Alexander Vinnik, the imprisoned former operator of Once Mighty Bitcoin Exchange BTC-E, is released from US custody as part of a prisoner exchange with Russia.

Vinnik, 44, will be swapped with imprisoned American teacher Marc Fogel, who returned to the United States last night after dealers hit a surprising breakthrough with the Kremlin. It had not immediately been clear who was on the other side of the deal.

But BTC-E was one of the early exchanges that popularized the purchase and sale of the world’s most popular digital asset. It had over 1 million customers and moved over $ 9 billion transactions between 2011 and 2017.

Its popularity also promoted a thriving criminal underground that trusted it to move in and out of poorly given Bitcoin revenue, according to US prosecutors. They accused Vinnik of operating BTC-E “for the purpose of promoting” drug dealers, money washing and other cyber criminals and caused the loss of $ 121 million.

Vinnik was arrested in Greece in 2017 and eventually handed over to the United States, he pleaded guilty to having money laundering in 2024 and stood a maximum of 20 years in prison.

His lawyers had previously the lobby without success for his admission to other high-profile US-Russia-prisoner exchanges, as last year’s agreement on the former imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.