German police seized more than $25 million from darknet marketplace Hydra

The law enforcement agencies conducted an operation to disable the platform’s German servers

05.04.2022 - 12:50

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What’s new? The German Federal Criminal Police (BKA) has disabled the German servers of the Russian darknet marketplace Hydra. The international operation seized 543 BTC ($25,32 million at the exchange rate on April 5, 2022). The case had been under investigation since August 2021 jointly with the US authorities.

BKA’s press release

What is known about Hydra? According to the BKA, the darknet marketplace has around 17 million customers and more than 19 000 merchants. According to analytics company Chainalysis, Hydra accounted for 75% of all darknet revenue in 2020, roughly $1,35 billion. The marketplace surpassed exchanges such as Kraken, OKX, and Poloniex in terms of cryptocurrency turnover.

Link to the Chainalysis

The German police reported that Hydra had a bitcoin privacy mixer built into it, making it difficult to track transactions. The US authorities also stated that funds from the darknet site could have been laundered through the Suex cryptocurrency exchange and Telegram bot Chatex.

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