NFTs, crypto mixers and decentralised finance platforms enable money laundering through subjective valuations, transaction obscuring and regulatory gaps that traditional systems lack.
Criminals use mixers, DeFi protocols and NFT flipping to disguise stolen cryptocurrency as legitimate gains, but law enforcement increasingly tracks them through blockchain analysis and heuristic tagging.
The tools, techniques and partnerships governments and exchanges use to trace crypto money laundering, even when disguised with mixers, NFTs or DeFi
Governments use blockchain analysis tools, exchange monitoring and legal enforcement to track crypto laundering, targeting wallets, mixers and off-ramps where criminals convert digital assets to cash.
Cryptocurrencies are decentralised digital currencies secured by cryptography and recorded on blockchain. They operate without central authorities and enable peer-to-peer transactions globally.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency created in 2009. It uses blockchain technology, mining to validate transactions, and a decentralised network of computers instead of banks.
Following illicit funds from a ransomware payment to a clean bank account
Criminals convert illicit funds to crypto, use mixers and privacy coins to obscure the trail, then layer transactions through NFTs and decentralised finance platforms before cashing out as clean money.
How wallets, mixers and decentralised exchanges changed the movement of illicit wealth
Criminals use crypto mixers, NFTs, decentralised finance platforms and privacy coins to hide the origin of stolen or illicit money, exploiting gaps in global regulation and enforcement.
