Hydra - Darknet's largest platform holds $ 150 million ICO

Regulators are introducing more and more prohibitive measures in relation to the crypto market, because the anonymity of digital coinsallows you to use them for money laundering, terrorist financing and the purchase of prohibited goods. The other day, the situation with the use of cryptocurrencies in criminal activity has reached its climax.

Hydra - the largest drug site in RussiaDarknet - announced an ICO to raise $ 150 million and enter the international market, promising investors a payback period of six months and a constant share in profits. At the same time, the platform intends to fulfill the cherished dreams of cipherpunk - to launch its own AspaNET network in September 2020, designed to replace TOR and provide the darknet with an unprecedented level of anonymity and convenience.

Hydra's loud statement immediately caught the eyeWest, after all, there has never been anything like this in world history. Is this absurdity, madness or revolution? And how can it all end? To your attention - analysis of ICO from Mining-Cryptocurrency.ru.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not an advertisement or a call to any action. Financing criminal activity is criminally punishable.

Hydra: scope and goals

American and European intelligence agencies destroyedall the largest Western platforms for trading hallucinogens. In addition to the well-known story of Ross Ulbricht and his Silk Road, AlphaBay, Hansa, Dream Market, Wall Street market, as well as hundreds of smaller platforms in the TOR network fell due to the efforts of the FBI and Europol.

On the Russian market the situation turned out differently:all large sites were also destroyed, but primarily through the efforts not of the authorities, but of themselves. As part of the fight against competitors for the “drug throne,” the sites spared no money and effort. The struggle for hegemony in the market led to the merciless destruction of R2D2, Amber Road, Malina, RAMP, RuSilk, BLACKMARKET and other representatives of the darknet. Some could not resist massive DDoS attacks, while the data of others was deliberately “leaked” to intelligence agencies.

In the end, the situation led toThe Hydra platform, which was formed in 2015 as a result of the alliance of WayAway and Legal RC sites, created a sole monopoly. Today, the market giant does not openly brag about its achievements, high level of service and security, and also promotes its ideas to the masses.

According to representatives of the site, Hydra is activelybuys large-scale advertising campaigns on YouTube and the media, which is why in recent months its popularity has reached a new level. The site assures that the large material on the drug business on the Internet, released by Lenta.ru (one of the leading Russian online publications), was also custom-made. Naturally, media representatives deny everything.

Be that as it may, the scale of Hydra's activities inThe numbers look impressive. Naturally, due to the specifics of the site, the exact statistics are unknown to anyone except the management, however, the Project publication, in its joint study with the DrugStat telegram channel, nevertheless found out some data. Here are a few of them:

More than 2 registered at the site.5 million people, 393,000 of whom at least once made purchases. At the time of closing, the world's largest international Alpha Bay site had only 400,000 registered users.
Over the past three years, users have contributed to theirbalances in Hydra total more than $1 billion. For comparison: from 2011 to 2015, five times less passed through all Western drug sites combined - up to $200 million.
Daily (including right now) onthe territory of Russia are "bookmarks" worth millions of dollars. On June 1, 2019, the total value of all relevant hiding places was $ 5.52 million, half of which ($ 2.37 million) was in Moscow. The total weight of all bookmarks in circulation is about 650 kg.
In the first five months of 2019, Hydra executives earned about $ 22 million from their operations.

However, the drug platform is not going to last a lifetimeboast of their own successes in Russia. Aware of the superiority in the domestic market, she decided to aim for more - enter the international market and establish a drug darknet monopoly throughout the planet.

Hydra understands that the US and European authorities are veryquickly cope with any similar resources, so they intend to enter the world stage with new solutions. A “Investment Memorandum” published by Hydra talks about the existence of vulnerabilities in the TOR network, due to which western sites were closed.

In this regard, the platform decided to developa whole new solution. Hydra plans to provide trade on global markets without the use of mail services (which all Western counterparts have resorted to) by organizing sales using the usual “bookmarks” for CIS users - after payment customers will receive an exact address and photo of the place where they can pick up drugs. Well, to solve problems with TOR, the organizers are developing their own anonymous network, which we will talk about later.

ICO Features

The international Hydra project will be called Eternos. To implement it, you need a lot of money, which the platform’s management intends to raise from its users through an ICO.

The launch of Eternos is scheduled for September 1, 2020. The initial offer of coins will be held from December 16 to 20, 2019.

The financial side of ICO Hydra

The platform plans to share profits fromactivities of the international platform between themselves and users. At the best outcome for investors, only 51% of the profits will go to the Hydra team, the remaining 49% to investors in the ICO.
Thus, the company decided to sell 49% of the tokenized "shares" of Eternos. A total of 1,470,000 tokens were put up for sale.
The price of one token is fixed - $ 100. The cost will not change until the launch of the international platform and only then will go to "free swimming".
In total, within the framework of the ICO, the site is trying to attract investments worth almost $ 150 million
For every 100 tokens, holders are entitled to 0.00333333% of Eternos net profit and access to statistics. Payments promise in bitcoins. Thus, dividends in the form of interest on income will be received only by those who invest at least $ 10,000, and those who buy less than 100 tokens are not entitled to a share in the project.
Tokens can be sold on the internal exchange after the launch of Eternos. The Hydra team expects that over the first six months of their work, their cost will increase by 700%.
Management expects overwhelming success atinternational market, predicting that only due to the share in the project the payback period of investments from major players will be only 6 months. Let's count. For a contribution of $ 10,000, 0.00333333% of the profit is expected. So, in order to recoup the investment in 6 months, the site should receive about $ 30 million of net income for this period. Pretty bold forecast. Moreover, the management assumes that for one year of operation, every 100 tokens will bring $ 50,000 per month.

