I see a lot of comments on the Monero subreddit that Monero is economically viable because it has a monopoly over darknet market transactions. However, the demand for illegal narcotics from people smart enough to use Tor Browser is probably at the end of its elasticity. If this is all Monero has, Monero holders will be incentivized to flee to historically more lucrative stores of value, because the potential growth of activity that is not illicit is much greater, and the number of people left that don’t know you can use Tor Browser and Monero to buy the things that are on darknets and are likely to learn how in the future is very small.

Monero needs growth in real commerce. This is something that can be addressed by darknet operators right now, through the simple magic of horizontal growth. I don’t personally use any darknet markets, and I don’t know any of their operators. If that is you, please make new markets for additional commodities whose trade is regulated via KYC. For example, in many states it is illegal to purchase catalytic converters without collecting IDs. There’s illiquidity in the market because of that – and you can be the central point of liquidity! What’s the total value of n% of all the world’s chop shop + covert angle grinder operators? It is a big market. And the legal risks are much smaller – we’re talking civil fines instead of jail time for being a party to a no-KYC car parts trade in most states, levied exclusively by state-level authorities instead of the DEA. This makes it a lot more likely that the first mover can establish a lasting monopoly in that vertical. Market operators please, fork your current repo and get some guys with angle grinders slanging catalytic converters on the dark web. Another giant industry is counterfeit goods, there are six figure arrests literally every day – the producers could have a more reliable distribution chain if they were sold on a Monero marketplace.

There’s ag commodities like this which would need some more personalized coding due to a need for localized delivery but that are very lucrative. Raw milk, young cheese, escargot producers are regularly raided by the feds. You see single raw milk dairies getting busted and they are moving mid six figs of product a month and going down because they are slanging milk out of their farm to a fed snitch. Make a market where people pay for raw milk delivery and cyberpunk milk courier can be a real world career. You could concentrically grow that business into other ag products and maybe meal delivery from unpermitted ghost kitchens.

I could list stuff all day but basically if something has its sale regulated and forbidden by the state and it has documented demand, there needs to be a concerted effort to make a Monero market for it. There needs to be roughly ten thousand times more hustling and grinding going on than there is right now.