A new study by Rand Corp Europe compared the e-commerce platforms used by sellers and buyers of cocaine, heroin, amphetamines and other drugs on the dark web to mainstream legal sites like Amazon.com.
Australia has the third highest number of vendors selling drugs on the secretive cryptomarkets, just behind the United States and the United Kingdom and ahead of Germany and the Netherlands.
"Cryptomarkets essentially work similarly to online e-commerce platforms, such as Amazon, but they require encryption software to access and payment in bitcoins,'' Stijn Hoorens, a research leader at RAND Europe and one of the report's authors, said.
The study found since Silk Road was closed in 2013 online transactions for cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, cannabis, ecstasy and other drugs in new dark web markets have tripled and revenues doubled.
Illicit drugs sold on cryptomarkets were dominated by cannabis (37%), stimulants like cocaine and amphetamines (29%) and ecstasy-type drugs (19%).
Cryptomarkets were dominated by vendors from the US (35.9% of total drug revenues), the UK (16.1%), Australia (10.6%), Germany (8.4%) and the Netherlands (7.1 %).
American Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht (32), who went by the nickname Dread Pirate Roberts, was sentenced in a New York court to life in prison last year.
Queenslander Peter Nash, a 43-year-old prison counsellor who worked as a moderator on the Silk Road site, was sentenced by a New York judge to time served in May last year after spending more than a year in custody.
