Cryptocurrency usage is surging in the United States. You wouldn’t know that from the number of federal examiners tasked with supervising the industry for anti-money-laundering (AML) compliance though. 

Last year, the number of supervisory officials at the IRS overseeing crypto firms and other money services businesses (MSBs) for AML compliance shrunk to the lowest level since at least 2017, according to new reporting by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which cited federal data obtained through a public-records request. 

A total of 139 IRS officials were charged in 2025 with overseeing all regulated crypto businesses as well as the vast number of MSBs offering services such as money transmission and check cashing across the nation, ICIJ said. That total represents a 33 percent drop from 2024, when the IRS had a total of 208 agents overseeing the sector. 

Agency officials, who have long complained about staffing shortages and the need for greater funding to fill the agency’s ranks, are now struggling to supervise a growing and highly complex set of financial institutions involved in crypto-payments, according to the report. 

“What’s notable is that this contraction appears to be happening while the regulated crypto and fintech ecosystem has grown dramatically in scale, transaction volume, product complexity, and risk exposure,” Christina Rea, an AML expert who counsels crypto businesses on compliance exams, told the news outlet. 

“Compared to 2017 and 2018, today’s firms are larger, more interconnected with traditional financial institutions, and operating far more sophisticated platforms, and yet examiner resources appear to have decreased rather than expanded,” Rea told ICIJ.

The IRS cutbacks align with similar reductions of supervisory staff across other federal agencies, Erica Hanichak, deputy director at the FACT Coalition, said in the report. 

“This sends the signal that the U.S. is open to dirty money,” he told ICIJ. 

Read more at ICIJ