The Frankfurt prosecutor's office seized 34 million euros worth of cryptocurrency from the eXch exchange.

What happened? German law enforcement arrested the local server infrastructure of the crypto exchange eXch. As part of a joint operation by the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime (ZIT) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) in Frankfurt am Main, not only were data carriers with a volume of over 8 TB seized, but also 34 million euros in bitcoins, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Dash. For the BKA, this is the third largest seizure of crypto assets.

What else is known? Launched in 2014, eXch allowed users to perform cryptocurrency swaps (exchanging one asset for another). On darknet platforms, it was specifically stated that the exchange does not take any measures to combat money laundering (AML ).

Thus, users were not required to go through the identification procedure, and their data was not stored. In this regard, crypto exchange through eXch turned out to be particularly convenient for hiding financial flows, as emphasized in the press release of the prosecutor’s office.

Due to rumors of a connection to the Bybit hack, the eXch team announced its closure on May 1, and law enforcement began to rapidly gather evidence. During the investigation, ZIT and BKA closely cooperated with the Dutch Tax Investigation Service (FIOD). Its results may also contribute to the investigation of a large number of other cybercrimes, as emphasized in the press release.