The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has banned four darkweb websites with a total trading volume of $263 million in cryptocurrencies, a blockchain forensic firm Elliptic has learned. According to the report, Russia blocked Sky-Fraud forum, Trump's Dumps, UAS Store and Ferum Shop.
Subscribe to our Telegram channel to stay up to date on the latest crypto and blockchain news.
The experts say "hundreds of millions" of payment card details have been sold for cryptocurrencies on the seized darkweb marketplaces as bad actors often practice the so-called "carding," a fraudulent scheme that is used to help launder and cash-out crypto obtained through other types of cybercrime.
According to estimates, Ferum Shop alone made a whooping $256 million in bitcoin (EXANTE: Bitcoin) from stolen card sales since October 2013. Elliptic claims the platform constituted almost 17% of the stolen credit card market. The experts note that raids of carding websites so far accounted for almost 50% of sales in the darkweb stolen credit card market in 2022.
Russia's activity against the darkweb comes after the Kremlin and government officials estimated that Russians might own over $214 billion worth of cryptocurrencies. While it remains unclear how exactly the authorities got the numbers, sources close to the matter claim the figures were calculated by analyzing the IP addresses of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange users. If calculations are correct, Russia represents over 10% of the total cryptocurrency market capitalization.
Access more than 50 of the world's financial markets directly from your EXANTE account – including NASDAQ, London Stock Exchange and Tokyo Stock Exchange.