Drug Trends has identified, crawled (or ‘scraped’), extracted, categorised and analysed drug listings on cryptomarkets on a regular basis since 1st February 2014. This bulletin series reports on trends in the availability and types of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets over a 12-month period. The current bulletin focuses on analysis of drug listings on cryptomarkets from June 2023 to May 2024.

An accompanying public online interactive data visualisation is available, allowing viewers to interact with data collected over the total monitoring period.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/30309 

Key Findings

• From 1st June 2023 to 31st May 2024, 20 cryptomarkets were monitored, of which 12 remained active at the end of the reporting period.
• The four markets reaching more than 10,000 listings in a snapshot during this period were ASAP, Incognito, Bohemia and Archetyp.
• In the final month of monitoring, Archetyp, MGM Grand, Dark Matter and Torzon were the largest cryptomarkets.
• There was an average of 24,116 drug listings per snapshot in May 2024, with an estimated decrease in listings of -8.3% per month as compared to June 2023 (n=57,883).
• Cannabis comprised the greatest percentage of drug listings from June 2023 to May 2024 (28%), followed by MDMA (8.2%), benzodiazepines (7.9%), cocaine (7.2%), opioids (excluding heroin) (6.9%), and meth/amphetamine (illicit) (5.8%).
• The market share of opioids (excluding heroin) showed the highest rate of increase from 5.3% in June 2023 to 7.0% in May 2024. The greatest rate of decrease in market share was observed for hallucinogenic mushroom from 3.3% in June 2023 to 2.9% in May 2024.

Funding and Copyright

Funded by the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care under the Drug and Alcohol Program ©NDARC, UNSW SYDNEY 2024.

This work is copyright. You may download, display, print and reproduce this material in unaltered form only (retaining this notice) for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organisation. All other rights are reserved. Requests and enquiries concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the information manager, NDARC, UNSW Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia via drugtrends@unsw.edu.au. 

Recommended Citation

Man N, Sadaphale V, Sutherland R, Barratt MJ, Bruno R, Peacock A. Trends in the availability and type of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, June 2023 – May 2024. Drug Trends Bulletin Series. Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney; 2024.

Available from: https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/30309

• Trends in the availability and types of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets,  June 2023 - May 2024.pdf
• Infographic.pdf
• Methods.pdf