Germany's cybercrime forces have stated that Hydra Market has been operating since at least 2015 with around 17 million customers, making it one of the largest darknet marketplaces in the world.
With help from the US, they seized 543 bitcoins while shutting down the operation:
The authorities confiscated 543 bitcoins that were valued at about €23 million ($25 million) following investigations tracing back to August 2021. They said several US authorities were involved in the probes
This was a very large marketplace, with more than one billion euros a year being transacted in the platform:
Sales at Hydra Market were at least €1.23 billion euros in 2020. ZIT and BKA said the site's Bitcoin Bank Mixer, a service for obfuscating digital transactions provided by the platform, made crypto investigations "extremely difficult" for law enforcement agencies.
