BTC-e Domain Seized by U.S. Law Enforcement | |
Industry | Bitcoin Exchange |
---|---|
Founded | 2011 |
Headquarters | Russia |
Website | btc-e |
BTC-e was a cryptocurrency trading platform primarily targeting Russian auditory with servers located in USA - until the U.S. government seized their website and all funds in 2017.[1][2] It was founded in July 2011 by Alexander Vinnik and Aleksandr Bilyuchenko,[3] and as of February 2015 handled around 3% of all Bitcoin exchange volume.[4]
It was a component of the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index since the index's September 2013 formation.[5]
BTC-e was operated by ALWAYS EFFICIENT LLP which is registered in London and is listed as having 2 officers (Sandra Gina Esparon and Evaline Sophie Joubert) and two people with significant control: Alexander Buyanov and Andrii Shvets.[6]
The US Justice Department attempted to close down BTC-e on the 26th of July 2017 when they charged Vinnik and BTC-e in a 21-count indictment for operating an alleged international money laundering scheme and allegedly laundering funds from the hack of Mt. Gox.[2][7]
BTC-e was established in July 2011, handling a few coin pairs, including Bitcoin/U. S. dollar and I0Coin to Bitcoin.[8] By October 2011, they supported many different currency pairs, including Litecoin to dollars, Bitcoin to rubles and RuCoin to rubles.[9]
The BTC-e website went offline on 25 July 2017, following the arrest of BTC-e staff members and the seizure of server equipment at one of their data centres. These events led to the closure of the BTC-e service.[10][11]
To repay its customers, BTC-e created WEX tokens, which were used to represent customers' seized equity until its funds were also seized by US Government. The WEX tokens represented $1 and were issued to account for the value of customers cryptocurrencies at the time of the seizure. Vinnik was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in prison in France while refusing to testify during his trial.[12] He was acquitted on involvement with the Locky ransomware charges.[12]