Abacus Market Disappears After 70% Market Share Surge

Abacus Market, once the largest Bitcoin-friendly dark web marketplace for Western buyers, suddenly disappeared from the internet in July. TRM Labs suggests that the site's operators likely shut down the platform and absconded with customers' funds in a classic exit scam. While some experts speculate that law enforcement may have secretly seized the servers, no agency has claimed responsibility for the closure yet.

The timing of Abacus's disappearance is noteworthy, as it occurred just three weeks after the shutdown of Archetyp Market on June 16, 2025. Signs of trouble had already begun to surface in June, with users reporting difficulties in withdrawing funds. The site's administrator, known as "Vito," posted on the Dread forum, attributing the delays to an influx of new users from the closed Archetyp site and DDOS attacks. However, the community expressed skepticism, and daily Bitcoin deposits indicated a significant drop in user trust. From June 1 to June 27, Abacus received approximately US$230,000 per day across 1,400 transactions. From June 28 to July 10, the average daily deposits plummeted to US$13,000 across 100 deposits, suggesting growing user suspicion.

Abacus Market was launched in September 2021 under the name Alphabet Market and rebranded two months later. Although it was accessible to users worldwide, it actively targeted Australian buyers, even hiring a local moderator and incorporating Australian slang into its site text. The marketplace offered a wide range of products, including stimulants, opioids, psychedelics, prescription pills, benzodiazepines, unlicensed medicines, and cannabis products. Unlike its rivals, DrugHub, ASAP Market, and Incognito Market, Abacus allowed customers to pay in Bitcoin or Monero.

This strategy proved successful. In 2022, Abacus held 10 percent of Bitcoin sales among Western darknet markets, rising to 17 percent in 2023. Following the closure of ASAP Market in July 2023 and the seizure of Incognito Market in March 2024, Abacus's market share surged above 70 percent in 2024. June 2025 marked Abacus's best month ever, with sales reaching US$6.3 million.

Despite the speculation, there is no concrete evidence of law enforcement involvement in Abacus's closure. Hugbunter, an administrator at the dark web forum Dread, who had been in contact with the Abacus team, has not seen any proof of law enforcement activity. However, in previous cases like the Nemesis Market closure, official notifications of law enforcement seizures only surfaced months later, leaving the possibility that Abacus was shut down by authorities.

Regardless of the cause, users quickly adapted. When ASAP Market closed in 2023, Abacus's traffic increased by 20 percent the following month. After Archetyp's fall in June 2025, thousands of its members shifted to Abacus overnight, contributing to the record US$6.3 million sales figure. Becoming the top Western darknet market may have attracted unwanted attention from law enforcement, leading Abacus's administrators to prioritize safety over further profits. Considering that the Archetyp Market team had already faced arrests and legal action, the Abacus team may have decided to disappear after roughly four years online and hundreds of millions in earnings, as noted by TRM Labs.

The dark web marketplace activity is relentless. Following the 2022 removal of Hydra Market, new Russian sites emerged and by 2024 captured more than 97 percent of global revenue in dark web drug sales. In the West, many new dark web markets are lightweight projects, such as 3DogsMarket, Drugula Market, and Squid Market, built from templates with weak security and designed to make quick cash before vanishing. Abacus could very well be another such example.