MENLO PARK, Calif.—A new report reveals that $2.5 billion worth of Bitcoin has been laundered through cryptocurrency exchanges, with a huge chunk of it ending up in countries with weak anti-money-laundering (AML) regulations.
The report from CipherTrace monitored some 45 million transactions from the top 20 cryptocurrency exchanges in the world between January 2009 and September 2018, Crypto Globe reported.
The study found that 97% of crypto funds laundered through these exchanges ended up in countries with weak, permissive or inefficient anti-money laundering laws. It also found that exchanges in countries with these inefficient AML regulations received 36 times more bitcoin from suspicious individuals or groups.
“In such jurisdictions, it is possible for cybercriminals to channel funds through platforms that likely don’t identify their customers through KYC/AML checks, potentially making transactions going through them untraceable,” Crypto Globe said.
The report shows that about 380,000 BTC (about $2.35 billion) was laundered through unregulated exchanges.
“Being easier to access, unregulated exchanges now happen to be some of the biggest in the world and 95% of outgoing payments to criminals have been reported to come from them,” Crypto Globe noted.