Another One Bites the Dust? World Market On Verge of Exit Scam

One of the biggest and most controversial darknet markets has all but exit scammed, according to senior moderators on the Dread darknet forum. On March 26^th, forum moderator Shakybeats announced they had removed moderation privileges for the World Market administrator on Dread, disabling their ability to continue posting and confirming that an impending exit scam was likely.

Warning signs that something at World Market was amiss had been present for weeks, going back to a cautionary post by a self-described former colleague of the World Market admin, written late last month. In the post, user nightmaremarket accused the market of preparing for an exit scam — a plan which its admin immediately denied.

On March 23^rd, Dread user dontlaugh started a new thread urging World Market users to take heed of “a number of red flags,” which most notably included a rollback to a previous version of the website. Other warning signs included a sudden jump in the cost of vendor bond – from $1,500 to $3,000 – and reports from several vendors that their payments were trapped in the market, with withdrawal requests being ignored.

In an effort to respond to mounting complaints, World Market admin and Dread user makarov wrote the following counter-post, which was heavily downvoted, with its rationale being dismissed by most respondents:

“The time has come that the World Market team must close shop. The team tried to fix numerous technical issues over the past week but could not recover what has been lost. We have worked hard to be the best market and to serve the community.

As much as I care for everyone at World Market, I also care about the vendors and buyers, and it would not be fair to continue at this point.” – Dread user makarov

Less than two days later, the post by dontlaugh was edited to include the following text: “UPDATE: I think we can call it. Either one of the admins fucked the other (who would have thunk it) or they both pulled this to squeeze out as much as possible from everyone,” thus signaling the end of the market’s functionality.

After the closures of White House Market and Dark0de, World Market was for a short while one of the biggest darknet markets in operation, hosting well over 30,000 listings at its peak. The market used the traditional account deposit system, making an exit scam especially lucrative for a market its size.

As of March 27^th, the rolled-back version of World Market was still accessible and allowing those who had created older accounts to still login and even make deposits. However, many functions have been removed, making purchases or withdrawals impossible.