eXch - instant exchange BTC / LN / XMR / LTC / ETH / ERC20

[examplens]

Can you give me a link of article or any info about Bybit trying to undermine eXch? I didn't know about their beef.

I don't remember that Bybit came out publicly against eXch, they did it in private communication. But they certainly are through their sock puppet X influencers. Like this one:
https://x.com/MistTrack_io/status/1893516845506011180

By the way, what is this Lazarus Group? They hack every exchange, they steal every cryptocurrency, they always launder money through every crypto exchange. Who are they? How are they so powerful? Let's say that they laundered money through an exchange, that money has to be converted into fiat, right? Where do they convert it into fiat? Didn't they get caught in convertation?

It is North Korea's cyberwarfare agency. They hack banks, exchanges, companies, put drainers on HODLer's computers and crypto developers, and they use all that money to make nukes after laundering it with the help of their black hat friends in China, Laos, Cambodia, Russia and others on Telegram groups.

This is all approved by their government by the way.

So as you can see, seizing eXch does nothing to punish Lazarus.

It seems that the easiest thing to do is to blame Lazarus for all the bad things that happen and the inability to cover up their mistakes.

[shield132]

This is actually the most worrisome part and essentially the center of the question. The reaction toward exch, given the minuscule amount of money allegedly passed through their system (26 million out of 1,400 million total)is disproportionate.

The European governments have become hysterical about crypto in recent years, to the point that they want to ban its pseudonymous usage completely, thereby copying China. You can tell this is the case here by the fact that not a single US agency is listed in the seized banner. I usually see FBI, and DoJ in these things. There is not so much as a press release from those websites.

Yeah, especially Netherlands and Germany. To be fair, I can't blame them because it's not really like they fight against your privacy but it's to help EU citizens to be safe. I do not say this out of thin air. Sadly, there are lots of scam call centers in my country that call EU citizens and try to scam them. They usually call elders and try to get their credit card information or make them register on their own website to buy crypto and then close their accounts. There are dozens of these accidents happening every day from my country and I'm very sorry for that, sadly there isn't much that I can do, I feel very ashamed.  Thanks to German authorities, lots of scam call service centers got closed in my country and some people ended up in jail. Sadly, these scams are protected by the government and on their own, they do nothing to close them. Anoter sad thing is that lots of young people work in these scam centers because they pay very well.

[Pmalek]

<Snip>

Call centers who employ people to scam the elderly have nothing to do with this case. eXch didn't scam anyone. It operated as advertised. It was an instant cryptocurrency exchange that anyone could use without going through KYC or AML checks. Who you are and what you do with your money isn't and shouldn't be their concern. If the exchange was used by criminals, then go after those criminals, build your case, and arrest them. The world wasn't unsafe with eXch around and it won't be any safer with them gone.

If you work in a supermarket and a thief comes and buys something, should the police close the market down and arrest the manager and staff because they allowed a criminal to buy his food there? They should not.

[mmgen-py]

If the exchange was used by criminals, then go after those criminals, build your case, and arrest them. The world wasn't unsafe with eXch around and it won't be any safer with them gone.

If you work in a supermarket and a thief comes and buys something, should the police close the market down and arrest the manager and staff because they allowed a criminal to buy his food there? They should not.

Excellent analogy

[hugeblack]

If you work in a supermarket and a thief comes and buys something, should the police close the market down and arrest the manager and staff because they allowed a criminal to buy his food there? They should not.

The problem with eXch is that it's a centralized service in an environment hostile to privacy, or at least to no-KYC exchange. If I were them, I'd simply comply with court orders (ignoring government requests), or at least restrict/review some transactions (flows above $50,000), or temporarily restrict the service when such events occur. While the above solutions aren't ideal, they're much better than losing eXch; we've lost a good service.

When we have something decentralized then we can do whatever we want I am not recommending doing anything illegal here..

[LoyceV]

If I were them, I'd simply comply with court orders (ignoring government requests)

Courts in which country? Does a Western court even have jurisdiction over a company registered in Belize? What if it's a Russian or Chinese court demanding data on American or European customers?

[joker_josue]

The problem with eXch is that it's a centralized service in an environment hostile to privacy, or at least to no-KYC exchange. If I were them, I'd simply comply with court orders (ignoring government requests), or at least restrict/review some transactions (flows above $50,000), or temporarily restrict the service when such events occur. While the above solutions aren't ideal, they're much better than losing eXch; we've lost a good service.

When we have something decentralized then we can do whatever we want I am not recommending doing anything illegal here..

The idea of suspending the service for some time seems interesting and minimally effective in the immediate term.
The question is, how long will it be suspended?

The crooks could wait until the service came online to use it. It is true that they certainly would not want to wait, and that could be a positive thing. But hard to know.

Really, setting up such a service without KYC and at the same time being able to avoid being abused by thieves is not easy. The ideal idea still seems that no one had.

[Woodie]

If you work in a supermarket and a thief comes and buys something, should the police close the market down and arrest the manager and staff because they allowed a criminal to buy his food there? They should not.

