Dream Market shut down; but that’s yesterday’s news. The new headline is-BitBazaar, a new marketplace seems to have been born to bridge the gap. That’s what this BitBazaar review deals with.
The marketplace is literally a day old! Hence I’d ask you to take this review with a pinch of salt. What I mean by that is, don’t expect it to have thousands of listings, users, or a “perfect” environment just yet.
Also, this BitBazaar review is almost being done from its beta, hence if a feature is missing for now it doesn’t mean the feature doesn’t exist. It simply means the feature isn’t available “currently” and has chances of being listed in the near future.
That been said, the marketplace does bring with itself couple features and options which hint as at its future potential.
Without further adieu, let’s get on with this BitBazaar review then?
BitBazaar Overview
Here’s an Eagle’s-eye view of the marketplace. It should get you a general idea of what the marketplace offers and what’s lacking.
- Primary URL: j5c6uwvqxvgw6cqk77z2j6yjikumzlleto3y6yqhg73enxewktmenbqd
- Security: Escrow, 2-FA, PGP, PIN
- No of Products: 80+
- Payment modes: BTC, LTC, DASH, XMR, ETH, BTCH.
- Registration: Optional, Registration Open.
- Exclusive: Auctions available.
BitBaazar Registrations
BitBazaar seems to be a non-intrusive marketplace and doesn’t force registrations upon users.
So you can browse, as well as even purchase products without registering on the marketplace. Non-registered users can pay by generating a one-time, trade-specific payment address and making the payment there.
This also makes the marketplace a “non-deposit requiring” marketplace. Meaning unlike most other marketplaces, users need not deposit funds on BitBazaar prior to making a purchase and can rather do so for each trade, at the exact time of purchase.
Although registrations are available. If u do choose to register, here’s what the form looks like:
As is evident, it’s not long per-se. Users start off by filling a “display name”, this is what’s displayed on your profiles and to other users on the marketplace.
Then there’s the “username” which is needed to login to the marketplace account. The password and “PIN” are security measures.
So bottomline, it’s extremely anonymous and one of the very few marketplaces in the industry which offer ordering without registrations.
Beware though, the Captcha isn’t the most cooperative and may require multiple attempts before a successful registration/login.
BitBazaar User Interface
Who can use BitBazaar? Do you need to be a tech-geek in order to do so? Fortunately not. Although the UI is quite unique and “non-traditional” as of now.
The top-bar lists options such as BitAuction (details below), BitAsk, BitHow, Order check, F.A.Q etc.
The marketplace itself is divided into four primary sections, a list of products on the top, then there’s a search-panel for no specific reason, and then the screen gets divided into two horizontal sections.
The left-section consists of product listings again, and the right-sidebar is what displays the product categories.
The product-thumbnails are pretty informative and display almost all the information that there is about the product. You get the price, the accepted currency and vendor-details.
Bottomline, it’s not conventional yet no harder than the traditional interfaces.
Types of Available Products
The exact number of products isn’t available at the moment, as the marketplace is being updated by the second and hence it’s quite dynamic.
However from the looks of it, BitBazaar seems to be primarily a Drug-dominated marketplace. Simply because it provides for 7 different sub-categories of Drugs on its product-categories sidebar, and the other products have only got 1 each.
The available drug types are Cannabis, Stimulants, Opioids, Prescription, Psychedelic etc.
Each of these categories are sub-divided into smaller divisions as well, So Cannabis has Weed, Hash, Edibles, Seeds etc. Benzos has Valium, Xanax and others, Stimulants lists Cocaine, Meth, Speed, Pills etc.
Although it’s not drug-exclusive, hence Digital, Physical and Software/Malware related products too are available.
The “Digital” section lists products such as Cards, eBooks, Game keys, software, PayPal accounts etc. “Physical” however only has two sub-categories, them being Carded Items and Counterfeits.
The “Software and Malware” section includes products exclusively related to the two products. Currently it includes products such as Botnets, Exploits, Security software etc.
Note that with time newer categories may be added.
Security Features
Even though BitBazaar is comparatively newer, it didn’t compromise on its security features.
For starters users are asked to specify an 8-digit Pin during registration. This PIN can be used to recover accounts lest they’re lost.
