Almost all of you know that eXch started as a project aimed at demonstrating to the community that alternatives can exist during times when there were none. We have never had any financial goals with this project and rather, we conducted an experiment that was unexpectedly successful.

Recently, we received confirmation of information we had previously, thanks to some friends we have even in the state intelligence sector, that our project is the subject of an active transatlantic operation aimed at forcibly shutting our project down and prosecuting us for "money laundering and terrorism."

Even though we have been able to operate despite some failed attempts to shutdown our infrastructure (attempts that have also been confirmed to be part of this operation), we don't see any point in operating in a hostile environment where we are the target of SIGINT simply because some people misinterpret our goals. Starting from the date of the merger with a new management team this month, and as a result of some urgent meetings, the majority of us voted to cease and retreat instead of going against strong winds, because none of us want to cause any harm to innocent people or this forum.

The goals we certainly never had in mind were to enable illicit activities such as money laundering or terrorism, as we are being accused of now. We also have absolutely no motivation to operate a project where we are viewed as criminals. This doesn't make any sense to us.

Originally, we were just a team of privacy enthusiasts with main areas of interest quite distant from cryptocurrency, where we saw the absolutely unfair happenings. This project was an attempt to restore balance in this industry.

Our project has demonstrated that an instant exchange done properly can be more effective than any centralized mixer in terms of privacy, which is why it has been referred to as "a mixer" many times by third parties, even though we have continuously rejected this label.

Our project has shown that it's possible to operate without abusing customers with nonsensical policies, unlike projects that will accept this announcement as a "weight lifted off their shoulders" that pretend to believe the false idea that confiscating crypto from customers somehow prevents "money laundering", who rely on random and unreliable scoring systems created and operated by companies that are parasites aiming to extract money from their governments by providing consulting based on the segregation of the crypto space and blockchain data. If we were to look at these projects from the perspective of "preventing money laundering and terrorism financing", any instant exchangers that screen their customer deposits using third-party APIs and appeal to nonsensical AML/KYC terms are far from preventing money laundering and terrorism. If they were serious about this, they would need to stop hiding behind shelf offshore companies and start conducting strict due diligence on every customer, which none of them do in reality. The absurdity is compounded by the absolute uselessness of the address score reporting APIs they use, as any of these screening mechanisms can be easily bypassed.

Our project will also demonstrate that even without it, this space will continue to have ways and instruments for those engaging in illicit activities to effectively "launder" their funds. Thus, the goal of stopping eXch under the belief that it may stop all money laundering in the world is ridiculous.

Meanwhile, our project effectively provided privacy to all our customers and even anonymity to most. However, there are still far more effective ways to achieve it, thanks to these flagship projects that exist nowadays:

- Monero, with its total privacy, although not without some recently discovered issues that are serious and should be fixed with the Full-Chain Membership Proofs implementation
- Litecoin, with its optional privacy (MWEB)
- Dash, with its optional privacy
- Tornado Cash
- Bitcoin CoinJoin protocols

Another distinctive project that does not betray its mission is Thorchain. Even under the immense pressure that the whole industry had to deal with due to the irresponsible actions of those at ByBit, Thorchain was the only decentralized protocol that resisted the pressure to implement screening mechanisms at the protocol level, proving itself to be absolutely reliable. Even though all Thorchain trades are transparent on-chain, privacy and even total untraceability can be easily achieved when combined with some of the privacy-enabling projects mentioned above, when used correctly. However, the Thorchain network currently has a very limited choice of good interfaces, aside from Asgardex and MMGen wallets, and none of them are privacy-preserving, but we hope this can change.

Bitcoin privacy remains, however, in the midst of a notable crisis given the collapse of all important projects and protocols that had significant liquid CoinJoin-like pools. The most interesting and convenient of them in terms of usability remains WabiSabi; however, it needs some lightweight client implementations to achieve greater popularity in order to effectively prevent serious risks associated with Sybil attacks. We certainly know that most people in this space prefer lightweight solutions to heavy software solutions, and this factor can significantly affect the popularity and usage of any good project.

Given this, we are announcing a 50 BTC open-source fund to support any FOSS projects aiming to enhance the availability of privacy solutions. We hope we can still make a difference. Here are examples of the projects we will support:

- Bitcoin wallets and protocols aiming to preserve user privacy
- Lightweight clients for WabiSabi
- Thorchain wallets aiming to preserve user privacy
- Bisq Light Client
- Ethereum wallets and smart contracts aiming to preserve user privacy (an example of such might be a "non-rigged" fork of Railgun smart contracts and wallets allowing users to operate in Tor)

Unfortunately, we will not support projects that are written in Java, NodeJS, Go, or C#, especially developers who don't take module chain supply attacks seriously and believe they're some kind of "conspiracy theory".

There will be other projects that will hopefully take our place as the industry leader in privacy-oriented centralized exchanges, and we wish them success.

Our partners will still have access to our API for a limited time, but what happens after May 1st will depend on our new management team, who will be in possession of all access to our infrastructure. Thus, we recommend launching their own liquidity pools to guarantee seamless operation. We will provide consulting and recommendations to them.

Privacy is not a crime.

