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Freshwater fishes of the genus Carassius are widespread throughout home Eurasia but also other continents (Kottelat and Feryhof, 2007). They represent important aquaculture fishes and include the world's most important pet fish, the goldfish (Rylková et al., 2010). On the other hand they are also the most successful invasive pests with a considerable ecological impact at many places (Ribeiro et al., 2015; Copp et al., 2005). High similarities in morphological taxa definitions and occurrence of species complexes have brought lot of confusion in their taxonomy, biogeography and introduction history (Kalous et al., 2012). We present a historical overview and outline past and present reasons that have led to their successful spreading. Our findings are based on phylogenetic, historical and social-economic data. Europe is inhabited by at least five mtDNA lineages of the genus Carassius, which correspond to four taxa and one undescribed species. In Europe there occur: Carassius carassius, feral populations of Carassius auratus, Carassius gibelio, Carassius langsdorfii and Carassius sp.. C. auratus and C. langsdorfii are not native to Europe C. carassius is native to Eastern, Central and Northern Europe (Kalous et al., 2012). The populations of C. gibelio in Eastern and Central Europe should be considered a result of natural postglacial range expansion but the whole Europe was also colonized by introduced Carassius biotypes of various genome combinations from East Asia in the 20th century (Rylková et al., 2013). The spreading of non-native fishes of the genus Carassius has been caused mainly by human activities comprising pet trade, aquaculture and recreational fisheries (Kalous et al., 2013; Kalous et al., 2015).