Dark pools, long used in traditional finance, are entering crypto whereby bringing stability but challenging decentralisation. By shielding trades from public view, they reduce slippage and protect against predatory strategies such as front-running. For institutions and whales, they unlock liquidity without destabilising markets. Yet this privacy clashes with blockchain’s ethos of transparency and raises regulatory concerns. But whilst dark pools could mature crypto markets, they risk reintroducing opacity and centralisation. Their impact will be pivotal: less a silver bullet than a sign of digital finance’s uneasy evolution.

Dark pools promise liquidity and stability, but their entry into crypto clashes with blockchain’s ethos of transparency. Opaque and centralised by design, they risk reviving structures crypto aimed to replace. Anonymity protects investors from slippage and predatory trading but also enables illicit finance, inviting regulatory scrutiny. Technically, secrecy on public blockchains demands hybrid models that compromise decentralisation for speed, sparking criticism from purists. Yet atomic settlement and AI-driven hyper-trading reveal their transformative potential. Dark pools underscore crypto’s central tension: balancing transparency, efficiency, security and oversight, whilst for retail investors, dollar-cost averaging remains the most pragmatic shield against volatility.