Now let's look at the innovations promised by Hydra.

Technical side of ICO Hydra

To ensure the anonymous operation of Eternos,drug dealers create AspaNET's “anonymous invulnerable new generation network” designed specifically for the site. Allegedly, this is an ideal replacement for TOR, solving the problems of the latter, due to which the activity of Western drug sites was crashed. According to the developers, this network has been successfully tested in China and Turkey, it easily bypasses The Golden Shield Project and DPI type locks, while maintaining complete anonymity. The Hydra team assures you that you can stop AspaNET, but only by stopping the entire Internet.
Apparently AspaNET will be very much liketo a decentralized cryptocurrency network and, possibly, it works on blockchain technology. The fact is that it will be possible to launch a certain HatchService to open one or several own gateways at once to maintain the network. For a kind of "mining" is rewarded.
Artificial Intelligence Integrated Inside NetworkIronRat to quickly resolve contentious issues and provide the highest possible speed. Based on the platform’s “memorandum,” AI trained for two years, taking part in resolving over 360,000 disputes at Hydra. According to expectations, by the time Eternos launches, it will be able to process 9 out of 10 tickets without human intervention.
For correspondence inside and outside the site, a multifunctional crypto messenger called Whisper is being developed based on the controversial PGP encryption.
An internal cryptocurrency exchange will be launched.
For input / output / exchange of digital and fiat moneyit is planned to launch the ChangePoint service, which works on the basis of a multimixer. It allows you to operate with digital and fiat money completely anonymously without KYC and other verification procedures.
Eternos must support the possibilities of smart advertising and no less smart logistics tools to calculate safe routes and predict legal risks.

Hydra reports that due to the nature of the activity, they cannot disclose documentation for all technical solutions, but promise to share more detailed information at the same time as Eternos launches.

Exit Scam Risks

Given the activities of the site and the ICO format, allusers who want to invest in Eternos are automatically at risk. One of them is the potential for exit scam. What prevents Hydra from simply taking and collecting $ 150 million, after which it will stop the drug trade and disappear forever, simultaneously ceasing its criminal activity?

This has happened with many “legal” ICOs,and in the case of a drug platform, not a single investor will even write a statement to the police, because in this case he will admit to financing a criminal group and will immediately go to jail under the relevant article of the Criminal Code.

Hydra in this case will lose its reputation andwill make enemies among the bandits. But this argument rarely stops anyone. Remember that at one time BTC-e was trusted by hundreds of thousands of traders, but this did not stop the exchange from committing an exit scam twice. If the Hydra team managed to remain anonymous on the RuNet for several years, then there is a considerable chance that the thugs will never find them.

Arrest risks

But even if the platform’s intentions are honest (if theiryou can call it that) - the risks do not become less, but on the contrary, they increase. As soon as Hydra expands its activities outside of Russia, it will immediately attract special attention from the security forces of the West. And foreign law enforcement agencies, unlike Russian ones, have established experience in combating darknet cybercriminals. One has only to remember the story of Ivan Molina Lee, who laundered drug cartel money through Bitfinex and, despite all the tricks, was still arrested by the intelligence services.

Given the political overtones (don't forget thatHydra is a Russian platform), there is no doubt that if they begin to conquer the US market, local intelligence services will spare neither time nor money to fight the “bad Russians.” According to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), all Western drug sites last on average only 8 months, after which they are closed and the owners are sent to prison, usually for life.

Hydra management assures that this is to blame -TOR vulnerabilities. However, TOR has been created by the smartest programmers for 17 years and is still imperfect. Why suddenly a fresh solution from unknown drug site programmers turns out to be safer? Why is there confidence that the authorities will not find an approach to AspaNET, which does not even have documentation and access to code security analysis? One bug can end everything. One vulnerability can become an ideal target for a fatal blow.

Not to mention that it is possible to resolve the issue anddifferently. Drug cartels work on trust, for example, to provide input / output of funds, it is necessary to enter into an alliance with partners. The human factor here can play a decisive role - one caught employee, partner or even an investor in the ICO can “merge” important information necessary to continue the chain of investigations. Practice shows that sooner or later, in the war against drug cartels, the authorities will win anyway, even the legendary Pablo Escobar could not cope with the onslaught.

The arrest and closure of the drug site will not just robinvestors invested money and share profits. Investing in the development of illegal structures and making profits from drug trafficking is considered a crime in any law. Therefore, if law enforcement agencies are able to catch the leadership of Hydra, they will soon take up investors, and such an outcome looks already much more serious than the loss of invested money.

Output

Feeling absolute superiority in the domesticmarket, the drug site decided to encroach on the Holy Grail for drug cartels - the US and Europe markets. However, when a new level is reached, risks grow, and it is far from a fact that the above measures will help to avoid them.

Before Hydra, there were many othersspecialized platforms that at one time positioned themselves as “innovative” and had every right to do so. Take the same Silk Road. The brainchild of Ross Ulbricht was the first service to open a drug trade for bitcoins. The site seemed invulnerable and unsinkable, but the two life terms that the owner is currently serving are saying the opposite.

The technical side of the ICO would look like newa round of development in the field of confidentiality, if not for Hydra's activity, which contradicts legislation and moral principles. Such an initiative, rather, threatens the entire crypto industry.

Even without Hydra going internationally inIn 2019, darknet users spent about $ 1 billion in bitcoins on the purchase of prohibited goods. For the authorities, this is a problem that they cannot solve in any way. And ICOs like Hydra only add fuel to the fire, forcing governments of different countries to strengthen prohibitive measures that could one day result in a complete ban on ICOs (as in China) or even criminal liability for the use of digital assets.