Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
-
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office and its Central Office for Combating Cybercrime have closed down 47 crypto exchanges for failing to comply with KYC requirements.
-
The exchanges were also accused of allowing illegal activities such as money laundering on their platforms.
Germany Closes 47 Exchanges
Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office and its Central Office for Combating Cybercrime announced in a press release on Thursday that they have closed 47 cryptocurrency exchanges allegedly linked to criminal activities, including money laundering.
According to the regulators, the exchanges failed to comply with “know your customer” (KYC) requirements, which required them to carry out certain identity and background checks on their customers.
Some affected crypto exchanges include Xchange.cash, 60cek.org, Baksman.com, and other smaller platforms. Furthermore, the authorities also seized some customer and transaction data during the investigation.
The authorities pointed out that the people behind those activities often reside in other countries outside of Germany, so it might be hard for German government officials to prosecute them.
The German regulators will instead focus on reducing the strength of the underlying infrastructure that enabled those illegal activities.
This latest development comes a few months after the BKA seized 49,857 bitcoins (BTC), worth $2.1 billion at the time, from the operators of a privacy website called Movie2k.to. The website was shut down in 2013 for violating the Copyright Act.
The German government embarked on a massive selloff of its Bitcoin stash in July, putting heavy pressure on Bitcoin’s price at the time.
Bitcoin has since recovered from that low and is currently trading close to the $64k mark following this week’s rally.
