# AlphaBay **AlphaBay** was the largest darknet marketplace of the post-Silk Road era, launched in 2014 and grown to many times the size of its predecessor before an international law-enforcement operation seized it in July 2017. Its founder, Alexandre Cazes, was arrested in Thailand and died in custody. Unlike **Silk Road**, AlphaBay was run as a business rather than as an ideological demonstration, listed categories its predecessor had refused, and accepted multiple cryptocurrencies including privacy coins. It re-entered the story of [[Ross Ulbricht]] in June 2025, when [[Chainalysis]] traced an anonymous donation of roughly $31 million in [[Bitcoin]] sent to Ulbricht's public address back through a transaction chain originating at AlphaBay. The provenance was never publicly resolved. > [!note] Stub > Spine stub. Expand: Operation Bayonet and the Hansa honeypot, Cazes's arrest and death, the 2021 relaunch under a successor operator, and the 2025 donation tracing.