Perfect analogy , eXch certainly doesn't didn't have control of who comes through their door 🚪

Just so unfortunate that eXch was caught in the crossfire of this whole Bybit saga , and in unfortunate circumstances eX was thrown under the bus & took the hit, but shit happens... hope that partner comes in to fill the void , and hopefully they don't mention their name as they will be moving target's!!

Really, setting up such a service without KYC and at the same time being able to avoid being abused by thieves is not easy. The ideal idea still seems that no one had.

KYC itself won't and would never deter bad player's, because these are willing to go the extra mile just to gain access to such platforms. AFAIK KYC is 50/50.

[NotATether]

KYC itself won't and would never deter bad player's, because these are willing to go the extra mile just to gain access to such platforms. AFAIK KYC is 50/50.

More like 5/95.

Because you can buy a fake ID to evade verification.

You can pay a homeless person or a drug addict $1000 for their ID and abuse that.

[Off-topic, but that is probably how the phishing scammers verified themselves on domain registrars. I highly doubt he (it's a one-man show apparently) would use his own ID for all those phishing sites.]

KYC by itself is NOT effective unless you implement it like the big centralized CEX do and use other heuristics to suspend the account or trade.

[Pmalek]

The problem with eXch is that it's a centralized service in an environment hostile to privacy, or at least to no-KYC exchange. If I were them, I'd simply comply with court orders (ignoring government requests), or at least restrict/review some transactions (flows above $50,000), or temporarily restrict the service when such events occur. While the above solutions aren't ideal, they're much better than losing eXch; we've lost a good service.

All that doesn't matter now after they have closed down their exchange, had some of their digital infrastructure seized, and lost millions from their personal holdings. That will probably have an affect on that supposed regrouping they were planning and having new owners take over and resume operations. No one from their team has released any official information since the seizure and we have no idea how their future will look and if there is a future at all.

[shield132]

<Snip>

Call centers who employ people to scam the elderly have nothing to do with this case. eXch didn't scam anyone. It operated as advertised. It was an instant cryptocurrency exchange that anyone could use without going through KYC or AML checks. Who you are and what you do with your money isn't and shouldn't be their concern. If the exchange was used by criminals, then go after those criminals, build your case, and arrest them. The world wasn't unsafe with eXch around and it won't be any safer with them gone.

If you work in a supermarket and a thief comes and buys something, should the police close the market down and arrest the manager and staff because they allowed a criminal to buy his food there? They should not.

No, I didn't say that they should have closed an exch exchange. I said that I'm not surprised big countries are getting strict with regulations and are going full KYC mode. It's very hard to go through criminals because behind the scenes, these scam call centres are under the hood of government officials. When the money goes through no KYC platforms, it's getting very hard for German or Dutch investigators to catch criminals.
I am not against privacy but I think that people aren't ready for that. There are so many accidents of foreigners losing money because of scam centers that it really hurts me to hear that alone.

[Synchronice]

By the way, what is this Lazarus Group? They hack every exchange, they steal every cryptocurrency, they always launder money through every crypto exchange. Who are they? How are they so powerful? Let's say that they laundered money through an exchange, that money has to be converted into fiat, right? Where do they convert it into fiat? Didn't they get caught in convertation?

It is North Korea's cyberwarfare agency. They hack banks, exchanges, companies, put drainers on HODLer's computers and crypto developers, and they use all that money to make nukes after laundering it with the help of their black hat friends in China, Laos, Cambodia, Russia and others on Telegram groups.

This is all approved by their government by the way.

So as you can see, seizing eXch does nothing to punish Lazarus.

Of course I know Lazarus group, my question wasn't direct, I simply wanted to underline how they make Lazarus group appear god like creature in cyber world. It's just strange that they hack everything, they can't be that smart, especially North Korean hackers. Maybe this is all US bullshit (their team), who knows? Everything (even illogical) makes sense these days.

Seizing eXch does really nothing to Lazarus. But okay, Lazarus laundered money through eXch but this money then goes somewhere, they cash it out, right? It can't be like all coins go to North Korea and North Korea withdraws it buy selling it on their own population. In the end, it all goes to banks and governments have access and all types of control over banks.

It seems that the easiest thing to do is to blame Lazarus for all the bad things that happen and the inability to cover up their mistakes.

That's what I think too, completely agree!

[NotATether]

Seizing eXch does really nothing to Lazarus. But okay, Lazarus laundered money through eXch but this money then goes somewhere, they cash it out, right? It can't be like all coins go to North Korea and North Korea withdraws it buy selling it on their own population. In the end, it all goes to banks and governments have access and all types of control over banks.

Governments are too incompetent to deal with any kind of cybercrime (not strictly related to North Korea), but it's very easy to deal with crypto sites by comparison.

If governments actually took hacking seriously, there would be less instances of successful hacks in anything, and more arrests of hackers.

[Pmalek]

Of course I know Lazarus group, my question wasn't direct, I simply wanted to underline how they make Lazarus group appear god like creature in cyber world. It's just strange that they hack everything, they can't be that smart, especially North Korean hackers. Maybe this is all US bullshit (their team), who knows? Everything (even illogical) makes sense these days.

