Germany shuts down billions-worth cryptocurrency laundering server

• 

The world's largest crypto money laundering service on the darknet has been shut down by German security authorities on Wednesday.

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office and Frankfurt's attorney general's office said that the German-based server, ChipMixer, worth about $46.6 million, was seized.

The server operators, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office and the attorney general's office, were accused of running an illicit trading and commercial money laundering platform on the internet.

The authorities further revealed that the server had been in service since 2017 and had allegedly received Bitcoin from criminal origin to disburse it after a so-called "mixing" operation.

The "mixing" operations meant that the platform disrupted the traceability of the credit of the individual owners of cryptocurrencies. In other words, the credit balances are piecemealed and occasionally transmitted with a time delay after being selectively combined with transactions from various senders.

In the particular case concerning ChipMixer, the service reportedly split deposited cryptocurrency into consistent micro-amounts dubbed "chips," according to the security officials.

It is claimed that these little sums were then mixed together to conceal the money's source. The service purportedly offered users total anonymity.

Security experts believe that ChipMixer was used to launder Bitcoins worth $2.9 billion, which could possibly be the darknet's greatest crypto mixer turnover.

Read more: US bonds vs Bitcoin: Markets seem to prefer the latter for investments