>He used it used to launder all of the stolen funds from the Mt. Gox hack (worth several billions, depending on when you measure the value), among other things.

It was not. Coins going in and out of btc-e were labeled making laundering through btc-e difficult at best.

>BTC-e was a cover to help criminals steal from Bitcoin exchanges and safely dilute the funds.

BTC-e was around longer than those exchanges.

The thing about BTC-e is every time bitcoin crashed btc-e would chug along just fine without going down. All other exchanges would become unresponsive. This made, at that time, btc-e the only "safe" program trading bitcoin platform. (Of course, in hindsight, with the us gov coming in and stealing all that money, safe is a bit of an over statement.)

It was, though. Vinnik created it as a way to help people launder stolen / illicitly-gained cryptocurrency, perhaps in addition to providing standard exchange services. Cryptocurrency from large hacks appeared in Vinnik's personal BTC-e account on several occasions, for example.

BTC-e was perhaps "safe" in that it seemed to be operated competently from a technical standpoint, and it didn't appear to attempt to scam its users (both of which may not be true of Mt. Gox), but it didn't really need to worry about costs due to the absurd amount of profit they were making from their laundering hustle.

It wasn't that they merely turned a blind eye to the laundering. Vinnik personally assisted in the laundering, presumably by working with some of the exchange hackers.

>BTC-e was around longer than those exchanges.

I should've said "a cover to help criminals launder illicitly gained cryptocurrency". There were plenty of reasons to launder cryptocurrency before any large exchanges existed. He didn't help just with exchange hacks. But when exchange hacks started happening, business was certainly booming for him, since that was the easiest way to steal a lot of cryptocurrency at once.

The US government may have inadvertently stolen your money, and other people's, but they did it to reappropriate billions of dollars money stolen from citizens around the world, including American citizens. Vinnik helped intentionally steal money from ordinary people who used Mt. Gox and other exchanges, and pocketed a lot of it for himself. Hopefully some of the money the US government seized will be returned to their rightful owners one day, but who knows.

If either you or the posters above linked to primary sources it would help a lot. Anyone can make proclamations but where are the references??

That's a good point.

The court case is starting in a little over a week, so Alexander Vinnik (the one accused of the MtGox hack, who was a technician working at btc-e) has yet to be found guilty or innocent.

>On 25 July 2017, suspected BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik was arrested at the behest of the United States Justice Department while vacationing with his family in Greece.[8][9] Wanted for money laundering by both France and Russia, in addition to the US[10]. Vinnik agreed to be returned to Russia, where he was charged only with fraud.[11] In October 2017 the extradition request by Russia was approved by one Greek court, but the request by the United States was approved by another.[12] The decision to extradite Vinnik to the United States was upheld by the Greek Supreme Court on December 13, 2017.[11] However, in July 2018 Greece agreed to extradite Vinnik to France instead,[13] giving precendence to the European warrant.[citation needed]A final ruling is scheduled for September 19,[14] though Vinnik's lawyer claims that "the decision on Vinnik's extradition to Russia has been made".[15]

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC-e

It's good that he didn't end up going to the US. The US, while legitimate in many ways, has a history of corrupt court practices. If it's in the government's interest to keep the 2 billion, which it is, they will do everything they can to throw him under the bus.

> The US, while legitimate in many ways, has a history of corrupt court practices.

I don’t know how can anyone with straight face compare US court system to Russia’s and not conclude that US is orders of magnitude more fair and less corrupt. Are you being serious right now? Russian court system is literally proxy for Putin’s decisions.

EDIT: disregard that, i somehow assumed extradition to russia was a sure thing already

it seems he is comparing them to french courts?

it may surprise you that france is not a province of russia

yeah, you're right, i think i got confused by the last statement. it's not final yet where he's being extradited. greece's ruling party's flirting with russia in past couple years makes me quite skeptical and pessimistic.

Between a Russian court an American one, do you think he'll be safer in a Russian one?

He's being extradited to France, which probably has less bias, but still a bias. I doubt the US will get involved behind the scene in France, because they've phrased their reasoning for the heist as btc-e's users were money laundering, so even if he is found innocent, the US still gets to keep the money and not look bad.

Russia may have a bias, I'm uncertain. I'm not sure how happy Russia was about btc-e. BTC-e may have been in the Ukraine, but Russia implicitly requires neighboring countries to follow Russian law. Did BTC-e break Russian law? I have no idea. But because he is not being extradited to Russia, we'll probably never find out what Russia thinks.

If Putin holds private keys at the end of this transaction, then - yes :)

>> The US government may have inadvertently stolen your money, and other people's, but they did it to reappropriate billions of dollars money stolen from citizens around the world, including American citizens. Vinnik helped intentionally steal money from ordinary people who used Mt. Gox and other exchanges, and pocketed a lot of it for himself. Hopefully some of the money the US government seized will be returned to their rightful owners one day, but who knows.

So the US stole money that was stolen and... might give it back?

Yes. Just like with Madoff, and other huge scams and fraud schemes.

I can't believe I'm only now hearing of this.