Massive surge in new digital currency as it becomes drug dealers’ first choice

A new crypto-currency has replaced Bitcoin as the currency of choice for illicit purchases, reports Fin24.

The two-year old “Monero” quadrupled in value in the last month after gaining support from prominent websites that anonymously peddle drugs.

“Following demand from the community, and considering the security features of Monero, we decided to add it to our marketplace,” AlphaBay, a popular online distributor, announced on Reddit last week.

“We expect this to cause a spike in the price, so if you are an investor, now is the time to purchase Monero.”

Monero similarly uses a network of miners to verify its trades, but mixes multiple transactions together to make it harder to trace the genesis of the funds.

It also adopts “dual-key stealth” addresses, which make it difficult for third-parties to pinpoint who received the funds.

“For any two outputs, from the same or different transactions, you cannot prove they were sent to the same person,” Riccardo Spagni, a lead developer of Monero, wrote by e-mail.