Europol Busts $1.51B Bitcoin Mixer Cryptomixer

• European police shut down Cryptomixer, a service that mixed Bitcoin to hide illegal money.
• The operation was led by Europol, the Swiss, and the German authorities from November 24 to 28, 2025.
• Since 2016, the service has cleaned up more than $1.51 billion in Bitcoin. Authorities took $29 million in crypto, three servers, the website domain, and 12 terabytes of data.
• Hackers use it for credit card fraud, ransomware, dark web markets, drug sales, weapon deals, and more.
• In this raid, no one was arrested, but officials got a lot of information that could help them make more arrests in the future.

European officials have dealt a big blow to crypto crime. They worked together to shut down Cryptomixer, a well-known Bitcoin mixing service that was accused of helping criminals clean up dirty money. This operation shows how law enforcement is getting better at keeping track of digital money.
The takedown took place over five days at the end of November 2025.

Europol worked with police in Switzerland and Germany to take down important parts of the service. They took over the website cryptomixer.io, shut down three main computers (servers), and stole about $29 million worth of Bitcoin. That’s like finding a treasure chest full of digital gold that was hidden.
They also got 12 terabytes of data. That’s a lot—enough to fill thousands of laptops. This information includes records of past transactions, which could help find more crimes that are connected to the service.

This bitcoin mixer works by mixing up coins from different people. This makes it hard to figure out where the money came from. Cryptomixer was different because it let users wait a long time to get their mixed coins back and mixed them up in random ways. Criminals loved it because it helped them hide money they made from illegal activities.

The platform has handled more than $1.51 billion in Bitcoin since it started in 2016. A lot of that came from ransomware attacks, in which hackers lock up computers and ask for money to unlock them. It also helped shops on the dark web that sell drugs, guns, and stolen credit card information.

This isn’t the first time that authorities have gone after mixers. They shut down ChipMixer, another service like this, in 2023. Europol learned from that case and was able to break Cryptomixer. They did a lot of research on the blockchain, which is the public record of all Bitcoin transactions, to find patterns.
The U.S. government allowed Tornado Cash to help with money laundering, which is another story like this. There is a pattern in these cases: privacy technology can help honest people, but criminals often misuse it.