Authorities Shutter Sprawling Dark Web Drug Bazaar and Seize $25 Million in Bitcoin

Hydra , a longtime dark WWW cesspit of money laundering and drug sales , has been close down by police .

A Russian - language darknet marketplace , Hydra has been one of the largest sources of online outlawed trade for several eld now . The web site , which has existed since at least 2015 , had some 17 million customers and some 19,000 number sellers prior to its shutdown , German police say . During its sovereignty , Hydra was known as a hub for drug trafficking and blur the origins of hard currency , and its client were based largely in easterly European state like Russia , Belarus , Ukraine , and Kazakhstan , according tothe blockchain analysis business firm Elliptic . Since it launch , Hydra has hear up of $ 5 billion in bitcoin transactions , Elliptic assesses .

“ The illegal marketplace was a Russian - language Darknet platform that had been accessible via the Tor web since at least 2015 , ” said German police official in their press liberation Tuesday . “ Its sales come to at least 1.23 billion euro in 2020 alone . In particular , the Bitcoin Bank Mixer , a service for obfuscating digital transactions provide by the platform , made crypto investigations exceedingly hard for law enforcement means . ”

Photo: LagartoFilm (Getty Images)

Granted , blue entanglement sites do have a substance abuse of getting upraise — and on-line crime , like offline crime , will almostalways spring anewin the void of what was just dismantle . Just seem at the well - known criminal offence den AlphaBay , which earlier launched back in 2014 but was quashed in a law takedown in 2017 . The sitecame back to lifelast summer after an administrator from the original project decide to relaunch it .

In other run-in , so long Hydra … for now . It remain to be view if the site , like the mythic animal it ’s diagnose after , will regrow its psyche .

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