John Marsh 
Bitbazaar a mid-level dark web market is currently suffering from uncertain situation. Five days ago various panicked users started complaining about not being able to access the market. It is natural when users aren’t able to access market then they do get panicked. Most of the users were getting 502 bad gateway error after passing the ddos captcha.
As the days passed by, the situation got even worse when a vendor claimed that his vendor account says user name no longer exsist and he cannott log in, yet all of his products are still listed even products that are out of stock have been re listed. Another vendor named “Sankhara” warned fellow vendors to avoid this market and withdraw their bitcoins asap because they have blocked his vendor panel and wallet access. He said:
WARNING to all the vendors who are vending on BitBazaar if you have a chance to withdrawal or deleting listings please do it.
As from today they have blocked our panel + wallet, also making a support ticket does not work because they have simply blocked that one also.Today i’ve seen some other vendors who are having the same troubles with this issue so basically they have been started with exit scamming.
WARNING to all our customers please do not purchase on our store at BitBazaar Marketplace.
Peace!
After getting so many complaints and no reply of our emails from bitbazaar’s admins (they usually reply within a day), the situation was clear to us. We marked this market as scam and posted a big red warning on our page to save our users from getting scammed.
Hack Claim by a Former Market Admin
Yesterday we received a message from a market admin that itself got hacked a few months ago, claimed he hacked bitbazaar market’s hot wallet and stole around 170k usd worth of bitcoins. He took full responsibility of the hack and claimed that this is the second time he hacked this market and stole its bitcoins thats why bitbazaar’s admin took the decision to close his market and get away with as much money as he can get before the attacker strikes again.
However we could not independently verify his claims because he wasn’t able to give us solid proof that can show he did hack this market. On the other hand a mod of bitbazaar showed up on a dark web forum in which he said that admins removed all of the mods yesterday, deleted their profiles, disabled vendor panels and redirected withdrawals to homepage. He said:
Hello,
I am moderator on Bitbazaar ,Admin yesterday claim that he pushed an update but today :
All the mods removed.
Admin profile removed.
BitAsk dont work
Vendors can’t access to their panel.
Withdraw page redirect to home.
Support dont work.As we already know BB got hacked .
I read somewhere that the amount that hacker stole was 170k ,Admin ensure me that they hacked BB’s hot wallet on hacker stolen less than 4 BTC however the exit scam clearly proved that he lost more than 4 btc.
He told me ” it’s just a pay day for the hacker”.Yesterday told me “I am pushing the update ,it will takes 6hours currently we proceed withdrawals manual”
Indeed until 19:00 UTC all pending withdrawals completed.
I am sure that the guy who typed behing account “Admin” yesterday was the real admin of BB.I logout 19:00 UTC.
I dont think that take over LE because administrator had excellent opsec .
Who knows.
PLEASE DO NOT USE
Ex-mod of BB
Eclipse
Busted by Law Enforcement
There are lots of theories floating around about the bitbazaar bust and the announcement of combi’s arrest by german law enforcement. We did talk to combi ourselves, he used to claim that he loves to work with bitbazaar and is a good friend of admin. He also claimed that he regularly chats with the admin using a mobile app named “wickr”.
The timing of the announcement of combi’s arrest and bitbazaar’s so called exit scam coincides but this is not enough. Normally when law enforcement seize a market, they add a big seizure banner on homepage to inform users of the takeover but this is not happening in bitbazaar’s case.
We don’t know what exactly happened to bitbazaar. Either it is an exit scam or may be its a hack turned exit scam or may be its a hack or may even be a law enforcement take over of the market. Whatever it is, one thing is clear which is all the users lost their coins.
