They swooped on all 46 cryptocurrency exchanges at once and seized them? Interesting! Have they built a strong case against each one of them? Or are they just implementing a blanket drive against crypto exchanges? Aside from having a government that's largely cold to Bitcoin, I wonder what triggered this specifically.

Why don't they do the same to their central bank and commercial banks. 99.9% of the underground economy is fueled by fiat.

Anyway, this is but another reminder of the reason why Bitcoin exists and why centralized Bitcoin-related services are an antithesis to it.

These services are mostly run by one entity through a custom script and some are hosted on the same shared IP address so it is easy to stop them all at once but they will continue to generate more transactions in a short time.


It is better to avoid platforms that do not give you the option to refund payments if you do not want to send your data.

Performing KYC on criminal websites is giving criminals your personal data. Assume your ID data to be sold on the dark web now.

This is very alarming and there's a possibility that some of the users are already referred because they are listed on review sites and directories, but why now, They should have taken swift action not to the point that these exchanges already have hundreds of thousands of traders who are not aware that they are trading in a bad exchanges.
The key point here is to always do your research and not store your funds on exchanges, but unfortunately, in this case, many of its traders information is at risk.

The very bad rating system on Bestchange showed all its shortcomings this time. Now I went through several feedback pages from seized exchanges, and not one of them has red feedback, even though there are many complaints about frozen user funds.


Therefore, before using any exchange, always check their KYC and refund policy. Many instant exchangers do not even have their liquidity funds but rely on a third party, which is usually Changenow. There is almost guaranteed freezing of funds and a very long, often impossible path to refund.

I've only heard of and used one of these, Prostocash. I think I used it like 3 times in total, and it was for sending money from crypto to a bank account a *very* long time ago.

I haven't had any complaints about AML during that time, and I was sending all sorts of coins from mixers, Freebitcoin, Binance (received from a friend - I don't have a Binance account) and others.

Since it looks like it's for lack of licensing they were taken down, then my conclusion is that we have to use either the no-KYC ones (and don't pretend to be compliant), or the ones which actually have licenses and do have AML checks.

I guess the task force has my email address now among other things 

Interestingly, they were accused because they did not respect the AML rules and approved transactions without KYC, and at the same time, there were many accusations from users due to frozen funds because they did not meet the AML criteria.
Since they were operating without a license, the AML failure was just an excuse to confiscate users' coins.

So you registered a brand new account just to tell us that and to defend bestchange?  

They deserved to be criticized about this, and some would say they even lied about improving rating system, when they actually didn't improve anything with rating for years.
Eternal improving of rating system without any visible results.

To clarify the situation, we would like to add that we did not receive any requests on this issue. We remained as uninformed as the administrators of the mentioned exchangers.

There are also no official data on what specifically led to the exchanger’s closure, as well as  what specific operations may  have seemed suspicious to the BKA when these operations were carried out, and if any AML procedures were performed on them. Complete obscurity, except for the caustic remarks from the representatives of the German authorities, we did not see anything substantive.

We also confirm that on the monitor, we immediately disabled the services listed on this resource until the situation is clarified, as it is unclear who and in what form has access to the hosting of these exchangers.

The cryptocurrency community has long been divided into two camps - some criticize exchangers and exchanges for poor compliance with AML legislation, while others criticize them for too harsh measures to comply with AML. Iin particular, exchangers are often hated for selective KYC procedures which are required in cases when a processed transaction has a high percentage of risk scoring. (even in this topic there is a representative of this camp).

Finding a balance between these polar positions is difficult not only for small exchangers, but also for large international exchanges, which are constantly criticized at the state level in different countries and receive multi-million dollar fines for non-compliance with far-fetched norms from the old financial world.


The accusation is too emotional, taking into account that its details are still unclear. Who and for what transactions were found guilty? Do you already know this? In the eyes of law enforcement bodies, almost any exchanger will conduct insufficiently strict AML/KYC procedures, this is their advantage.

But it is precisely because of critics like you that exchangers have to find a balance between strict checks and their complete absence. The serviceslisted in the publication conducted checks selectively, only when risk score was high, which in a certain sense can be regarded as insufficient measures to counter money laundering, especially when marking some wallets retroactively, as often is the case. In addition, it may be a question of very old transactions, when no one, including international crypto exchanges, conducted AML assessments at all, we need to wait for the details of the accusation, and then accuse someone of double standards.

So unless the BKA is lying in their press release, what you say is bs. The services were seized because they failed to fully comply with AML and KYC laws, so if they didn't, how come they are so strict in confiscating customers funds and rarely ever returning it back to them. It can only mean one thing, and that is that this services used the excuse of 'suspicious tx's' to steal funds from their customers and keep the money for their own benefits.