Kazakhstan shut down 36 illegal crypto exchanges in 2024, seizing $112 million in assets and advancing Anti-Money Laundering efforts alongside its upcoming digital tenge launch.
Kazakhstan took down 36 illegal cryptocurrency exchanges in 2024 amid ongoing efforts to combat money laundering in the region, a drop of 96% from 2023.
On Jan. 6, the Financial Monitoring Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan announced the shutdown of 36 crypto exchanges operating without proper authorization in 2024.
The agency noted that illegal crypto exchanges help facilitate money laundering by allowing unvetted fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-fiat transfers. A translated statement from the agency said:
“Such entities (illegal crypto exchanges) do not identify their clients and do not identify suspicious transactions. Therefore, their services are often used by cyber crooks and drug traffickers.”
The 36 crypto exchanges, with a total turnover of about 60 billion Kazakhstani tenge ($112.8 million), “were destroyed,” according to the notice. Additionally, assets worth approximately 2.5 billion tenge ($4.8 million) were confiscated by authorities.
An ongoing crackdown on unlicensed crypto services
In 2023, Kazakhstan’s Financial Monitoring Agency (FMA) blocked 980 unlicensed crypto exchanges and launched nine investigations into “illegal exchange operations” and money laundering in parallel.
Despite the crackdown, global exchanges with operational licenses, including Binance, Bybit, CaspianEx, Biteeu, ATAIX, Upbit and Xignal&MT, continue to operate legally in Kazakhstan.