The Hydra Market, a Russian-language darknet marketplace formerly specialising in the sale of illicit drugs, forged documents, intercepted data and illegal digital service, has been shut down by German Federal police.
Working in conjunction with the United States Justice Department, authorities closed German servers of the marketplace on Tuesday, seizing $25m in Bitcoin of alleged dirty money.
Prosecutors in Frankfurt have said that Hydra, active since 2015, was the largest darknet market in the world at the time of destruction. It has been reported that the marketplace had produced $1.34B of sales in 2020 alone.
