German Authorities Simultaneously Shut Down Dozens of Crypto Exchanges

German law enforcement agencies have carried out a large-scale operation to shut down cryptocurrency exchanges. The operation was conducted by the Central Office for Combating Cybercrime of the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor’s Office (ZIT) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).

Users of several Russian-language online exchanges registered in Germany discovered that their requests were automatically redirected to a German criminal police landing page titled “Operation ‘Final Exchange’.”

Details of the Operation

According to a statement from German law enforcement, authorities seized dozens of servers belonging to exchange services that were allegedly used by “affiliates of ransomware operators, botnet owners, and vendors of other darknet services.” Operators of the closed exchanges are accused of deliberately concealing the origins of funds obtained through criminal online marketplaces.

Officials stated that the operation involved large sums of money and a blatant disregard for anti-money laundering (AML/KYC) requirements. “We have found and seized development servers, production servers, and backup servers. We possess data from these servers—your transaction data, registration information, and IP addresses. From this moment, we are starting to track your activities. See you offline!” the German criminal police message reads.

List of Closed Exchanges

The landing page includes a list of 47 exchange services with information about their launch dates, user counts, and transaction volumes. The closed services were hosted in Germany, and some had been active in the crypto market for over 10 years.

In January, German authorities confiscated 50,000 bitcoins from the organizers of the pirate website Movie2K, who are accused of copyright infringement.

You can view the list of closed exchanges here: https://www.finalexchange.de/en