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Dark Web Market Plans to Support Ethereum - Crypto-News.net
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AlphaBay, one of most widely held dark market expects will “add support” for Ethereum, the open-source and public Blockchain-based distributed platform that features the functionality of smart contracts within the next few weeks.

A mediator for AlphaBay made the announcement after obtaining data from the news site, DeepDotWeb. It is planning to incorporate payments starting May 1 of this year. Recent increases in prices could have compelled this decision as per the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)-signed moderator announcement that came out in AlphaBay Market sub-Reddit.

As a dark web marketplace, AlphaBay became popular for its alleged connection to criminal activities such as extortion, fraud, illegal drug trafficking, arms-dealing, and pornography. It is being watched by law enforcement authorities worldwide.

DeepDotWeb is a news portal that focuses on Dark Web events. There are reviews, detailed interview stories regarding Darknet marketplaces, legal actions, TOR hidden services, Bitcoin and other relevant industry news. Exclusive coverage includes Darknet market drug arrests, hacking of Darknet markets and market diversification.

Framework Preparation

The go-between explained AlphaBay is preparing the framework for the purported acceptance of ETH and allow Ethereum deposits as well as withdrawals. Merchants who wish to receive ETH can change their listings quickly and easily.

The market also explored other crypto currencies in the past. Last August (2016), the privacy-focused Monero was also integrated for payments. AlphaBay said other platforms are awaiting integration and updates will come soon. Meanwhile, developers from the online market are completing a configuration for Ethereum transactions.

Monero & Dark Net Markets

ETH’s value increased which AlphaBay acknowledged. This spike in value pointed to the escalating interest in said currency. Other stakeholders said the spike is caused by this awareness. A chief executive officer of one Blockchain-based exchange (Aurelien Menent) stated this interest was brought about by additional legitimacy of the platform. In fact, Monero surpassed both Bitcoin and Ethereum, increasing its value approximately 27 times more than these two leading virtual currencies.

In 2016, the value of the anonymous digital currency climbed up 2,760% and became the top-performing electronic currency of the last year. Monero was worth $12 compared to only 50 cents in January of 2016. Its collective value swelled to $165 million. The reason for that sudden escalation can be traced to Monero’s inimitable confidentiality properties that go further than decentralization. This currency was made to be very private, completely anonymous and undetectable. On the other hand, crypto currencies like Bitcoin are hampered by regulations from government agencies and banks.

Ethereum Classic

Ethereum Classic (ETC) is a decentralized program which runs smart contracts. It operates as programmed without risk of restriction, scam, downtime, and third-party intervention. Classic is the carry-over of the unforked Ethereum Blockchain which is the standard version and cannot be tampered with.

ETC was developed following the contentious hard-fork into Ethereum. This is what AlphaBay staff had to say regarding the original platform: The Marketplace began to accept Ethereum for market listing purchases. The ETH Blockchain got adequate footing from legal business entities due to its smart contract feature. Various financial corporations and banking institutions are currently in the process of building multiple apps anchored on technology. The establishment of Enterprise Ethereum Alliance is one more feat towards said direction.

AlphaBay also advocates Bitcoin aside from Ethereum and Monero. Some reports revealed implementation of ETH on this dark net marketplace was influenced in part by the recent acceptance of zk SNARKS or zero-knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge. Non-Interactive zero-knowledge proofs are alternatives of zero-knowledge proofs wherein interaction does not take place between the person who proves and the one who verifies. Said model has some bearing on properties derived from the zero-knowledge protocol.

Ethereum and Bitcoin

The price of Ethereum has gone up from more or less $15 last March to around $45 after barely a week. At present, it is trading at $42. Industry observers believe Bitcoin is being beaten by Ethereum. The currency’s price upsurge can be compared to the rise of BTC five years ago.

A Bitcoin Block requires an average time of 10 minutes for processing while those of Ethereum only needs 12 seconds. There is a large disparity here. Ethereum’s quicker time is attributed to its GHOST procedure and capacity to deal with more data. This is definitely a big advantage because of the faster Block time, which results in faster transactions.

Another significant difference between ETH and BTC is monetary supply. More than ¾ of BTCs have already been mined. It’s a different story for Ethereum which has a supply of 89.75 million coins at present. This is even expected to grow rapidly and steadily in the near future. Bitcoin is preferred by the masses so low supply is a major disadvantage. BTC is divisible and this should not be an issue in principle. However, the supply and demand predicament is in the fact that there are more than seven billion people globally and only a ceiling of 21 million coins for circulation. ETH does not have this limits.

Ethereum highlights an exclusive Turing complete internal encryption which indicates crypto currency developers are capable of writing programs that will deal with reasonable concerns in computation. Again, BTC does not possess this capability.

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By Lutpin

This is Lutpin, and I edit, review and publish articles for CryptoNews. Sometimes, I also write them myself. I started being interested in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as far back as late 2012/early 2013. A year later I dropped out of the scene due to losing interest. Since 2015 I'm back in and involved deeper than ever. Besides writing articles, I'm a huge fan of gambling, preferrably combined with cryptocurrencies. Another big interest of mine are physical bitcoins, I know everything about them. Besides Crypto-News and Crypto-Games, you can find me mainly on bitcointalk.org

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