In Germany, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has closed down 47 cryptocurrency and fiat currency exchanges hosted in the country. What are these platforms accused of?
Police in Germany shut down 47 cryptocurrency exchanges
On Thursday, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Frankfurt am Main public prosecutor's office announced: the closure of 47 cryptocurrency and fiat currency exchanges.
The common thread between all these platforms is that they operated without KYC verification procedures, allowing users to conduct trades anonymously. Thus, German authorities consider that this facilitated money laundering and cybercrime operations in general.
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In its press release, the BKA highlights the difficulty of tackling certain actors, given the jurisdiction in which they are located. Thus, the emphasis is placed on ways to weaken and “destroy cybercriminals' infrastructure“.
In this case, it turns out that The websites of these 47 exchanges were hosted in Germany. In addition, the authorities are warning users of these services about the data they have left on these exchanges and which would not be deleted. Many of them would have been recovered during these operations, and they would be currently being analyzed, as indicated by a message on a site to which all the closed sites are redirected:
We found their servers and seized them — development servers, production servers, backup servers. We have their data — and therefore your data. Transactions, registration data, IP addresses. Our search for traces begins. See you soon.
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Among the closed platforms, some had been in operation for many years, such as Xchange.cash with more than 410,000 users since 2012:
Exchanges closed by the BKA
👉 Also in the news — Binance is working tirelessly to free one of its executives detained in Nigeria
While it has not been specified whether these measures have led to arrests, it will be interesting to see whether the ongoing investigation can bring to light elements of past hacks of the ecosystem through the analysis of seized data.
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Source: BKA
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Since 2021, I have devoted my free time to seriously training myself on cryptocurrencies in order to acquire as much knowledge and credibility as possible. I often have the opportunity to conduct interviews with influential figures in the blockchain industry. I also conduct in-depth analyses on Web3 themes to offer exclusive content to Cryptoast readers.
Vincent Maire
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