I bought peptides with crypto. How my purchase helped fuel a $100 million gray-market, ‘looksmaxxing’ economy

I’m interested in buying peptides,” I wrote on Whats App. Two minutes later, I received a reply from a U.K. area code from someone calling herself Louise, whose profile picture was of a young woman with airbrushed skin. Louise shared a menu: testosterone boosters, synthetic growth hormones, weight-loss medications, and more. Mindful of my expense account, I scoured the menu for a cheaper peptide, a term that describes a class of molecules that promise some type of wellness boost and include the popular weight-loss drug Wegovy. I settled on 5-amino-1MQ, a substance that one connoisseur later told me “makes a lot more sense for high-level competitive athletes,” not a first-time peptides buyer. Louise quoted me a price of $49 for the medication, plus $60 for overnight shipping. She asked for payment, proposing the Chinese platform Alipay. Or, she said, I could send crypto. Eventually, I sent Louise $109 worth of USDC, a popular stablecoin whose price is pegged to the U.S. dollar. After I confirmed my shipping details, she responded with a heart emoji. Two days later, in late May, a small package with 10 vials full of a bright-orange substance arrived at Fortune’s office from a facility in New Hampshire. I had successfully used crypto to buy peptides—and participated in a booming gray-market economy increasingly reliant on digital assets, according to data from the crypto analytics firm Chainalysis. “If this end[s] with you under investigation by a federal agency,” my editor messaged me, “I will swear it was in the name of journalism.” ‘I won’t tell you anything’ Since the launch of Ozempic and Wegovy in 2021, peptides have exploded in popularity. In fact, the “p” in GLP-1, the class of medications to which the blockbuster weight-loss drugs belong, is short for peptide, which are chains of amino acids. But, more recently, wellness influencers and Silicon Valley biohackers have begun to experiment with what medical professionals say is a more unproven class of medica