“We have reached our goal and now, according to plan, it’s time to for us to retire.” This is how began the retirement message posted on the 1st of October by Mr White, the White House Market administrator. He continues by stating that new registrations will be disabled effective immediately.
The darkmarket will however stay open for all the orders to complete, disputes to be resolved, and users to withdraw their funds. The admin urged vendors to not take advantage of the closure to act maliciously, highlighting that the feedback system is still working, and shared with Recon (a darknet market search engine).
The market has been active for slightly more than two years, after being created in August 2019. As of today, it had 3,450 active vendors, 48,103 listings, and 894,479 users (326,611 active). It was often praised for being the first market only accepting XMR to preserve its users’ anonymity, as well as taking security seriously (for example by requiring PGP two factor authentication).
White House Market has been growing substantially since its one year anniversary, and after Empire Market’s exit scam (see this article). At this time, the market only had around 200,000 users. Interestingly, the shutdown announcement occurred exactly 8 years after Silk Road was shut down by the FBI (1st of October 2013).
Here is the official signed message
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
We have reached our goal and now, according to plan, it's
time to for us to retire.
Effective immediately user registration and ordering have
been disabled, everything else (yes, withdrawals included)
is working as usual.
We will keep the market online for a limited time until
open orders are finalized, disputes handled and coins
withdrawn. We don't know how long that will take but
don't expect to come back 6 months from now and find the
market up.
All market rules are still in effect so users (both
buyers and vendors) should not try to take advantage
of the situation and scam, the feedback system is still
working and will be shared with Recon and other markets.
Because this week's featured listings and stickies won't
generate any revenue vendors who paid for them will be
refunded via their market wallet.
Vendors can now advertise the markets where they operate
on their vendor profiles however direct contacts are still
disallowed.
For alternative markets check out /d/Superlist on Dread, the
ones listed there are established and going strong. Keep in mind
any market can disappear at any time and for what ever
reason (exit scam, law enforcement operation, hack, technical
issue and so on) but markets like Monopoly (true wallet-less,
direct deal) and Versus (enforced multisig) greatly minimize
damage. You can also give a chance to new markets, we all
have to start somewhere.
Thanks everybody for your business, trust, support and of
course for placing decent amounts of money in our pockets.
We may come back some time in the future with a different
project or we may not. Meanwhile be on the lookout for phishing
or copycats, if it's not signed by us it's not us.
Good luck and stay safe.
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