Markets: AlphaBay (v2)

In August of 2021, it was announced by a user going by the name “DeSnake” on the Dread forum that the AlphaBay marketplace had been relaunched. DeSnake verified his identity by proving he has control of the PGP key that belonged to the staff of the original AlphaBay market that was seized by law enforcement from various jurisdictions in 2017. In the same thread announcing the markets’ relaunch on Dread, a former staff member of AlphaBay, “disc0”, said they recently spoke with DeSnake and reconfirmed that it was the same administrator from the original marketplace. Regardless of what he did to prove his identity, there was a lot of distrust towards him and the newly relaunched marketplace. Not only from anonymous users on various forums expressing their distrust and skepticism, but also from a law enforcement official who was involved in the markets’ initial investigation that lead to its seizure.

Despite the uncertainty as to whether or not DeSnake was compromised, or if he was even the same person, AlphaBay made a return with substantially better security features, such as using Monero as the only accepted cryptocurrency on the marketplace, which makes block chain tracking and analysis very difficult to practically impossible.

DeSnake was very outspoken about the enhanced security measures implemented on his marketplace and about his rather strict methods of operational security. He claimed that he turned his computer off every time he left it unattended, even for a quick bathroom break, citing how Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road, and Alexandre Cazes, the founder of AlphaBay, both had their laptops seized by law enforcement while the devices were still on and accessible, which provided law enforcement with tremendous amounts of evidence against them and further insight into their operations.

Both AlphaBay went offline in February, 2023, and DeSnake stopped posting on Dread around the same time. It is believed that he took AlphaBay down in an exit-scam. Although some conspiracy theories state that DeSnake (or the servers in which AlphaBay was hosted) has been affected by Turkey's earthquake which ultimately caused AlphaBay V2 to defunct.

This article was written a while ago and will be updated.