Abstract:

The paper addresses dilemmas arising in the context of black market operations in a digital economy. Some of the inherent properties of the World Wide Web, such as the relative anonymity, IP and connection masking, and the asynchronous character of interactions may, in some cases, stimulate and support the development of nefarious uses of digital systems, resulting in a rise of black market economy. The aim of this study was to present the nature of black market operations along with some of the most important regularities associated with this form of illicit activity in economies based on digital networks. The findings provide insight into some of the reasons for the rapid growth of black market operations in the global networking system, including: extremely low reproduction cost of virtual commodities, continued development of connection masking techniques, the rise of cryptocurrencies, and wide dispersion of both supply and demand.