Then there’s 2-FA via PGP. So users can specify PGP keys in their accounts which will force users to decrypt a login-message using the specified PGP key before allowing access to the accounts. This protects users in case their passwords are compromised.
Talking of PGP, buyers are shown the vendor PGP keys on the purchase-page, this PGP key can (and should) be used to encrypt the shipping details.
Another security feature is its session-inactiveness detection capabilities. Once a user stays inactive for a specific amount of time (couple minutes) the platform logs him/her out. So the next click or action can only be performed after completing a captcha.
Finally there obviously is Escrow. Although it also facilitates Finalize-Early and Half-F.E transactions in case you’ve a trusted vendor and don’t wish to go with the Escrow.
Payment Methods
One of the most impressive aspects about this BitBazaar review is its acceptance of a wide variety of currencies.
Payment can obviously be made in Bitcoins, but in addition to that it also accepts:
- Ethereum
- Litecoin
- DASH
- Monero
- And Bitcoin Cash.
Although note that not all currencies can be used to pay for all products. The currencies are probably vendor-specific and some vendors may or may not accept one or the other currency.
Buyer/Vendor Transparency
This is something which I personally believe is of supreme importance. The transparency that the marketplace offers to the buyers for the vendor-profiles.
So buyers may get a chance to audit the vendor without having any interactions with him/her and avoid potential scammers.
The marketplace displays a lot of information about the vendor on the product-thumbnail to begin with, details such as:
- Total Sales.
- Vendor Positive/Negative/Neutral feedback.
- Acceptance/Non-acceptance of Escrow etc.
In addition to this, buyers can click on the vendor’s display-name to reach their profiles. This offers additional information such as the registration date, ratings for quality, speed, packaging, and communication, vendor level, last login etc.
It also displays a “feedback summary” which shows the number of positive/negative feedback in the last 7days as well as for the last month.
Reviews left by other users too are displayed and can be checked before finalizing a vendor.
Why should buyers get all the privileges? BitBazaar agrees, and lets vendors check buyer details as well by going to their profiles. This helps them avoid time-wasters and scammers who may be involved in multiple disputes.
Search functionality
One of the last features we’d be discussing in this BitBazaar review is the marketplace’s search-functionality.
The search-functionality is generally discussed because it effects the speed with which a potential buyer may find his/her products. However in this case, it’s being discussed because the marketplace has placed it abruptly on the homepage literally demanding attention.
Well, here’s what it looks like:
As is evident, the filters currently offered are:
- Categories: Letting users specify a category for their products. Note that it also includes the sub-categories for even deeper and narrower search.
- Ships from: Buyers get to choose a source-country, so that only vendors/products shipping from the specified country are displayed.
- Transaction Type: Choose the transaction type from Escrow, F.E and Half-F.E.
- Order By: This basically is the same thing as “sort”. It helps us sort the search-results based on Low-High prices, most sold, most trusted vendors etc.
Now this search-panel even though is acceptable in its current form, isn’t impressive. I generally like specifying a minimum-maximum budget, and being able to specify a “destination country”. That’s because there’s no point in going through a product only to find out it doesn’t ship to your home-country.
Auctions
This is one of the most unique features I’ve seen on any Darknet market so far. It lets vendors list their products in “auction”, and buyers buy from those auctions.
Here’s what a basic open auction looks like:
The starting bid, number of bids, and types of currencies accepted is shown. Interested parties may register their bid and whoever bids the highest wins and receives the product.
Here’s a closed-auction:
Even though you can’t participate in it anymore, you can see the winning-bid. These auctions too are protected by Escrow.
Although note that only registered users may participate in the Auction and it’s not open to anonymous users.
Final Words on
So that’s a wrap as far as this BitBazaar review goes folks. Now I personally am impressed with some features such as its Payment modes, Auctions, security features etc.
There isn’t a lot missing with the marketplace even though it’s still an infant. Although its performance, products and newer features would totally be a sight when it ages a couple weeks or months.
Anyway that’s just my personal opinion on the marketplace, do let us know what you think of BitBazaar (Will it survive? Or perish in this vast Darkweb ocean?) as well as on this BitBazaar review in the comments.
