Archetyp Market, a darknet marketplace that operated from 2020 to June 2025 using only the privacy coin Monero.
It was an online illegal marketplace that accepted only Monero specifically to make transactions hard to trace on the blockchain.
It grew to over 600,000 users, 17,000 listings, and an estimated 250 million euros in sales before being taken down in June 2025 by a joint European operation (Europol, Eurojust, German police) that seized 7.8 million euros and arrested its administrator in Spain.
It shows how privacy coins were used to dodge tracing — and how law enforcement eventually cracked even that.