What are cryptocurrencies you support?
Litecoin, Bitcoin, Monero, Dash, Ethereum and Ethereum's ERC-20 tokens
Who are your liquidity providers? Can you proof your reserves?
We do not use any third-party liquidity providers and all our reserves belong to us, allocated on our nodes. We can provide a proof of reserves on request.
How exchanges are performed?
We generate a one-time input address exclusively for you. Once you transfer the required amount to it and it gets confirmed, you will receive the cryptocurrency purchased.
Do you need any documents from me in order to exchange?
No. We are a non-KYC exchange. We also never require SoF.
What is your .onion address?
http://hszyoqwrcp7cxlxnqmovp6vjvmnwj33g4wviuxqzq47emieaxjaperyd.onion
Do you collect any client metadata (browser info, IP, etc)?

We don't collect any metadata.
Do you have an affiliation program?

Yes, follow this link to participate.
What is aggregation?

We operate with two pools of addresses for BTC deposits and transfers - mixed and aggregated. In a mixed pool all received and sent transactions are mixed together and there is no way to discover how many people are behind certain addresses and traceability is extremely difficult, which is very good for privacy but bad for risk scoring. In the aggregated pool all transactions we receive from users are collected on a known single address which is also used to send payments, what will clearly show you have interacted with our exchange and it's good for interacting with other major exchanges to avoid any risks of frozen funds.

These are cons and pros of each pool:

Aggregated pool
Pros:
No risks of being frozen at major exchanges due to low risk score given by chain analysis platforms
Currently accepted by the following exchanges without any issues: Binance, Coinbase, Gate.io, HTX, Kraken, Gemini, OKX, Kucoin, Poloniex (this list is being reviewed daily).
Cons:
None
Mixed pool
Pros:
Strong privacy
Nearly impossible traceability of funds by chain analysis platforms
P2P-alike
Cons:
High risks of frozen funds at major exchanges due to high risk score given by chain analysis platforms

Why my Bitcoin order payout is taking so long to confirm?

If you have selected the slow (or "free") fee mode during the order creation, we have sent Bitcoin to you and used the lowest possible mining fee so you don't have to pay it. The confirmation of a such transaction might vary from 12 hours to around a week, depending on the current mempool workload on the Bitcoin network.

You can speed it up by using your wallet's CPFP functionality. Since the unconfirmed transaction we have sent to you is spendable, you can spend it with a higher fee to incentivize confirmation of both transactions, which is the most simple way to get it included into the blockchain.

We recommend using the quick fee mode if you need your transaction confirmed fast, but we will charge you the blockchain mining fee.
Why my Monero order is taking so long to be paid?

Due to the fact we are using a single wallet for all incoming and outgoing Monero payments and its protocol limitations of UTXOs being spendable strictly after 10 confirmations, multiple orders involving Monero within our system may cause delay to your order, since we are only able to process one order once a UTXO from a previous order is fully confirmed.
Why my Bitcoin Lightning order is in the error state?

Bitcoin Lightning (also BTCLN or LN) network is a very dynamic system in its early development stage still but evolving rapidly. Sometimes the payout of your invoice may fail due to a variety of reasons and some of them are known:

Android battery management killing the app's network: If you use a mobile wallet such as Phoenix or Wallet of Satoshi, please ensure your app is open in the foreground during the payment attempt of your invoice. There is a known issue that if the app is sent to background, Android's batery optimization engine may restrict the app's network access in order to increase battery life, which will make your app unable to receive payments. Ensure your app is either (a) open in the foreground or (b) you configure your OS to exclude that app from Android's battery optimization.
Lack of inbound liquidity: Ensure your wallet is currently capable of receiving payments and has enough inbound liquidity.

If you still have issues, you can ask us for help by mentioning your wallet's software name.
Why no Telegram?

Our communications framework consists mainly of desktop applications and Telegram doesn't support end-to-end encryption ("Secret Chats") in their desktop app since the initial release, thus we consider transmission of payment and other private data via Telegram insecure, including using bots and standard chats, since neither of them support end-to-end encryption. We do not use mobile devices due to risks associated with a wide exposure of manufacture supply chains to hardware backdoors. More details can be found here https://github.com/marcovelon/tdesktop/blob/NoSecretChats/README.md and in the following discussion https://github.com/marcovelon/tdesktop/issues/2

WARNING: We strictly recommend against usage of Telegram bots for making exchange operations, because Telegram bots do not have any end-to-end encryption capabilities thus all your interactions with them are stored in the plain text on Telegram servers, available for data extraction any time later. Any service offering you swap operations via a Telegram bot has no understanding of security implications of a such service and most probably doesn't care about your privacy or possible consequences. Telegram actively cooperate with the law enforcement.
Any wallet recommendations?

Desktop
Electrum (BTC), Electrum-LTC (LTC)
Sparrow (BTC)
Feather (XMR)
MyCrypto (ETH + ERC20)
MMGen (BTC, LTC, XMR, ETH + ERC20)
Mobile
Unstoppable Wallet on F-Droid (BTC, LTC, DASH, ETH + ERC20)
Electrum on F-Droid (BTC, LN)
Brume Wallet on F-Droid (ETH)

WARNING: We do not recommend any mobile wallets that are not included into the official F-Droid repository. Projects that do not have technical capabilities to accomplish the inclusion criteria or simply avoiding doing so should be considered risky. The main purpose of being included to F-Droid is to ensure the compiled binaries are built from the current release source code without any modifications, because any project included to F-Droid is compiled by F-Droid's infrastructure and not by the project's team that can be compromised any time (this concept is called "reproducible builds").
Browser
Enkrypt (ETH + ERC20)
Hardware
Foundation Passport

• No KYC