Major Darknet marketplace White House Market stops accepting bitcoin.

As Bitcoin is witnessing an astronomical increase in demand from both retail and institutional investors, White House Market, a major marketplace on the darknet, has stopped taking payments in Bitcoin. The move was forced by the blocking of Tor nodes by the darknet market’s third-party payment processor partner Morphtoken. The platform is now accepting only Monero, a popular privacy coin. “Bitcoin payments are no longer accepted,” White House Market noted in a statement.

Around $1.4 billion worth of Bitcoins were sent to mixing services in 2020.

The darknet marketplace further noted, “the 3rd party exchange API we used (Morphtoken) has suddenly decided to block access from Tor exit nodes and while this is trivial to circumvent we decided to respect their decision.” “The Bitcoin workaround was supposed to be there just to help with the transition to XMR, and as we are concerned, it’s done; therefore, we are now Monero only, just as planned,” the statement noted. Bitcoin is a preferred mode of payment in the darknet markets and also for criminals. An estimation by Bitfury earlier revealed that around $1.4 billion worth of Bitcoins were sent to mixing services this year.

Bitcoin continues its positive rally. 

The price of the leading cryptocurrency more than tripled this year amid the ongoing global pandemic. The previous weekend price of bitcoin reached as high as $28,000 for the first time. At the time of writing, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is trading at just above $26,600. Bitcoin is used in darknet marketplaces for its anonymous nature. However, any Bitcoin spent at any darknet marketplace can reveal its previous owner’s identity. Illegal service providers use the mixing services to wipe out the transactional history of Bitcoins.