Bitcoin Becomes the Preferred Payment Method for Purchasing Experimental Weight-Loss Drugs

Bloomberg

Compiled and organized by angelilu, Foresight News

A 49-year-old American marketing director, who previously believed Bitcoin had "no intrinsic value," spent several days this year setting up an account, buying cryptocurrency, and transferring funds—just to purchase 20 bottles of a weight-loss drug still in clinical trials from a Chinese seller. A report by Bloomberg on July 20 revealed that such transactions are forming a crypto payment market projected to exceed $100 million in annual volume at current rates—with most buyers being ordinary consumers who had never previously engaged with cryptocurrency.

The buyer interviewed by Bloomberg is named Zach, who did not disclose his last name for privacy reasons and is from the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. He is seeking retatrutide—a weight-loss drug under development by Eli Lilly that acts as a triple agonist targeting GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon receptors, meaning it targets one additional pathway compared to currently available drugs like semaglutide and tirzepatide. Eli Lilly released its Phase 3 clinical data in March this year, showing up to 28% weight loss after 80 weeks at the highest dose, but the drug has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is not available through legitimate channels.

Zach searched for months before finally finding a Chinese seller willing to sell him 20 bottles of what was claimed to be the compound—enough for about a year—for a total of $240. In comparison, buying from a U.S. reseller cost him $300 per month, or $3,600 per year.

The only condition is: Bitcoin accepted only.

According to Bloomberg’s account, Zach previously classified Bitcoin as a purely speculative asset. But the multiple-fold price difference changed his mind—“The spread was so extreme, it felt like a risk worth taking.” The seller gave him a website showing how to buy and transfer cryptocurrency; a few days later, he opened a Coinbase account, bought Bitcoin for the first time, sent it to the seller, and received the package a week later.

Peptides are short chains of amino acids that play a role in regulating various physiological processes in the human body. In the past two years, they have entered the public spotlight alongside the weight-loss drug trend—injectables such as semaglutide (Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Zepbound), which are themselves peptide-based drugs that have undergone full clinical validation and received approval.

However, alongside these approved medications, a large number of similar products that have not been adequately tested for human safety and efficacy are available online, often marketed as "research chemicals" with packaging clearly stating they are not approved by the FDA and are not intended for human or animal use. These products are shipped directly from overseas laboratories, require no prescription, and are not covered by insurance.

Due to unverified health claims made by the products, the legal and regulatory risks are too high, so banks and credit card networks are often unwilling to provide services to these sellers. After being excluded from payment systems, an increasing number of sellers accept only Bitcoin.

It should be noted that within crypto payments, there is a hierarchy: according to data cited by Bloomberg, stablecoins have surpassed Bitcoin as the preferred choice among sellers with an average transaction amount exceeding $1,000; however, for small retail customers like Zach, Bitcoin remains the dominant option.

Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis’s data shows that gray-market peptide sellers received $32 million in cryptocurrency payments in the first quarter of 2026, a 700% year-over-year increase (and a 159% quarter-over-quarter increase from $12 million in the previous quarter). At the current pace over recent months, the annualized volume has surpassed $100 million.

The security firm TRM Labs used a different approach—combining on-chain analysis with public research into precursor drug manufacturers—to estimate that cryptocurrency inflows in this sector reached $41.4 million in 2025, a 20% year-over-year increase.

According to Ari Redbord, Global Policy Lead at TRM Labs, "This market is huge and growing—I'm not sure there's another pharmaceutical market in the world growing as fast as peptides."

This paints a somewhat dramatic scenario: linking the profile of gym regulars, podcast listeners, and middle-aged individuals seeking to lose weight with buyers in the gray market.

Although growing, industry investors estimate the total peptide black market size to be between $1 billion and $3 billion. The volume using cryptocurrency as a payment method remains small.

The most intriguing scene in this Bloomberg article takes place in a corner of a bar in Manhattan—walls adorned with crypto memorabilia, over a hundred people crammed into a stuffy room, listening to a lecture on peptides.

Hosted by DeSciNYC, a monthly in-person gathering for science enthusiasts with the motto "Science belongs to everyone." Past topics have included longevity, CRISPR gene editing, AI and science, the microbiome, bioelectricity, tardigrades, cellular metabolism, academic publishing fraud, and prediction markets.

This peptide-themed event, titled "Peptides 101," is presented by Julius Ritter, a twenty-something-year-old founder of the California Peptide Club who also runs a longevity-focused meal delivery company and operates a hackathon house in San Francisco. In one hour, he covers peptide chemistry, potential applications, some risks, and specific products, concluding with a live self-injection while wearing a black T-shirt to thunderous applause.

This scenario illustrates something more direct than payment data: the connection between crypto and this market isn't just a payment channel—it's the same group of people. The DeSci, longevity, biohacking, and fitness self-optimization communities are already highly overlapping, and the crypto community is a regular participant in all of them.

Notably, the United States is moving toward legalization.

The FDA is convening an advisory committee to discuss whether to permit the legal production of certain popular peptides within the United States. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has publicly supported this direction, arguing that legalization would help shift demand away from the black market. Lee Rosebush, president of the American Peptide Medical Society, which advocates for regulation, described the current market as the "Wild West," stating that stricter rules could eliminate "for research only" manufacturers and make safer medications more accessible to patients.

If this path succeeds, crypto payments will find themselves in an awkward position in this market—today’s share is largely due to gaps left by traditional payment systems.

Zach himself plans to step away. He says he has reached his target weight.