You Won’t Believe What This “Dead” Crypto Mixer Is Still Doing Behind the Curtain

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It would be naïve — laughably so, perhaps — to believe that when the steel gates clang shut, all movement within ceases. No: in the great frosted distance of the digital steppe, crypto mixer eXch carries on, like the distant rumble of a Stalin-era train that the authorities swear hasn’t run in years. Official pronouncements are issued, lips pucker solemnly, and yet: the machine groans quietly on, churning the dirty linen of the internet while some poor functionary files another pointless report.

Let us speak plainly, with eyebrows arched: eXch, notorious among the apparatchiks for laundering millions filched from Bybit, after its “public execution” in late April, has apparently been resurrected behind closed cryptographic doors. How touching, this feigned compliance! A shutdown so temporary, you’d think it merely overslept.

The analysts at TRM Labs — no strangers to peering at screens under harsh fluorescent bulbs — have reported what can only be described as a Kafkaesque twist. eXch, far from accepting its trip to the gulag, continues to hand out API keys to its comrades — other mixers and privacy services. Like passing bread through the cracks of a cell door, on-chain activity is observed, the old laundering shuffle undiminished. The mixed pool—so anonymous, you’d struggle to identify yourself if you fell in.

The finger-pointing continues: eXch, it is said, has long been the warm bath for all manner of digital rogues, including — not a joke, though it reads like dark comedy — actors trafficking in the most unspeakable material. The tally, we are told, sits at a humble $300,000 tied to CSAM funds. “But wait, comrades,” the analysts mutter, “the number is still growing.” Perhaps eXch operates on the same principles as Soviet statistics: the worse it gets, the less you see.

“We have identified that eXch has been directly exposed to more than $300,000 in CSAM-related funds. However, we expect this figure to increase as we continue our attribution on eXch.”

TRM Labs

This mixed-pool beast fragments everything—transactions spliced, scattered, shuffled—so that “there is no way to discover how many people are behind certain addresses and traceability is extremely difficult.” A privacy model that would make even the most paranoid dissident weep tears of joy (or perhaps frustration). Illicit funds swirl together with the honest, like bureaucrats at an office party, impossible to tell one from another until the vodka runs out.

Recall the “shutdown” on April 17: eXch’s official abdication, posted with great ceremony. And, let us not forget, removed within hours. There is now no public record of this moment – like a memo vanishing from the archives on the night shift. By April 28, the platform was up and running again, as if nothing ever happened. The grand tradition of quietly pretending the problem doesn’t exist.

But as always — every plot has a subplot — the team behind eXch bemoaned a sinister “transatlantic operation” out to snuff it, warning of prosecutors, money laundering, and terror. Analytics firms waved their own solemn flags, declaring eXch a laundering hub.

The saga’s climax: after the grand heist of February 21, where some 400,000 Ethereum (ETH) flew from Bybit’s cold wallet like political prisoners dug from their beds, the notorious Lazarus Group (truly no relation to Lazarus, except for their repeated refusal to stay dead) spread those coins across the vast gulag of decentralized exchanges, bridges, and the ever-forgiving eXch. The digital Siberia is wide, and the blizzards unyielding. And so the circle closes. Or, in this case, it never ends. 🚂💸🤡

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2025-05-05 11:25