U.S. law enforcement has not seized $BTC-e coins kept in cold storage, according to the former operator of the failed cryptocurrency exchange, Alexander Vinnik.
At a crypto conference in Russia, Vinnik spoke about the fate of client funds and urged those who wish to recover some of them to join a lawsuit in the United States.
$BTC-e’s Vinnik shares details about lost customer assets
Alexander Vinnik, co-founder of the now-defunct crypto exchange $BTC-e, has thrown light on what happened with user money after its collapse.
Speaking at the Blockchain Forum 2026 event in Moscow this week, the entrepreneur revealed that funds on the platform were split in two after his arrest.
Part of them were taken hold of by U.S. authorities when they busted the crypto trading venue nine years ago, taking control over its servers, bank accounts, and payment systems.
The rest, consisting mainly of digital coins stored in cold wallets, remained “outside the perimeter seized by the FBI,” in his own words.
Quoted by the Bitcoin news outlet Bits.media on Tuesday, the IT specialist insisted he lost control over all of these assets.
Once the largest crypto exchange in the Russian speaking segment of the market, $BTC-e went offline amid allegations over its role in the processing of $9 billion of illicit money.
According to U.S. officials, the total included cryptocurrency stolen from the Mt. Gox exchange, which ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy protection in early 2014.
Vinnik, one of $BTC-e’s founders and operators, was detained in the summer of 2017, while on vacation with his family in the Greek city of Thessaloniki.
Several countries sought his extradition, including the United States, his native Russia, and France. Athens first handed him over to the French authorities.
In France, Vinnik received a five-year sentence in late 2020, which took into account the time he had already spent in custody.
He was later returned to Greece and eventually transferred to the U.S. in 2022, where he pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in 2024.
In February 2025, President Trump’s second administration exchanged Vinnik for American school teacher Marc Fogel, arrested and sentenced in Russia on drug trafficking charges.
$BTC-e coins end up on the WEX exchange
The portion of the user funds that wasn’t seized by the U.S. is linked to the WEX exchange, which was launched in the fall of 2017, the report noted.
Alexander Vinnik claims he had nothing to do with the latter and only learned about its establishment from his lawyer.
WEX was announced as the successor of $BTC-e and promised clients to return their holdings. However, it closed down, too, after halting withdrawals in 2018.
Aleksey Bilyuchenko, co-founder of both exchanges, is known to have testified in Russia that the remaining balances were under his control.
At $BTC-e, Vinnik facilitated the movement of fiat funds and maintained some of the deployed electronic payment systems. He denied having access to cold crypto wallets and seed phrases.
The Russian described as unfair his prosecution in the U.S., where he was accused of money laundering and illegal transactions, and added:
“I was held responsible for the entire $BTC-e turnover — on the grounds that it was in American dollars … I don’t understand why they tried to convict me.”
Vinnik insisted that $BTC-e complied with all the requirements of banks, payment operators, and other financial institutions, but also admitted:
“We had anonymity, of course, but only to protect clients’ funds, so that some criminals couldn’t extort or rob them.”
The former crypto businessman advised those who want to recover some of their lost funds to join a class action lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia at the end of June 2025.
The case, which is still pending, concerns “All virtual currency held in the $BTC-e operating wallets as of July 25, 2017” and some other assets. Vinnik issued a similar call on Telegram in late February, as reported by Cryptopolitan.