Everything you always wanted to know about drug cryptomarkets* (*but were afraid to ask).

For some drug policy scholars, including us, the online marketplace Silk Road and its successors are inherently fascinating. When we first discovered Silk Road in 2011, on opposite sides of the globe, we could not believe it was real: people were buying illegal drugs anonymously through a global marketplace that resembled eBay or Amazon. We were instantly hooked. Rather than addressing our fellow cryptomarket-obsessed colleagues who will no doubt already be devouring the 12 articles in the issue, we would like to address the remaining readership of the journal, who may not know much at all about cryptomarkets and may wonder what relevance cryptomarkets have to broader drug policy scholarship. We believe that there are at least five reasons that the broader drug policy scholarly community should pay attention to drug cryptomarkets. First, cryptomarkets provide us with arguably the first opportunity to analyse the supply side of a drug market in its totality: not using small and often partial samples, but as a near complete population. Second, cryptomarkets are not isolated from broader drug markets: drugs flow into and out of cryptomarkets into broader social and commercial drug supply chains. Third, cryptomarkets provide a new way of monitoring emerging drug trends. Fourth, cryptomarkets offer an illustration of criminal innovation in drug supply as a response to law enforcement efforts. Fifth, cryptomarkets have become a location in which the needs and preferences of drug users are at least partially met: a wide repertoire of available drugs, information and advice, all within a community-based regulatory system that has more or less effectively bypassed state regulation. These marketplaces may therefore provide us with lessons we can usefully apply in a possible post-prohibition world. In this editorial, we aim to demonstrate why the journal readers should care about cryptomarkets. What are cryptomarkets and how do they work? How do the papers in this special issue contribute to mapping the innovation of cryptomarkets? What are the novel methodological opportunities and ethical issues that arise in conducting these kinds of studies? And what can we say about the future of cryptomarkets?