Europol uncovers cryptocurrency mixer, seizes 25 million in bitcoins

Together with the Swiss and German authorities, Europol held an action week in Zurich from 24 to 28 November 2025, aimed at dismantling the illegal cryptomixing service Cryptomixer. According to investigators, this platform has long been used to launder money and support cybercrime.

In Switzerland, they seized three servers as well as the cryptomixer.io domain, with authorities recovering more than twelve terabytes of data and Bitcoin worth in excess of €25 million.

Cryptomixer operated as a hybrid hashing service available on both the regular internet and the dark web. It was used to disguise the origin of criminal financial flows for ransomware groups, dark web markets or underground economy discussion forums. The platform's software deliberately undermined the traceability of transactions on the blockchain.

Since 2016, more than 1.3 billion in bitcoins have passed through the service. They collected users' deposits randomly over a long period of time and then sent them out to target addresses to obscure their origins as much as possible.

As Europol noted, shuffling services offer anonymity to clients, who often use them before redirecting their laundered assets to cryptocurrency exchanges. This allows the 'cleaned' cryptocurrency to be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies or for fiat currency via ATMs or bank accounts.

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