To Buy Investigational Weight Loss Drugs, a Group of Americans Learned to Pay with Bitcoin
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To Buy Investigational Weight Loss Drugs, a Group of Americans Learned to Pay with Bitcoin
Buying clinical-stage weight loss drugs has become a new scenario for crypto payments; at the current pace, the annual transaction volume is projected to exceed $100 million.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsSource: Bloomberg
Compilation and Editing: angelilu, Foresight News
A 49-year-old American marketing director, who previously believed Bitcoin had "no underlying value," spent a few days this year opening an account, buying coins, and transferring funds, all to purchase 20 vials of a weight-loss drug still in clinical trials from a Chinese seller. A report revealed by Bloomberg on July 20 disclosed that such transactions are forming a crypto payment market, projected to exceed $100 million in annual transaction volume at the current pace—while most buyers are ordinary consumers who have never previously interacted with cryptocurrency.
A Transfer to Save Money
The buyer interviewed by Bloomberg is named Zach, who withheld his surname for privacy reasons and is from the Pacific Northwest of the United States. What he wants is Retatrutide—a weight-loss drug under development by Eli Lilly, belonging to GIP, GLP-1, and glucagon triple receptor agonists; simply put, it hits one more target than Semaglutide and Tirzepatide currently on the market. Eli Lilly announced its Phase 3 clinical data in March this year, showing weight loss of up to 28% over 80 weeks at the highest dose, but this drug has not yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and cannot be purchased through formal channels.
Zach searched for several months and finally found a Chinese seller willing to sell him 20 vials of a product claimed to be the compound, equivalent to about a year's supply, for a total price of $240. By comparison, buying from a U.S. reseller would cost $300 per month, totaling $3,600 per year.
The only condition was: Bitcoin only.
According to Bloomberg's description, Zach previously categorized Bitcoin as a purely speculative asset. But a price difference of more than ten times changed his mind—"The price gap was too huge, felt like this risk was worth taking." The seller gave him a webpage teaching how to buy and transfer coins; a few days later, he opened a Coinbase account, bought Bitcoin for the first time in his life, transferred it to the seller, and received the package a week later.
What Are Peptides, and Why Do They Need Crypto Payments
Peptides are short chains of amino acids that participate in regulating various physiological processes in the human body. In the past two years, they have entered the public eye along with the weight-loss drug boom—injections like Semaglutide (Wegovy) and Tirzepatide (Zepbound), which have undergone complete clinical validation and approval, are themselves peptide drugs.
But besides these approved drugs, a large number of similar products without sufficient human safety and efficacy validation circulate online, usually sold under the name of "research chemicals," with packaging clearly marked as not approved by the FDA and not for human or animal use. They are shipped directly from overseas laboratories, require no prescription, and do not go through insurance.
Since the health benefits claimed by the products are unproven, legal and regulatory risks are too high, banks and credit card networks are often unwilling to provide services to such sellers. After being shut out by the payment system, more and more sellers accept only Bitcoin.
It should be noted that there is also stratification within crypto payments: data cited by Bloomberg shows that among sellers with an average single transaction amount exceeding $1,000, stablecoins have surpassed Bitcoin as the preferred choice; while on the end facing small retail customers like Zach, Bitcoin remains mainstream.
Scale Is Growing, But Overall Not Large
According to data from blockchain analytics company Chainalysis, crypto payments received by gray market peptide sellers in Q1 2026 reached $32 million, a 700% year-over-year increase (a 159% increase from $12 million in the previous quarter). Calculated at the pace of recent months, the annualized scale has exceeded $100 million.
Security company TRM Labs used another method—combining on-chain analysis with open-source intelligence investigations into drug precursor manufacturers—to calculate that crypto inflows in this field in 2025 were $41.4 million, a 20% year-over-year increase.
TRM Labs Global Policy Head Ari Redbord's judgment is, "This market is huge and expanding, I'm not sure there is any other drug market in the world growing as fast as peptides."
This outlines a somewhat dramatic scene: regular gym-goers, podcast listeners, middle-aged people wanting to lose weight—this demographic profile is linked with gray market buyers.
Although growing, industry investors estimate that the entire peptide black market scale is between $1 billion and $3 billion. The volume using cryptocurrency as a payment method remains very small.
A Bar Decorated with Crypto Memorabilia
The most interesting scene in this Bloomberg report happened in a corner of a bar in Manhattan—walls hung full of crypto memorabilia, over a hundred people crowded in a stuffy room, listening to a lecture about peptides.
The organizer is DeSciNYC, a monthly offline gathering for science enthusiasts, with the slogan "Science belongs to everyone." Its past themes include: longevity, CRISPR gene editing, AI and science, microbiome, bioelectricity, tardigrades, cell metabolism, academic publishing fraud, prediction markets, etc.
This peptide-themed session was named "Peptides 101," the main speaker was Julius Ritter, in his twenties, founder of California Peptide Club, simultaneously operating a longevity-themed meal delivery company and running a hackathon house in San Francisco. He finished talking about peptide chemistry, potential uses, some risks, and several specific products in one hour, finally lifting his black T-shirt to inject himself on the spot, winning applause from the whole room.
This scene illustrates something more direct than payment data: the connection between crypto and this market is not just a payment channel, but the same group of people. DeSci, longevity, biohacking, and fitness self-optimization circles already highly overlap, and the crypto community is a frequent visitor among them.
Regulation Is Moving, This Use Case Might Disappear
It is worth noting that the U.S. side is moving towards "legalization."
The FDA is convening an advisory committee to discuss whether to allow some popular peptides to be legally produced within the United States. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) publicly supports this direction, reasoning that legalization "helps shift demand away from the black market." Lee Rosebush, Chairman of the American Peptide Medicine Association advocating for regulation, used "Wild West" to describe the current market state; he believes stricter rules could instead squeeze out "for research only" manufacturers, making it easier for patients to get safe drugs.
If this path succeeds, the position of crypto payments in this market will become awkward—its share today is largely space left by the absence of the traditional payment system.
Zach himself plans to exit. He said he has reached his target weight.
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