What it was
BTC-e opened in 2011 and, for most of the six years it ran, was one of the few places where a person anywhere in the world could trade bitcoin without sending anyone a passport. FinCEN's account of what it collected is exact: the exchange "failed to obtain required information from customers beyond a username, a password, and an e-mail address."
It also concealed where it was. The 2017 indictment records that "according to the company's website, BTC-e is located in Bulgaria but organized or otherwise subject to the laws of Cyprus", while its base of operations was in the Seychelles and its web domains were registered to shell companies in Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, France and New Zealand. Its managing shell company was Canton Business Corporation. No coherent registration can be established for it, which is why the structure here is left undocumented rather than claimed as absent.
That combination is why it belongs in a history of Bitcoin's early infrastructure. In 2013 there were very few liquid exchanges. BTC-e was one of them, it quoted in dollars and roubles, and a great deal of ordinary trading passed through it alongside everything else.
On the record
On 26 July 2017 a grand jury in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California indicted BTC-e and Alexander Vinnik on 21 counts, among them operating an unlicensed money service business and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Vinnik was arrested in Greece on 25 July 2017.
The same week the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network assessed a civil money penalty of $110,003,314 against "BTC-e a/k/a Canton Business Corporation" for wilfully violating United States anti-money-laundering law, and $12 million against Vinnik. FinCEN's release states that it "acted in coordination with law enforcement's seizure of BTC-e". It was the first Treasury enforcement action against a foreign-located money services business. FinCEN recorded that BTC-e processed over 300,000 bitcoin traceable to the theft from Mt. Gox, and at least $3 million tied to the Cryptolocker and Locky ransomware.
On 3 May 2024 Vinnik pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Justice Department's release records that BTC-e processed over $9 billion worth of transactions, served more than a million users, and was shut down by law enforcement in July 2017. He faced a maximum of 20 years.
He was not sentenced. On 11 February 2025 the White House press secretary confirmed that he had been handed to Russia in a prisoner exchange, having forfeited more than $100 million.