New research suggests dark web marketplaces could be raking in anywhere between $300,000 and $500,000 in sales daily, with peaks of up to $650,000 per day.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers analyzed, or “scraped,” 35 dark web markets to both qualify the number of transactions completed daily and quantify the total proceedings from those sales.
The researchers wrote that their goal in gathering the data was to “make an observation of the entire marketplace at an instantaneous point in time, which yields information such as item listings, pricing information, feedback, and user pages.”
Although the markets often went down or had inconsistent pricing, the researchers noted that they attempted to adjust for these challenges.
The researchers said Silk Road could have generated $100 million in 2013 if it had not been taken down in October of that year.
