Germany Seizes $25 Million in Bitcoin

Germany closed Russia's illegal darknet marketplace, Hydra Market, and confiscated 543 Bitcoins totalling about $ 25.2 million.

Germany’s Central office for Combating Cybercrime and Federal Crime Policy Office has said that among other things, there is a suspicion of the commercial operation of criminal trading platforms on the Internet, the commercial procurement or granting of an opportunity for the unauthorised purchase or the unauthorised sale of narcotics as well as commercial money laundering.

The illegal marketplace had been accessible through the Tor network since at least 2015. Approximately 17 million customers and more than 19,000 seller accounts have been registered on the market. Hydra Market was probably the highest-selling and illegal market in the world, according to ZIT and BKA estimates.

The German authorities have said that the Bitcoin Bank Mixer, a service for obfuscating digital transactions provided by the platform, made crypto investigations extremely difficult for law enforcement agencies.

Crypto investigation firm, Chain analysis has also recently found $200 million in stolen cryptocurrency on the crypto platform in 2021 and early 2022.