Markets end in a small number of recognisable ways, and the difference between them decides what happens to the people who had money on them.
Law enforcement takes the infrastructure and usually replaces the site with a notice. Abrupt by design, since advance warning would defeat the purpose. Funds held by the market are gone from the user perspective, and the historical examples were widely reported at the time.
The operator leaves with the balances. This one telegraphs itself if you know the sequence: withdrawals slow while deposits keep being accepted, support goes quiet, established vendors drift away, signed announcements stop. The site often looks completely normal throughout.
Nothing malicious, simply an operation that stops being maintained. Attacks are not fought off, disputes stop resolving, vendors leave and the market decays until it is not worth using. Slower and less dramatic, with the same practical result for anyone who left funds there.
The rarest and the only ending that treats users properly. The operator announces a wind down, stops taking new orders, lets the queue clear and lets people withdraw. It exists, it is uncommon, and it is the only category where being a user costs you nothing.
Across the whole history covered in this archive, exit and seizure account for the overwhelming majority. The distinction mattered enormously to the operators and almost not at all to users, because in both cases anything sitting on the market was gone.
Every one of these endings has the same lesson attached and it has not changed in fifteen years. Money on a market is exposed to the market. Money you withdrew is not. That single habit separates people who read about these events from people who appear in them.
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