Crypto

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. 

Binance fired members of its internal compliance investigations team after they raised concerns that Iran-linked entities may have moved more than $1 billion through the crypto exchange, according to new reporting by Fortune. 

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) added Kuwait and Papua New Guinea to its “grey list” of countries under closer monitoring, saying both have pledged to fix weaknesses in their safeguards against illicit money flows. 

Cryptocurrency flows to suspected human trafficking services surged 85% in 2025, reaching hundreds of millions of dollars across identified services.

Paxful Holdings Inc., a peer-to-peer virtual currency trading platform, was sentenced on Tuesday to pay a $4-million criminal penalty after pleading guilty to conspiracies tied to illegal prostitution, anti-money-laundering failures and transmitting criminal proceeds.

Drug cartels and other criminal groups are increasingly using cryptocurrencies and a growing “gig” workforce of freelance brokers and couriers to launder cash and evade law enforcement, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.

The European Commission has proposed a blanket ban on cryptocurrency transactions linked to Russia and new trade restrictions on Kyrgyzstan in an effort to close loopholes used by Moscow to fund its war in Ukraine. 

The Council of Europe’s anti-money-laundering body on Tuesday published a new report on how criminals exploit crypto-assets to launder illicit proceeds, fund terrorism, and evade sanctions.

Last month, the dollar-pegged stablecoin created by the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, reached an important milestone: the total circulation of USD1 exceeded $5 billion for the first time, ranking it among the world’s top cryptocurrencies, according to recent reporting by The New York Times. 

Brazil’s Finance Ministry has urged the country’s central bank to tighten regulation around pooled and escrow accounts that authorities say are being used by bad actors to circumvent asset freezes, according to Reuters.