Darknet’s BTC-friendly ‘Abacus Market’ goes offline, exit scam suspected

Abacus Market, widely touted as the largest Bitcoin-friendly darknet marketplace in the west, has mysteriously gone defunct raising suspicions of an exit scam. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs posted a blog on July 14, suggesting that the evolving legal landscape around crypto bringing instability in the darknet market may have prompted Abacus’ operators to take the site offline and flee.

As per TRM Labs, the marketplace was launched in 2021 as “Alphabet Market” and was later renamed as “Abacus Market” in November 2021. It was majorly used for the selling and procurement of illegal drugs via cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and Monero. Abacus also offered a central deposit wallet feature – that essentially lets buyers deposit the agreed-upon amount of crypto to a designated wallet address controlled by the operators.

The users of Abacus Market had been reporting issues with withdrawing their crypto deposits from the site’s wallet service since June this year. At the time, an administrator of the marketplace who goes by the name “Vito” had informed the site’s users that a heavy visit rate on the site and a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack were reasons why the marketplace was malfunctioning.

Despite the reassurance from Vito, the site’s wallet address continued to clock a sharp decline in deposit volume, indicating the beginning of a user exodus.

“Between June 1 and June 27, 2025 average daily deposits to Abacus were $230,000 across 1,400 transactions. However, from June 28 to July 10, 2025, this dropped to $13,000 across just 100 deposits,” TRM Labs said. For now, the estimation of user funds lost to Abacus’s potential exit scam remains unknown.

Citing internal analysis, the blockchain intelligence firm said that Abacus’s rise to become the largest darknet site in the global west is what could have led to its end.

“Marketplaces that reach the top of the ecosystem, in terms of volume, user base, listings, and reputation, often become priority targets for law enforcement,” the blog said. “Furthermore, after four years of operating and generating substantial profits, the admins likely lost motivation to continue and chose to exit the ecosystem to preserve their freedom and financial gains.”

It also remains unclear for now if the case of Abacus going defunct being investigated by law enforcement authorities.

The apparent silent exit of Abacus Market from the darknet space could also have been prompted by the legal ordeal that unfolded last month for Archetyp Market – one of the longest-running dark web marketplaces, TRM Labs said. Around mid-June, law enforcement authorities from Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, and Sweden joined forces with the US authorities as well as the Europol to put an end to Archetyp. As part of this operation, the authorities confiscated $9 million in assets from under the marketplace’s custody.

“Abacus’s demise marks a significant setback for the Western DNM ecosystem, leaving successors such as DrugHub, TorZon Market, and MGM Grand under increasing pressure to adapt,” the TRM Labs added.

Previously, similar darkweb marketplaces like ASAP Market, Agora Market, and the Evolution Market have also drawn curtains on their operations owing to the rising legal awareness around the world.