The Lazarus Groups is everyone's favorite scapegoat when it comes to hacking and online crime. Something bad happens, blame it on the bad North Koreans and their hackers. That will shift people's attention to their enemies and they will stop asking further questions. But also, Lazarus Group is state-sponsored and they take their "job" seriously. The money and crypto they steal is part of the country's revenue streams. Don't forget that North Korea is heavily sanctioned. They need alternative ways to earn. Lazarus provides one such option.

Seizing eXch does really nothing to Lazarus. But okay, Lazarus laundered money through eXch but this money then goes somewhere, they cash it out, right? It can't be like all coins go to North Korea and North Korea withdraws it buy selling it on their own population. In the end, it all goes to banks and governments have access and all types of control over banks.

Russian and Chinese exchanges could be some destinations where the money goes to. North Korea has good relations with those two countries. 

[examplens]

The problem with eXch is that it's a centralized service in an environment hostile to privacy, or at least to no-KYC exchange. If I were them, I'd simply comply with court orders (ignoring government requests), or at least restrict/review some transactions (flows above $50,000), or temporarily restrict the service when such events occur. While the above solutions aren't ideal, they're much better than losing eXch; we've lost a good service.

When we have something decentralized then we can do whatever we want I am not recommending doing anything illegal here..

Looking at the broader picture, the biggest problem with eXch arose when they took over a large part of the XMR market. More frequent attacks from competitors such as Whitebit, Bybit etc... From earlier, they marked coins with eXch addresses as tainted, and with a long-term negative campaign against them, we came to the point that eXch was the subject of an investigation.

[Woodie]

Looking at the broader picture, the biggest problem with eXch arose when they took over a large part of the XMR market. More frequent attacks from competitors such as Whitebit, Bybit etc...

With eXch case, why is eXch labeled the bad guy yet Bybit keeps roaming the streets like nothing happened?? And for damage control, it seems Bybit is going aggressive with their marketing, seeing several ads from them but they keep following me, Twitter , Blue app etc  (hope not Data analytics from my web history )

[Woodie]

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Given this, we are announcing a 50 BTC open-source fund to support any FOSS projects aiming to enhance the availability of privacy solutions. We hope we can still make a difference. Here are examples of the projects we will support:

- Bitcoin wallets and protocols aiming to preserve user privacy
- Lightweight clients for WabiSabi
- Thorchain wallets aiming to preserve user privacy
- Bisq Light Client
- Ethereum wallets and smart contracts aiming to preserve user privacy (an example of such might be a "non-rigged" fork of Railgun smart contracts and wallets allowing users to operate in Tor)

Unfortunately, we will not support projects that are written in Java, NodeJS, Go, or C#, especially developers who don't take module chain supply attacks seriously and believe they're some kind of "conspiracy theory".

There will be other projects that will hopefully take our place as the industry leader in privacy-oriented centralized exchanges, and we wish them success.

Not sure if eXch will be active on the forum after winding up, but how do we follow these new developments as a lot has happened over the last couple of weeks..will the supported projects be posted here or maybe eXch has other channels of communication that will be used, say telegram, x , discord etcetera...

[examplens]

Not sure if eXch will be active on the forum after winding up, but how do we follow these new developments as a lot has happened over the last couple of weeks..will the supported projects be posted here or maybe eXch has other channels of communication that will be used, say telegram, x , discord etcetera...

I don't think we'll ever see them again here under eXch attributes. If a case is opened against them at BKA and FIOD, they have no reason to risk any further disclosure. If they appear here again, I believe it will be under a new name without any connections with exch.
At the same time, they did not remain in debt, so we have no reason to insist on seeing them here again.

They never even used Telegram, X, or similar common channels for communication. As far as I know, only SimpleX chat.

[condoras]

Governments and their authorities will always attack whoever closes the door in their faces and doesn't "comply" with their rules. They want to know and to control everything and not for people's interest. This is their excuse for doing what they do and it won't change. People are inside a bubble and they can't understand the true meaning and purpose of any service like eXch. That's the worst part, and it seems that we can't do anything to change it. At least for now, I want to keep hope alive for the future.

[nutildah]

Wow, what a crazy ending to it all. A lot of parallels here with the Chi**ixer shutdown, and even more with Sinbad. (Sinbad the genie, of course). The moral of the story is don't accept funds from N. Korea funded hackers if you want to continue to exist. Just do the slightest bit of due diligence, and when you see them coming in, isolate the input and send it back!

You can say "but what about privacy for non-hackers?" And yes, you're right, you deserve privacy. One of the steps involved in that is not using services that have accepted coins from N. Korean hackers.

It doesn't matter what should or shouldn't be in a perfectly fair and moral world, because that world doesn't exist.

This is actually the most worrisome part and essentially the center of the question. The reaction toward exch, given the minuscule amount of money allegedly passed through their system (26 million out of 1,400 million total)is disproportionate.

You're right, its not a lot, but it was completely traceable and intervention was actionable.

Having said that, it was a great service and it will be missed.