Van Buskirk Joe, Bruno Raimondo, Dobbins Timothy, Breen Courtney, Burns Lucinda, Naicker Sundresan, Roxburgh Amanda
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, 2052, Australia.
University of Tasmania, School of Medicine, Hobart, Tasmania, 7000, Australia.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2017 Apr 1;173:159-162. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2017.01.004. Epub 2017 Feb 20.
Online drug markets operating on the 'darknet' ('cryptomarkets') facilitate the trade of illicit substances at an international level. The present study assessed the longitudinal impact on cryptomarket trading of two major disruptions: a large international law enforcement operation, 'Operation Onymous'; and the closure of the largest cryptomarket, Evolution.
Almost 1150 weekly snapshots of a total of 39 cryptomarkets were collected between October 2013 and November 2015. Data were collapsed by month and the number of unique vendor aliases operating across markets was assessed using interrupted time series regression.
Following both Operation Onymous and the closure of Evolution, significant drops of 627 (p=0.014) and 910 vendors (p<0.001) were observed, respectively. However, neither disruption significantly affected the rate at which vendor numbers increased overall.
Operation Onymous and the closure of Evolution were associated with considerable, though temporary, reductions in the number of vendors operating across cryptomarkets. Vendor numbers, however, recovered at a constant rate. While these disruptions likely impacted cryptomarket trading at the time, these markets appear resilient to disruption long-term.
在“暗网”（“加密市场”）上运营的在线毒品市场促进了非法物质在国际层面的交易。本研究评估了两次重大干扰对加密市场交易的长期影响：一次大型国际执法行动“Onymous行动”；以及最大的加密市场“进化”的关闭。
在2013年10月至2015年11月期间，共收集了39个加密市场近1150个每周快照。数据按月汇总，并使用中断时间序列回归评估跨市场运营的独特供应商别名数量。
在“Onymous行动”和“进化”关闭之后，分别观察到供应商数量显著下降，下降幅度分别为627个（p = 0.014）和910个（p < 0.001）。然而，这两次干扰均未对供应商数量总体增长速度产生显著影响。
“Onymous行动”和“进化”的关闭与跨加密市场运营的供应商数量的大幅减少（尽管是暂时的）相关。然而，供应商数量以恒定速度恢复。虽然这些干扰可能在当时影响了加密市场交易，但这些市场从长期来看似乎对干扰具有弹性。
