Over the last month, the Bohemia market has been in some hot water, from website issues to pausing withdrawals and disappearing. It’s been widely assumed that they’re in the midst of an exit scam. That being said, the Bohemia head admin has finally responded to u/HugBunter and even gone as far as re-opening the market. 

Allegedly, a former lead developer had misappropriated funds from the site, leading to the temporary suspension of withdrawals. Let’s look at why the Bohemia market has lost its trustability and see if they can return to their old self.

Bohemia Drama Recap

In early August 2023, Bohemia faced growing frustrations. Initially, the site went offline briefly, and upon return, users encountered login issues due to a malfunctioning Captcha system. 

• Despite resolving the Captcha problem for some users, the overall functionality of the site declined significantly. Withdrawal issues escalated, prompting complaints on LiveDarknet and the Dread Forum.
• The situation raised suspicions of a potential exit scam. Enough for HugBunter, co-founder and admin of Dread, to a major alert on Bohemia’s ongoing issues. Withdrawal problems persisted while the rest of the site remained functional, signalling a potential crisis.
• HugBunter theorised that Bohemia’s wallet might have been drained, and the platform is selectively allowing users to withdraw funds in an attempt to salvage the situation. HugBunter’s handling of the situation drew criticism within the darknet community. Some accused him of not clearly labelling it as an exit scam despite apparent signs.
• Bohemia’s head admin, usually responsive, went silent, further fueling suspicions. Efforts to reach the admin proved unsuccessful.

Admin Returns And Re-Opens Market

After a dramatic month and a bit, the admin finally returned to the Dread forum, responding to all the accusations. While he still faced some heavy criticism, many accepted his returns, apologies, and explanations. The Dread post titled “What’s Happened vs What’s Happening” u/Bohemia released a statement addressing the recent withdrawal issues that have been plaguing the darknet marketplace. The team acknowledged that a former lead developer had misappropriated funds from the site, leading to the temporary suspension of withdrawals.

“In a shameful and disgruntled set of events, our lead developer quite simply decided to go “rogue” and choose their own path by slowly and passively withdrawing small amounts of BTC over a prolonged period of time from several accounts which had been pre-created and loaded with small BTC balances. This activity (to our knowledge after concluding our investigations, lasted for a little over a month).”

According to the team’s investigation, the developer had slowly and systematically withdrawn small amounts of Bitcoin over a period of time, leaving the site with depleted funds. Upon discovering this activity, the developer was immediately terminated from the site. But the damage was done, causing all the turmoil.

Unfortunately for Bohemia, the damage didn’t end there. The former developer created additional accounts with false Bitcoin balances, which they subsequently emptied after leaving the site. While this triggered new security measures that had been implemented to flag accounts making withdrawals without prior deposit or order history. The developer had managed to empty almost all the funds.

Bohemia: We’ll Be Back

According to the admin, the combination of these events, along with the recent surge in Bitcoin prices, put a strain on the site’s overall liquidity, causing delays in withdrawal processing. To manage this situation, the team has implemented temporary measures such as staggering withdrawals and setting a daily withdrawal limit.

Despite these challenges, the Bohemia Market team is adamant that they are not going anywhere. They have assured vendors and users that withdrawals are being processed as quickly as possible, albeit with some delays.

To prove themselves, the team started to fast-track all deposits. 

“Deposit issues are being resolved as this response is typed; we have processed 300+ deposits on the platform today alone and are continuing to do so whilst we finalize the updates to come.”-u/Bohemia

HugBunter asked for some clarity on other questions:

Why XMR withdrawals were affected: XMR withdrawals were affected because the former lead developer also misappropriated some XMR funds from the site. This, along with the BTC misappropriation and the recent surge in BTC prices, put a strain on the site’s liquidity and caused delays in withdrawal processing for both BTC and XMR.

Length of the process of converting a balance to XMR + withdrawals? The process of converting a balance to XMR and subsequently withdrawing that balance will be immediate. 

What time frame are we looking at for when all withdrawals will be able to be processed? The time frame for everything to be cleared and smooth sailing is within the next month, that doesn’t mean to say it will be exactly a month, but rather within.

It was the third point that was super controversial from the community perspective. A month for withdrawals is ridiculous by any standard and is the only point keeping up the FUD and speculation over the area. The admin said this as if it were standard practice while it’s unacceptable.

As popular Dread user “DontYouDare” put it

“A month for withdraws to clear out? A withdraw made on Nov 22 / 23 whenever the update has been implemented can take until Christmas before reaching our offline wallet? Is this a joke? Did you misspell? I don’t get it. When people find out about this it will only make sure of a decrease in deposits, until there are no deposits at all and you go bankrupt, taking us all with ya into the abyss.”u/DontYouDare

All Systems Go – Market Reopened 

A day after his announcement with HugBunter, u/Bohemia made another Dread post announcing the re-opening of Bohemia Market. However, he noted some major changes too.

New Bohemia Market Rules

• Users are permitted 2 exchanges from BTC to XMR per day (minimum exchange of 0.0001 BTC).
• Withdraws exceeding 30 XMR will require manual approval (approval system implemented for senior staff to process manual withdraws quickly and efficiently).
• Each user is permitted a maximum of 3 withdrawals per day.
• Any unsettled disputes which are finalized from this point onwards will be credited to the awarded parties’ balance in XMR (regardless if the dispute was initially paid for using BTC – it will be instantly exchanged on site and credited accordingly).
• All listings which solely accept BTC as a payment method have now been disabled (vendors may re-enable those listings by editing the listing in question and selecting XMR as the available payment option).
• All listings with the BTC and XMR payment options available have now been changed to XMR only.

“We understand that this may not be ideal for many users, but this is the best course of action moving forward to mitigate the situation at hand. BTC will be re-implemented in the near future.”u/Bohemia

Concluding Bohemia Markets Mess

Bohemia Market’s admin has gone through hell to ensure the market is up and running… or at least it seems at this point. Their announcements were met with much speculation on the legitimacy of their claims, and it’s clear there are issues right now.

The Darknet market has held a solid reputation for years on end, and so giving it a second chance is acceptable. However when it comes to the Darknet, things are still blurry, and if they’ve missed out on one exploit, who knows what else is missing? We could go a step further and point out that the developer may know stuff and leak this to authorities.

It’s murky waters at this point, so it’s probably best to use alternatives in the meantime. Check out our other Darknet Market recommendations here.