WEX.nz — The BTC-e Reboot That Stole Half a Billion and Ran

WEX.nz, a Russian-operated cryptocurrency exchange registered in New Zealand, collapsed in mid-2018 with somewhere between $400 million and $500 million in user deposits missing. The platform had launched in September 2017 as a near-identical copy of BTC-e — a notoriously shadowy exchange seized by US and European authorities in July 2017 for facilitating billions of dollars in money laundering — and was operated by Russian national Dmitry Vasiliev. Within eleven months of launch, WEX froze withdrawals, shed its domain names, and went dark. Vasiliev was later arrested in Warsaw and extradited to the United States in mid-2025 to face charges of fraud and money laundering.

The WEX story is inseparable from BTC-e, but they are distinct events. BTC-e was founded around 2011 and operated for six years as one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, processing more than $9 billion in transactions while deliberately serving criminal clients including ransomware operators and darknet marketplaces. Its operator, Alexander Vinnik, was arrested in Greece in July 2017. WEX.nz then appeared as an ostensible continuation of BTC-e — inheriting user balances, the trading interface, and much of the user base — but it operated only under Vasiliev’s direction and lasted less than a year before its own exit. The two cases involve separate operators, separate legal proceedings, and separate thefts; understanding that distinction is essential to understanding either.

The roughly 100,000 users who trusted WEX with their deposits had already survived the BTC-e shutdown and accepted Vasiliev’s reassurances that their balances were intact and the new exchange was legitimate. Most recovered nothing. As of mid-2026, Vasiliev is in US custody awaiting trial; no meaningful restitution has reached victims.