CoinVoice recently learned that the Chainalysis report pointed out that traditional money launderers (criminals outside the cryptocurrency field) may also transfer their cash on the chain. Kim Grauer, head of research at Chainalysis, said that traditional money launderers began to use the encryption network to create a "large-scale money laundering infrastructure" to launder cash from non-encrypted fields.
Rather than originating from addresses associated with crypto scams, thefts, and ransomware attacks that Chainalysis flags on-chain, these transactions are more opaque and come from wallets not considered illicit. These funds flow across blockchains to exchanges using strategies that traditional financial compliance departments might flag, such as breaking them into whole numbers just below the KYC reporting threshold and then putting them back together.
Grauer added that most on-chain investigators have known for years that this situation has been a potential nuisance. However, she said the July report was Chainalysis' first attempt to document how large the trend of such activity is across the chain. The company found that the number is several orders of magnitude larger than even the known base of illegal transactions. When analyzing all transfers sent to exchanges in 2024, it found an excess of transactions worth just below the $10,000 mark, which is the threshold at which KYC rules take effect. [Original link]
