Historical — seized 2022
No .onion address on file
Hydra darknet market
Hydra is a historical catalog entry. German federal police announced an April 2022 seizure of Hydra Market’s servers and 543 bitcoins. It is not an active market and has no live onion address in our files. This is an editorial profile, not a marketplace listing.
Catalog facts
- Reported launch
- Reported 2015
- Public focus
- Historical — seized 2022
- Catalog status
- Seized — Seized April 2022 (BKA / ZIT Frankfurt)
About Hydra
Open reporting describes Hydra as a Russian-language Tor shop that ran from about 2015 until April 2022. The BKA said vendors often used dead-drop delivery rather than mail, which is why English-language catalogs treated it as a separate ecosystem from the Western shops on this page.
On 5 April 2022 the BKA and Frankfurt’s ZIT announced they had seized Hydra’s Germany-hosted servers after an investigation running since August 2021 with U.S. agencies. The same notices said officers emptied wallets holding 543 bitcoins, then worth about €23 million. No arrests were announced that day; a BKA spokesperson told press the investigation continued.
The BKA put 2020 turnover at €1.23 billion, with about 17 million customer accounts and 19,000 vendor accounts. TRM Labs later described Hydra as handling around four-fifths of darknet-market cryptocurrency trade at its peak, with Bitcoin as the listed coin and a built-in mixing service German investigators said obstructed tracing. Those figures are agency and analyst claims, not an in-house audit.
Those public reports treat the shop as closed. This catalog lists Hydra as Seized — a historical row, aligned with the BKA notice. Onion rows stay empty. A reused brand after a widely reported takedown is a common phishing lure — treat any address you find elsewhere as untrusted until you check a signed canary and a second independent source.
Reported history
- 2015
- Public summaries date the shop here as a Russian-language market serving Russia and neighboring states.
- August 2021
- The BKA says the investigation that ended in the seizure began around this date, with U.S. agencies involved.
- 5 April 2022
- The BKA and ZIT Frankfurt announced the server seizure inside Germany and the 543-bitcoin wallet action. Elliptic independently described the on-chain movement as 88 transactions totaling 543.3 bitcoin.
- 2026
- Public live-markets tables no longer include Hydra; historical tables still do. This catalog lists the name as Seized (historical).
Reported public features
- Historical entry only. Tags in our file: Historical.
- Public reporting describes a Russian-only interface and a dead-drop delivery model rather than a mail-based Western catalog.
- The BKA and later TRM write-ups say Bitcoin was the listed coin and that the platform ran a built-in mixer. Those are reported traits of a closed shop, not a live feature list.
- Scale figures (accounts, 2020 euro turnover, share of darknet crypto trade) vary by outlet. We leave competing integers off the card.
What this page does not claim
- This is not an active market. There is no live onion in our files.
- No operator arrests were announced on the seizure day. The BKA said the investigation continued.
- Volume and account figures come from the BKA and later analyst notes. We do not treat them as an in-house audit.
- Any “Hydra is back” mirror after a widely reported takedown should be treated as a clone until a signed canary and a second independent source agree.
Public sources
How TorBible records Hydra
Status, tags, and listing counts come from our catalog file. Editorial notes below the card come from open public reporting and are worded as reported when we have not verified them in-house. Treat every mirror you find elsewhere as untrusted until you check a PGP canary and a second independent source. See phishing detection and OPSEC fundamentals.