Topic: eXch - instant exchange BTC / LN / XMR / LTC / ETH / ERC20 - page 47. (Read 27792 times)

That's great, well done!  

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https://etherscan.io/tx/0x21f0da3982926d693c915b30a8a138db48f469989bff3e9e6434916fa2d3783f

Well done also on your donation to Simplex, I discovered this service recently thanks to a fellow bitcointalker and I'm very pleased!

However, I'm really surprised to see that the team behind Simplex uses Binance's services  

200 BTC throughput mark surpassed in our aggregation wallet pool just in ~1 month after its launch!

https://mempool.space/address/bc1qu2dq8w8lv8v3l7lr2c5tvx3yltv22r3nhkx7w0

Add another 300 BTC monthly throughput in our mixed wallet pool (that can't be tracked publicly) making it ~500 BTC throughput in last 30 days. And this is without counting other currencies!

That is also an amazing reason not to show up physically at any court, even if the terms were correct from the opposite side 

This is just one more example that bureaucracy is the same allover the world.


You are now like a modern Robinson Crusoe

That's correct. We have already requested clarifications from them but no reply was provided to us. I must also mention that going to any court physically is out of question for us since our team is currently located on a desert island which was the closest habitable location after a boating accident and there are currently no transportation options available for getting to the mainland. Thanks satellite broadband and autonomous energy sources we will be able to remain here for some time. It's a nice place after all.

Isn't this an incorrect, even carelessly drafted statement, and therefore it is possible not to give an official answer at all and not to go to court on completely legal grounds? I mean, if they were interested in this, they should have made it clear, whom exactly the addressed to.

In that particular case it should become available publicly after conclusion, but if we have anything earlier from our lawyer we'll share it. At this time it's not even clear whether they addressed their request correctly, since our legal company name isn't specified in the request. They have addressed a court order to a string "exch.cx" which makes unclear whether it was addressed to a domain name, a website, a host or someone wearing a T-shirt with "exch.cx" written on it.

Oh -- I understand. Perhaps after November 16th you can share some more details about how things took course at the Court? (Obviously, only if the situation will allow you to do it).

Answering all your questions would reveal some business details containing information that should remain off-the-record at least till the current subpoena is cleared. However, I would gladly answer your questions via private E2EE communication channels.


We consider Thorchain's native token (RUNE) a reliable coin since its network brings a lot of benefits to the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

Recently we have launched an experimental feature of ETH/BTC swaps via the Avalanche Bridge, since we had some requests from users who have volumetric ETH/BTC swap requirements that eXch couldn't satisfy and since the Avalanche's Bridge can only be used from a privacy-hostile app called 'Core', we have enabled this optional functionality for them to provide 'rails' that automate the whole process of swapping between native BTC and ETH via Avalanche Bridge. During the development of that feature, we have found out that the Avalanche Bridge is far from being decentralized and that their nodes responsible for bridging BTC and ETH are closed-source and are fully controlled by Ava Labs. We have found that Ava Labs have implemented AML screening (https://medium.com/@AvaLabsOfficial/updates-to-the-avalanche-bridge-dc0d33b1b475) in their BTC and ETH bridging mechanisms that are used to selectively stop certain coins from bridging in order to confiscate these funds (or traditionally speaking - to scam their users). We have also found that they have already confiscated 85 BTC from someone without returning it (https://forum.avax.network/t/why-i-use-core-bridge-has-been-sent-btc-but-i-didnt-received-my-btc-b/1157/3) and out of curiosity reached that victim and chatted with them about this, confirming that their 85 BTC are still being held by Ava Labs without any reason. After creating a disposable Discord account just for research purposes since such communities reside there, we have found that there are more victims who lost their funds to Ava Labs selective scamming. This made us wonder whether providing Avalanche Bridge on our service was a good decision and afterwards found out that their AML screening mechanisms do not affect amounts below 5 BTC, which we have implemented as a limit for these. However, later we have found that there is another network that provides native BTC/ETH swaps with considerable liquidity - Thorchain. After a rigorous research performed by us, we have concluded that it's truly decentralized and makes Avalanche Bridge obsolete, since Thorchain's native swap functionality makes part of the network consensus and its code is fully open-source. We have since decided to replace the Avalanche Bridge rails we provide with Thorchain which will be released this week. We have also found Thorchain useful to rebalance our own liquidity when needed without relying on unsafe and unreliable Web3 ecosystem and codebase that is constantly exposed to dependency supply chain attacks.

Please note that Thorswap doesn't make part of Thorchain at all and as it's just a privacy-hostile frontend for Thorchain, thus, eXch could be used as an alternative frontend to Thorswap (however, for now, limited only to the coins and tokens that we support).


