The German government has shut down 47 cryptocurrency exchange services as part of an enormous crackdown on illegal money laundering.
A press release from the BKA says that the operation, which was led by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and the Central Office for Combating Internet Crime, went after websites that let people trade fiat currencies for cryptocurrencies without showing proof of identification.
The “know-your-customer” (KYC) protocols, which require users to prove who they are before making a financial deal, were not followed by these exchanges.
By not following these rules, the platforms made it possible to trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum quickly and anonymously. This gave criminals a way to wash their funds from doing illegal things like ransomware attacks and selling drugs on the dark web.
Germany Targets Unlicensed Crypto Platforms
On August 20, German police started a large-scale operation to stop people from laundering money. They took 13 cryptocurrency ATMs and almost $28 million in cash from 35 sites across the country.
BaFin, the financial regulator, led the raids, which were mostly aimed at machines that were not licensed properly and were therefore a major source of money laundering.
Law enforcement is trying to break down the infrastructure that supports hacking in a bigger way by shutting down these services. The government has gotten important information about users and transactions from the exchanges. This information could help with future investigations and help find crooks who are laundering money.
This new crackdown is the latest in a series of actions taken by German police. In 2023, they took down the ChipMixer website, which was used to hide €90 million in cryptocurrency. In the past few years, Germany has also gone after other cybercrime networks, such as malware producers.
This summer, the BKA moved and sold about 50,000 Bitcoin that they had taken in a case from 2013 involving the movie piracy site Movie2k.to. This had a significant impact on the cryptocurrency market.
