Introduction

This book is about cryptomarkets and cryptomarket research, with a particular focus on the illicit drugs trade. As the title suggests, it is intended as a guidebook to those with an interest in conducting their own study into this fascinating and ever-expanding area of research. There is no shortage of interesting fodder. In little more than eight years, cryptomarkets have facilitated hundreds of thousands illicit drug exchanges, likely worth in excess of two billion US dollars. They have been implicated in fatal overdoses and facilitate door-to-door delivery of a greater volume and wider range of illicit drugs than may be witnessed in any open air drug market in the world, and yet they are widely suspected to be reducing a range of systemic drug and prohibition-related harms. They have been linked to acts of domestic terrorism (Malik, 2019), been falsely implicated in providing a safe haven for hitmen (Ormsby, 2016) and traders in weapons of mass destruction (Brewster, 2017) and caused both media sensations and moral panics on both sides of the Atlantic, and as far afield as Australia and Argentina. They have catalysed the development of new investigative tools and strategies, and new forms of transnational policing, jurisprudence and cross-jurisdictional extradition. And each year they grow bigger, demonstrating a remarkable resilience to internal and external assaults reminiscent of the mythical hydra of antiquity.