Ethereum is becoming one of the popular ways of transition, a valuable cryptocurrency at least in the cyberworld. By every passing day its popularity is not only seeking investors’ attention but its useability is taking it to new height. Recently, one of the world's largest Darknet Marketplace – 'AlphaBay' has announced that it will start accepting Ethereum as one of its payment method. Currently they are working on setup of Ether payment functionality, including deposits and withdrawals, and the new currency will be fully operational on May 1st, 2017.
Couple of days ago, AlphaBay (AlphaBay_mod) made an announcement on reddit.com
“Following the popularity of the new altcoin Ethereum and the recent price
hike showing a growing interest, Alphabay has made the decision to start
accepting Ethereum for marketplace listing purchases.We are currently laying out the framework to make ETH acceptance possible,
and we will enable Ethereum deposits and withdrawals starting May 1st, 2017.
Vendors wishing to accept Ethereum can edit their listings and set the "Accept
ETH" to "On" in order to be able to be paid in Ethereum.We have plenty of new stuff in the works, so expect more updates in the near
future.”
Nevertheless, many people can argue that using ETH for darknet is not the real use case example of possible future of cryptocurrency but it definitely is a positive development for Ethereum ecosystem. Many other organization may get inspiration on making decision whether or not to make ETH as their currency of transaction depending on the success rate in AlphaBay. At present AlphaBay is accepting few other cryptocurrency as mode of payment such as Bitcoin, XMR and Monero but they are now looking at Ethereum as an additional payment method since ETH gained a lot of value over the past week. Since, this is not the only mode of payment in AlphaBay; the sellers will get an option to accept ETH payments in their account settings by enabling it manually.
Bitcoin is the first digital currency and has been the market leader ever since then. Ether, becoming worthy of being rival to such a long-time runner will not go unnoticed. Possible reason for Ethereum to secure this position as alternate cryptocurrency in dark world may be because of its anonymity which is the primary need of this world. Then again there is Monero (an altcoin) to keep an eye on, as it offers a lot more anonymity and privacy than Ethereum does in its current form. So, giving competition to present players is one thing, but it will be interesting to see how far ETH can travel to take the lead.
Some darknet users are having their own doubts with the AlphaBay decision to add Ethereum as a payment option, as they believe that using a token on top of a censored chain can bring more problems than benefits to darknet marketplaces. It is also not very clear how many sellers are going to accept it actively. It is too early to comment on the success of Ethereum's addition as the payment method. Consideration of Ethereum may be controversial but it surely is a fascinating start. We will be looking forward for more 'real-life' usecases of Ethereum.
Cary Numan once said,
“I think if you are creative then it's an unstoppable thing. It just keeps coming throughout your entire life.”
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