From 1st February 2025 to 31st January 2026, 17 cryptomarkets were monitored, of which 13 remained active at the end of the reporting period.

Figure: Cryptomarkets monitored from February 2025 to January 2026. 

^{Note: There are short breaks at the end of each month because the twice-monthly snapshots before June 2025 were based on 2-week intervals starting on the 1st and 15th of each month, and the snapshots were taken at monthly intervals from June 2025 onwards at a time between the 1st and the 28th of the month, i.e., days of the month after the 28th were excluded from monitoring. Extended breaks indicate periods where market crawling was not achievable or incomplete. The height of the bar is proportional to the log of the number of drug listings observed in each snapshot for each market.}

The two markets reaching more than 10,000 listings in a snapshot during this period were:

• Archetyp with maximum number of listings in a snapshot of 13,424; and
• Drughub with maximum number of listings in a snapshot of 12,898.

Archetyp is considered to have closed from law enforcement seizure in June 2025.

In the final month of monitoring (January 2026), 13 markets were scraped. The six markets whose number of listings were above the average of 4,014 listings in January 2026 were:

• Drughub with 12,818 listings;
• Dark Matter with 9,030 listings;
• Torzon with 7,755 listings;
• MarsMarket with 5,678 listings;
• Nexus with 5,595 listings;
• Blackops with 5,006 listings.

Figure: Number of drug listings by cryptomarket from February 2025 to January 2026. 

^{Note: Markets with <1000 listings in a snapshot across the whole 12-month period (i.e., ColombiaConnection, Euphoria, CannaExpress, Quantum and Atlas) were excluded to improve visibility. Complete interactive visualisation available here. The markets are ordered by maximum number of listings per snapshot over the 12-month period}

There was an average of 52,185 drug listings per snapshot in January 2026, with an estimated increase in listings of 1.7% per month as compared to February 2025 (n=30,501) but the increase was not statistically significant.

The drugs below had a significant increase in number of listings:

• Other psychotropic medicines from 624 to 1,449 listings (5.9% per month);
• Other medicines from 1,171 to 2,796 listings (5.7% per month).

Cannabis comprised the largest proportion of listings identified across the overall market over the 12-month period (25.3%). The other most frequently listed drugs making up at least 50% of listings in the overall market were:

• benzodiazepines, with 7.7% of listings;
• MDMA, with 7.6% of listings;
• opioids (excluding heroin), with 7.3% of listings; and
• cocaine, with 7.0% of listings.

Other psychotropic medicines had the greatest rate of relative increase in market share (4.1% per month) from February 2025 to January 2026 (2.0% of all drug listings to 2.8%, respectively). This was followed by:

• other medicines increasing at 3.9% per month, from 3.8% to 5.4%;
• PIEDs/weight loss drugs increasing at 2.0% per month, from 5.4% to 7.3%;
• heroin increasing at 0.7% per month, from 1.9% to 2.1%; and
• ketamine increasing at 0.6% per month, from 5.1% to 5.4%.

The increase in size of Drughub, Dark Matter and Blackops contributed to the increase in market share of other psychotropic medicines, other medicines and PIEDs/weight loss drugs as they have a proportionally bigger share of these drugs in their markets compared with the overall market.

Figure: Drug composition of cryptomarkets monitored from February 2025 to January 2026 (in descending order by maximum size of market, and the overall market in last column).

GHB/GBL/1,4-BD had the greatest relative decrease in market share (-4.0% per month) from 0.5% in February 2025 to 0.4% in January 2026. This was followed by LSD (-3.3% per month) from February 2025 to January 2026 (3.8% of all drug listings to 3.4%, respectively). The following drugs also decreased significantly in market share:

• meth/amphetamine (illicit) decreasing at -1.5% per month, from 5.9% to 5.1%;
• MDMA decreasing at -1.3% per month, from 7.9% to 7.1%; and
• benzodiazepines decreasing at -1.1% per month, from 7.8% to 6.6%.

Man, N., Sutherland, R., Barratt, M. J., Bruno, R., Sadaphale, V., & Peacock, A. (2026). Trends in the availability and type of drugs sold on the internet via cryptomarkets, February 2025 - January 2026. Drug Trends Bulletin Series. Sydney: National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW Sydney. Available from: https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/32119

Drug Trends is supported by funding from the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing under the Drug and Alcohol Program.

©NDARC, UNSW SYDNEY 2026 

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