BTC-E, Russian Bitcoin Exchange Seized By The US Government
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BTC-E, Russian Bitcoin Exchange Seized By The US Government
In the recent events, Alexander Vinnik, who is believed to be the operator or one of the operators of the Russian Bitcoin Exchange BTC-e was arrested while on vacation in Greece. The arrest was a result of tracing the stolen funds of Mt. Gox, a leading Bitcoin stock exchange which went defunct in 2014.
Vinnik has been charged with 21 various counts of money laundering and is allegedly involved in a theft of more than 800,000 Bitcoins from the Mt. Gox, a tremendous loss which resulted in shutting down of the exchange itself. Mt. Gox was so big, that at one point it handled almost 80% of all the Bitcoin-to-currency transactions; but when the theft occurred, an amount of roughly $450 Million went unaccounted for.
Detailed investigation has revealed that the theft has in fact been in preparation since years and hackers have been targeting Mt. Cox throughout the time. The stolen Bitcoins were laundered through BTC-e accounts allegedly controlled directly by Vinnik. Authorities believe that Vinnik has laundered almost $4 Billion in the form of Bitcoins through the BTC-e Bitcoin Exchange.
Since the revelation of alleged connection of Vinnik with the BTC-e, the future of the exchange didn’t appear very bright and when the fact that the funds stolen from Mt. Cox were also laundered through the exchange came to spotlight, it further darkened the fate of the site.
The Aftermath
The site itself went offline on 25th July 2017, following the arrest of Alexander Vinnik. However it assured it’s users that it will be back online in under 10 days and the funds associated with the site were not available for withdrawal during this time.
In the wake of all these events, The United States Federal Government has now seized the Domain associated with the BTC-e site, which means that the site is now indefinitely closed. As far as the funds associated with exchange are concerned, there is no solid course of action devised retrieve them, yet. The events of the past week have certainly taken a toll on the reputation of Bitcoins and Cryptocurrencies in general.
