A massive international investigation has cast a new shadow over the digital-asset industry, suggesting that the world’s biggest exchanges have quietly become highways for criminal finance.
Key Takeaways:
- Investigators traced about $28B in criminal funds moving freely through major crypto exchanges.
- Binance, OKX, and Bybit were identified as preferred channels for cybercrime and global scam networks.
- Binance allegedly continued receiving high-risk inflows even after its $4.3B settlement.
- Political ties and recent U.S. actions toward Binance have raised concerns that regulation could soften instead of tighten.
The findings come from a collaborative project involving the New York Times and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which analyzed two years of blockchain transfers and internal compliance documents.
What the reporters uncovered paints a bleak picture: billions of dollars generated through cyberattacks, social-engineering frauds, and transnational scam operations were able to move freely across mainstream trading platforms that are central to the global crypto economy. Instead of isolated abuse, investigators describe a system where criminal liquidity can be “absorbed” into legitimate markets with alarming efficiency.
Exchanges Were Not Randomly Selected — They Were Preferential Targets
The core of the report centers on Binance, OKX, and Bybit, not because the criminals stumbled upon them, but because these venues allegedly provided the fastest path to conversion into widely traded assets and stablecoins.
In some cases, networks linked to North Korean hacker collectives and Southeast Asia–based industrial-scale scam farms — including pig-butchering operations — reportedly funneled enormous volumes through these platforms before distributing them across brokers and stock exchanges worldwide.
Even After Penalties, the Flow Reportedly Continued
One of the most controversial elements uncovered by the investigation is not how the scheme began, but that it appears to have persisted even after public enforcement action.
Despite Binance paying a record $4.3 billion settlement and admitting to money-laundering and sanctions violations in the United States, investigators claim that the exchange went on to receive over $400 million from high-risk accounts, with a notable share linked to Cambodia’s Huione network — one of the hubs associated with forced-labor scam compounds.
Political Ripple Effect Raises Regulatory Alarm
The findings carry an even heavier geopolitical twist. The report notes two recent developments — President Donald Trump’s signing of a $2 billion cooperation agreement with Binance and his pardon of Changpeng Zhao — that have sparked unease among analysts.
Critics fear that the optics of strengthened ties between Washington and the world’s largest exchange may be interpreted as a signal that regulatory pressure on the industry’s dominant players could soften, even as illicit flows remain rampant.
Regulatory Fallout Seems Inevitable
Whether governments lean toward enforcement or partnership, the tone among policy specialists interviewed in the investigation is almost uniform: the era of lax oversight is coming to an end. With the report documenting roughly $28 billion in criminal capital entering the exchange ecosystem in two years, global watchdogs are expected to push for cross-border supervision, stricter onboarding standards, and real-time monitoring of high-risk transfers.
In short: the story isn’t just about one exchange — it’s about a digital-asset framework that still struggles to defend itself against the world’s most organized financial-crime networks.
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