Quote from: sparky999 on October 20, 2016, 07:43:43 PM

I've been monitoring 10 different searches on AB since the launch 7/10 have seen an increase. 4/10 categories have roughly doubled the offerings since launch.

I was thinking the same.. Not sure how much it's increased, but it is sticking around - and very slowly, people are picking it up. The prospect of being in on the ground floor for many of the participants of the DNM's is really nice too. Heaps of people on the markets were around since the early SR days and are well aware of the 'opportunity of a lifetime' that buying a nice chunk of BTC in the $1-20 park would have done for you. Pretty much everyone missed that. One guy even tried to hire me to research XMR and school him on it. I gave him my opinion and let him know I wasn't qualified at all, and he could master it himself quite easily - with a bit of research, I gave him all those good links (he accepts it on quite a few listings now).

Vendors especially, they are very busy and have a lot of risk on their plate each day - but when they get around to researching XMR, if they are satisfied it's truly bringing something new (that BTC can't do) to the table - and that if enough buyers and sellers decide to shift even a portion of their trade into XMR - it would benefit them all very much.

Not just the inevitable price rise, but having another class of asset to spread the risk. Insurance against unforeseen catastrophic BTC disaster. Splitting the risk/value storage among 2 awesome but unique systems is a good thing. It does not hurt in any way to have an additional working, very private (and this will need to be proven over time, that it does hold up as well as it looks to), currency & store of value, which just so happens to be perfect for this sort of trade.

I am going to do a very simple search and see what numbers I get, I will pick a single item (say, only weed) and post below the results.

I wanted to include the whole world, but there are too many items listed. So I will measure only sellers in "Australia", a country in which DNM use is quite high per capita. I suspect this is because, in comparison to the rest of the world - the price and quality of common street drugs was. It does seem to be coming more in-line with international norms over the past couple years - I doubt DNM's account for enough trade to impact country-wide stats. It's a small group but it is growing, as long as all these (mostly far less harmful than booze) compounds are made illegal, enterprises like these will flourish. Whichever currencies are choice for the trade will earn a constant boost. Here, the best type of money really does win - there's nothing stopping people from using the best currency avaliable. And in this case, until prohibition ends anyway, there's going to be constant demand for these types of currencies.

All vendors, but only 1 category "Cannabis & Hashish" in Australia ONLY:

Individual listings (items) accepting Monero:
31
Individual listings (items) accepting BTC:
316

(9.81 % Accepting Monero - on 21st Oct, in-case I check in say 1 months time)

Some vendors offer Monero for some products and not others, hence the choice to go by individuals item rather than the vendor status (accepting or not), I think this might give a clearer picture.

If anybody is interested, I can check some other categories in this exact way ^

Then, in a month, I could do the same - it would act as a very small indicator of how XMR use is working out.

Like it or not, I do believe XMR will have to be "accepted" by DNM's, just like BTC was, if it's actually going to become anything more than a medium sized project. The DNM's seem to test a currency, they make the decision on if it is suitable - or in this case, if it is advantageous in any way, to BTC, the only real alternative today. It's what's needed to ready it for the world I'd say.

So far, there have been a number of other coins accepted on markets for varying amounts of time. LTC,dash(was it?) and others I don't remember, they all faded away because they were never used. I think it would be useful to check in every month and take some measurements, perhaps the method can be improved a bit, but accurate data on how DNM adoption is going would be a huge clue as to how future adoption will go IMO.