Germany shuts down world's largest darknet market with US help

German authorities took down the world’s largest illegal marketplace on the darknet with the help of U.S. law enforcement agencies, they said.

Hydra Market was a Russian-language marketplace that had operated via the Tor network since at least 2015 and was known for extensive drug trafficking, according to German authorities. The market's 17 million known customers were also known to buy and sell forged documents and stolen credit cards, they said. In 2020, its sales amounted to well over $1 billion euros.

German authorities said they seized Hydra’s server infrastructure and about $25 million in bitcoin on Tuesday.

“The seizures carried out today were preceded by extensive investigations that have been conducted…since August 2021 and in which several US authorities were involved,” the German federal police announced.