BUY ALL THE DRUGS! - Just kidding, don't buy all the drugs, they're bad for you, unless you want to, in which case, I won't stop you.
But save some for me...
MONERO (XMR) Becomes the DarkMarkets Favorite
While Bitcoin has in the past few years gained a greater degree of respectability, it was within the deep-web darkmarkets that Bitcoin really cut its teeth as a truly useful form of currency and medium of exchange. And I must admit the first time I heard of Bitcoin, years back, was within an expose on the national news documenting "the horrors" of people purchasing drugs in the darkest corners of the internet with this previously unheard of digital currency - where crackheads, smackheads, pill-poppers, and dangerous bong-fueled degenerates of all kinds were seemingly buying-and-selling every manner of illicit substance known to man, from the comfort of their homes, next-day delivery included - LSD and amphetamines delivered directly to your door, just as quickly, easily, and conveniently as ordering something from Amazon...
And while as mentioned Bitcoin has to some degree cleaned up its act in recent years, with the likes of Paypal and other various institutions getting involved in the blockchain-worlds number 1 cryptocurrency, driving prices in 2020-2021 to new all-time-highs. Bitcoin had remained a major form of currency in the trading of illicit substances on the darkmarkets, that is, until recently. As illustrated in this recent tweet from dark.fail, one of the main collators of darkmarket information around...
Which is kind of interesting for Monero. Because if buying drugs has been one of the primary use-cases for Bitcoin over the years. And now these darknet drug markets are moving away from Bitcoin in favor of more privacy-focused cryptocurrencies. With Monero being a point of focus in particular. You've got to wonder what kind of impact that might have on demand, and in turn, price...
In the short-term we could only speculate, the price of XMR is down around 4% since that tweet went out, but is up ~132% over the year past. Down 72% from its ATH of $542 back in 2017. But up over 70000% from its all time low of around 20 cents some 7 years ago. 2020 was a highly volatile year for the crypto markets overall, but for most crypto, beyond hype, everything comes down to utility, and usage. So you'd think that as long as the darkmarkets continue to operate, and over the years for every market that gets closed down by the FEDs, another quickly pops up in its place - Monero would benefit from this switch away from Bitcoin and towards itself; as the darknets crypto of choice.
Time will tell...
