How Much Money is Made on the Dark Web

A considerable amount of millions of dollars, euros, and other currencies.

Theoretically, it is a substantial amount of bitcoin, litecoin, monero, etc. worth millions of USD/EUR/etc.

When several owners of darknetmarkets have been arrested, it has been reported that sums ranging from $2 million to $10 million or more have been recovered.

The federal government sold the bitcoin confiscated during the initial arrest on Silk Road for $48 million. That would have been a small portion of what that market’s proprietor earned during its run.

This amount represents the transaction cost for market trades. I cannot recall what Silkroad’s fees were, but such fees are normally between 3% and 6. You can do the arithmetic to determine that this market could have generated hundreds of millions of dollars.

I am not taking into account the growth and fall of Bitcoin values.

To approach from a different angle – presently, one darknet market has around 700,000 registered customer accounts and 3,500 registered vendor accounts.

If this market disappeared, a new one would develop within days, and before weeks it would also have a significant number of buyers and sellers.

Consumers typically make numerous purchases each year. A now-defunct market displayed the amounts spent by consumers on their profiles as an indicator of status and repute. I became interested in this topic, and although it was not always simple, I was able to locate some client profiles. Amounts like $3000 $5000 were quite normal. I observed some that above $10000 and a handful that over $20000.

There are further methods to estimate and quantify the sums of money being exchanged, but I believe this answers your query.

If you asked me for my best guess, I would say between 800 million and 1.6 billion per year. It may be much higher, as a significant number of high-dollar transactions appear to be occurring, but the individuals involved are naturally cautious and circumspect. I highly doubt it is lower.