As time passes, more developments continue to take place in hidden markets and among them is the addition of new altcoins, which are meant to bring more convenience to dark web market users.
Bitcoin (BTC) is the very first virtual currency to get adopted by hidden sites. At first, it proved very convenient but as individuals in the community continued to use it, some began experiencing drawbacks.
And as a result, many saw the need to start accepting altcoins to be used as substitutes, or even to compete against it altogether.
One of the major drawbacks with Bitcoin is the delays in the blockchain network. Delays are caused by the ever-increasing number of transactions within the network, leading to higher charges in processing fees from the miners.
Due to the delays, Dream Market—the current most popular market of its kind—saw it essential to integrate Bitcoin Cash (BCH) as a payment option. However, during the development of this feature, the engineers working on the system never put into consideration some key factors.
Now, those factors are beginning to emerge as Dream Market users are losing their coins by sending BCH to Bitcoin wallets.
Issues Experienced
Dark Web News took a look at Dream Market forums to find out more about the issue, and it seems users are concerned with the fact that they’re losing funds by transferring Bitcoin Cash to Bitcoin wallets. The two crypto assets are different from each other, and so there is no way the balance will reflect and thus resulting in the loss of funds.
The reason why market users ended up sending BCH funds to their BTC wallets is that there was no icon on the homepage where the BCH balance section appears.
However, there were those who could see the option after logging in, and they are the ones who experienced little or no issues—since they could just click on the BCH icon and proceed with transferring funds from their wallets to their account in order to make a purchase.
It is not the first time that users of Bitcoin are finding themselves in a similar situation. Last year, when Bitcoin split to form Bitcoin Cash, users began discussing what the new currency means for the community by considering its adoption rate and the likelihood that it will survive the crypto wave.
During this time, and up to date, users are finding it difficult to differentiate between the two due to the spiking similarities. Though not compatible with each other, the addresses are very similar, and a person cannot distinguish a BTC wallet from BCH because the two have alphanumeric characters which are the same length.
Right after the split, issues of users sending BCH to BTC wallets began to emerge. And as events unfolded, users started taking their concerns to Reddit to see if others also experienced the same problem. The occurrence of sending Bitcoin Cash funds to the wrong addresses began even before the adoption of the currency by Dream Market, which had used BTC all along.
Given the fact that Dream Market is currently rated as the biggest market after the fall of AlphaBay, it is unknown why the developers never took time to look at this process of automatically adding the icons for their customers to see.
On the other hand, a market like Silk Road 3.1, which comes second to Dream, has already added payment support for other altcoins, bringing the options to four—Bitcoin (as usual), Monero, Litecoin and Ethereum. What’s more is that all the options are readily available, giving the customer a much easier time to navigate the system and deposit their coins.
How to Add BCH Option in Dream Market
For some accounts, there is a BCH icon together with BTC, thus making it easier for the user to choose depending on convenience. Those who could see this option never had any problems unless they made a mistake of accidentally clicking the BTC option.
But for those who cannot locate the BCH option in the homepage, all they need to do is to type /bchWallet at the end of the URL after logging in, and the option will appear.
Taking Extra Caution
With the unexpected events that take place in dark web markets, users should take steps to stay safe from different parties who could be after them in one way or the other.
Evident to the fact that most of what transpires in the dark web is illegal, then it is for sure that law enforcement agencies are on the lookout for those who make both purchases and sales through darknet markets. Not only that, those who manage the marketplaces are also targets.
The other parties who target users are fraudsters who will seize every available opportunity to scam an individual of their funds.
The scams can happen in a variety of ways—either by not delivering orders after an individual has placed a Finalize Early (FE) or through third-party anonymous messaging apps such as ICQ and Jabber, among others.
Some of the vendors of Dream Market are very fond of asking customers to contact them privately on these messaging apps so they can lure the individual into making offline payments, which results in fraud.
Now that Dream Market users continue to have the option of using Bitcoin or Bitcoin Cash, it is necessary that they make use of tumbling services to protect themselves further, since transactions can be traced back to the source if they are not careful.
Tumbling services—also known as shufflers or mixers—usually mix up the coins and give them a new set, thus removing any possibility of getting traced.
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