Our opsec is much better than Bestmixer's, Chipmixer's or Whirlwind's altogether and we haven't made any mistakes in our opsec any close to such were made by them, apparently from the beginning of their existence, as some court data and other events revealed about some of them afterwards. eXch is run by people specializing in infosec since around 2000 that are also cypherpunk culture adepts that follow military-grade standards and guidance to protect their projects digitally and physically, therefore, it's very unlikely that our platform will be smashed due to rookie mistakes similar happened to the platforms I mentioned and some others I didn't. There is always a lot to learn from every privacy-oriented service shutdown (including darknet markets) and we are certainly not next.

I don't see this a big problem since I already recommend using of onion link anyway.

Maybe, unless you have some weak link and leaks from inside your team
I hope nearly impossible is good enough, since we know you are facing powers with unlimited financial sources on the other side.

I'm curious as to what's the motive behind adding RUNE? Are you planning to implement Thorchain for cross-chain trading for all pairs? or just RUNE ones? I also want to know, if you're going to use Thorchain directly, or simply use Thorswap?

What happened during previous Court orders? Did you present there? Did you come with a lawyer...? Did a lawyer go there in your name...? Care to share more details about what happened in the previous situations?
Similar, now... are you going to user a lawyer's services for this order?

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People like you are so rare... You are a rara avis, eXch!

Thanks for sharing this. Honestly, I am quite surprised that there is so much pressure and demand for data, and I am glad that there are still services that will take care of the privacy of their users.
Can you refer to GDPR compliance and care for the personal data of your users when not providing them in such cases?

eXch was not charged with anything up to this date. We got one subpoena from a court in Germany 3 months ago and another one from U.S. Secret Service delegated by a court 7 months ago. We weren't notified about any outcome. It indicates that the cases were either archived or are still being elaborated. In any case, these orders assume requesting data from us in a role of a service provider, not the heist originator, therefore it's doubtful they will come with any enforcement action addressed to our service at all since our service is not even USA/Germany based, nor we have any entities that could be exposed to extradition risks.

Apart from that, we had many other requests this year coming from different police departments around the world related to cybercrime investigations.

No data was disclosed from our end to any of these.

We are also working on creating a /transparency section at our website that should be live this month where we will publish each received LE request.

We are very proud to be able to fight for the cryptocurrency neutrality and provide resilient services aiming to countermeasure censorship.

Sure, I cannot argue that there are thousands of people who have never even heard of this forum. Actually, nobody from my acquaintances in the "real world" knows about it, and when I tell them, they are quite surprised. But then again, only very few of them made some efforts to learn more after my introduction.

However, i can conclude from my observations by being here, that forum users tend to come here for new pieces of information. They discuss updated and releases here, that is why I believe, they perceive bitcointalk as the fastest way to find out something new. And of course they learn about some reliable and trusted services here as well.

Have some of the previous processes already been concluded or are they still open?
If they were linked for similar charges, can we know the epilogue? Guilty, innocent, some specific penalty or what?

Please find here the Romanian translation in the topic: eXch – schimbă instantaneu BTC / LN / XMR / LTC / ETH / ERC20.

Other than that, I am looking forward to see what will happen on November 16th.

It cannot be an easy situation when any individual/organisation (including yourself) receive a Court document demanding various things. Any form of Court summons cannot be taken lightly but from what you have written it seems you have prepared plans. Basically, if you do not have any data on hand because it gets deleted upon user request (or automatically deleted after 15 days), it means there is not much data you have on hand to give to those demanding it.

As you are not obliged to retain information, it seems to be another plus point to use the exchange alongside a no KYC policy.

Very nice volume, and it's not such a bad thing to be under the radar for some people
I didn't hear about eXch from bitcointalk forum, someone recommended it to me and I saw ratings on kycnot.me website.
So far I didn't have a single complain after using eXch for a while, and that is not something I can say for other exchanges I used in past.

Sorry to hear about terrible boating accident 
It's going to be interesting to see what happens after November 16...

Is it a big deal for mixers who certainly received many of them already but without a public disclosure? You know the answer, therefore the same applies here. I have purposely linked this post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62858665 in the subpoena post to demonstrate that it's an ordinary situation for us to handle, however, I will quote the relevant part from that post here:


Note that it's not the first subpoena we have received and published, nor it it will be the last, since we know how to handle such situations. You shouldn't worry about eXch, but should worry about mixers instead.
Note also that Twitter discloses subpoenas to their affected users independently whether there is a gag order or not, because it's their company policy:



[Twitter link] [Nitter link]

Our policy is to do the same, except producing information related to exchanges since we don't have it nor obligated to have it, because we do not operate with any financial instrument according to the current legal definitions of cryptocurrency.


I am fine with all kind of translations in case there is some interest in doing so. This is a community after all.