UniCC had a distinguished dark web presence for nine years. As a platform for selling stolen credit cards, it was a benchmark.
But this week, officially, his team said “to retire”. UniCC closed its doors as a result, without pronouncing a renewal of its qualified staff of no longer being sufficiently “young” for their “allow to work like this”.
A little human in a sector in the shadow of the police, under the radar, and far from showing attachment to morality.
Since 2013, the platform has received payments via Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin or Dash. At the exchange, credit card information stolen by various computer techniques and hacking from banks or e-commerce platforms.
Customers, to avoid leaving too many traces, only made a few transactions with the cards, but did not save very large amounts. The use of cards to purchase gift cards was also a means of benefiting as much as possible from this illicit activity.
Retreating players, new entrants
According to its own information provided, UniCC says it has generated $358 million in sales since 2013, in cryptocurrency equivalent. The market, meanwhile, reached $1.4 billion in Bitcoin alone.
In 2021, the majority of the turnover was generated by UniCC while its direct competitor, Joker’s Stash was already bowing out.
Of the historic names, surprisingly UniCC is the latest to go. Others have already ended their activities while we can clearly see, thanks to data from the blockchain analysis company Elliptic, that the exchanges are not weakening.
Most likely hypothesis: investigations on these platforms would threaten their teams and it would be high time to renew the whole organization, identity, domain names, etc. Another idea: more advanced technologies in terms of phishing, ransomware and other computer viruses are in the process of taking their place on the throne.
