been there to take it's place. It's rare for a dominant dark web market to be destroyed by a law enforcement operation only to bounce back and regain its top spot.

In July of last year, AlphaBay's central server was seized by law enforcement and the site's creator was arrested in Thailand. In August of last year, DeSnake, AlphaBay's number two administrator and security specialist, suddenly reappeared, announcing AlphaBay's resurrection in a new and improved form. Thanks in part to a tumult of takedowns and mysterious disappearances of competing dark web markets, DeSnake's reincarnated AlphaBay is now well on its way back to its former heights. It looks like it has regained that spot.

According to DeSnake, AlphaBay is the #1 darknet marketplace. At the time of AlphaBay's relaunch last summer, he told us that they were going to be #1. I do what I say.

As of last week, AlphaBay had more than 30,000 unique product listings, but also thousands of listings for malicious software and stolen data. In September of last year, 500 listings were recorded. There are more than 50,000 listings in ASAP. AlphaBay had more than 1,300 active vendors in the first six months of this year, compared to about 1,000 for ASAP. AlphaBay's listings appear to be growing more quickly.

Archetyp and Incognito have a few thousand and a few hundred listings respectively. AlphaBay appears to be the most popular market for dark web vendors to list their wares.

AlphaBay has tens of thousands of product listings, but they are still a small portion of the 350,000 it offered before it was taken down. It was ten times the size of the Silk Road drug market. When Chainalysis estimated that AlphaBay generated as much as $2 million a day in sales, DeSnake conceded that the new AlphaBay's revenue hasn't yet come close to that. DeSnake said they are in the big digits.