German authorities shut down world’s largest darknet market Hydra

Germany’s Central Office for Combating Cybercrime (ZIT) and the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) person successfully seized the server infrastructure of the world’s largest amerciable darknet marketplace Hydra.

Per a press release published by the BKA today, the instrumentality enforcement agencies person besides confiscated astir €23 cardinal worthy of Bitcoin.

“Among different things, determination is simply a suspicion of the commercialized cognition of transgression trading platforms connected the Internet, the commercialized procurement oregon granting of an accidental for the unauthorized acquisition oregon the unauthorized merchantability of narcotics arsenic good arsenic commercialized wealth laundering.”

What is Hydra?

Launched astir 2015, Hydra was hitherto the astir salient Russian darknet marketplace and “likely the largest darknet marketplace successful the world”—despite operating mostly successful CIS countries, according to crypto quality steadfast Ciphertrace.

Namely, the marketplace served customers successful Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Moldova. In total, astir 17 cardinal customers and implicit 19,000 seller accounts were registered connected the marketplace.

Hydra ran retired of heads

Naturally, trades connected Hydra — the lion’s stock of which reportedly progressive amerciable narcotics — were conduсted utilizing cryptocurrencies specified arsenic Bitcoin, the BKA pointed out, adding:

“According to ZIT and BKA estimates, ‘Hydra Market’ was astir apt the amerciable marketplace with the highest turnover worldwide. Its income amounted to astatine slightest 1.23 cardinal euros successful 2020 alone. In particular, the Bitcoin Bank Mixer, a work for obfuscating integer transactions provided by the platform, made crypto investigations highly hard for instrumentality enforcement agencies.”

The notification placed connected Hydra’s website aft the shutdown. Image: Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office

Following Hydra’s closure, a peculiar banner was placed by the agencies connected its website, notifying users that “the level and the transgression contented person been seized by the Federal Criminal Police Office connected behalf of Attorney General’s Office successful Frankfurt americium Main successful the people of an planetary coordinated instrumentality enforcement operation.”

As CryptoSlate reported, contempt being of Russian origin, Hydra wasn’t really utilized to evade the occidental sanctions that followed the country’s equipped struggle with Ukraine, according to blockchain information level Chainalysis. And present it ne'er volition be, apparently.