Company:BTC-e

From HandWiki
BTC-e
IndustryBitcoin Exchange
Founded2011
Headquarters
Russia
Websitebtc-e.com

BTC-e was a cryptocurrency trading platform until the U.S. government seized their website 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] Until the 25th of July 2017, it allowed trading between the United States dollar , Russian ruble and euro currencies, and the Bitcoin, Litecoin, Namecoin, Novacoin, Peercoin, Dash and Ethereum cryptocurrencies.

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]

History

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]

During 2013 and 2014, BTC-e had many outages related to distributed denial of service attacks. They later began using the reverse proxy service CloudFlare to help mitigate these attacks, reducing the exchange's downtime.[citation needed]

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]

On 28 July 2017, US authorities seized the BTC-e.com domain name and 38% of all customer funds[citation needed]. To repay its customers, BTC-e created WEX tokens, which were used to represent customers' seized equity. 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]

References

  1. ↑ Benjamin Guttmann (2014). The Bitcoin Bible Gold Edition. Books on Demand. pp. 175–176. ISBN 9783732296965. https://books.google.com/books?id=ceiVAgAAQBAJ&q=BTC-e&pg=PA175. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Russian National And Bitcoin Exchange Charged In 21-Count Indictment For Operating Alleged International Money Laundering Scheme And Allegedly Laundering Funds From Hack Of Mt. Gox". 26 Jul 2017. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/russian-national-and-bitcoin-exchange-charged-21-count-indictment-operating-alleged. 
  3. ↑ Eckel, Mike (November 28, 2019). "How Much Did Russian Spy Agencies Rely On Bitcoin? New Hints In Leaked Recordings". RFERL. https://www.rferl.org/a/how-much-did-russian-spy-agencies-rely-on-bitcoin-new-hints-in-leaked-recordings-/30297083.html. "Since its inception in 2011, founded and operated by Vinnik and a partner named Aleksandr Bilyuchenko, BTC-e's business model was heavily reliant on the criminal underworld and people and entities interested in anonymity or hard-to-trace transactions, according to U.S. and other officials." 
  4. ↑ "Bitcoin Exchanges Market Share". Bitcoinity. http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list. 
  5. ↑ Del Rey, Jason (September 11, 2013). "What's a Bitcoin Really Worth? CoinDesk Thinks It Has the Answer.". All Things D. http://allthingsd.com/20130911/whats-a-bitcoin-really-worth-coindesk-thinks-it-has-the-answer/. 
  6. ↑ "ALWAYS EFFICIENT LLP - Overview". https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/OC394172. 
  7. ↑ "Vinnik Superseding Indictment Redacted for U.S. District Court Northern District of California San Francisco Division Case No CR 16-00227 SI". https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/984661/download.  Alt URL
  8. ↑ @yourbtcc (June 21, 2017). "Hi, BTCC is the longest-running bitcoin exchange worldwide. BTC-E was established on July 17, 2011. BTCC was founded on June 9, 2011.". https://twitter.com/yourbtcc/status/877577485294067712. 
  9. ↑ BTC-e (2011-10-25). "Start trading on a pairs of BTC/RUB, LTC/USD, RUC/RUB, USD/RUB!". https://btc-e.com/news/37. 
  10. ↑ "Russian National And Bitcoin Exchange Charged In 21-Count Indictment For Operating Alleged International Money Laundering Scheme And Allegedly Laundering Funds From Hack Of Mt. Gox". 26 Jul 2017. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/russian-national-and-bitcoin-exchange-charged-21-count-indictment-operating-alleged. 
  11. ↑ "Russian wanted in US caught in Greece for money laundering". The Daily Star Newspaper - Lebanon. Associated Press. 2017-07-26. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/World/2017/Jul-26/414044-russian-wanted-in-us-caught-in-greece-for-money-laundering.ashx. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Catalin Cimpanu (2020-12-07). "BTC-e founder sentenced to five years in prison for laundering ransomware funds". ZDNet. https://www.zdnet.com/article/btc-e-founder-sentenced-to-five-years-in-prison-for-laundering-ransomware-funds/. 




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