The crypto money laundering ecosystem has grown dramatically in recent years, increasing from $10 billion in 2020 to over $82 billion in 2025, says Chainalysis in its latest report.
This substantial rise reflects the growing accessibility and liquidity of crypto, as well as a fundamental shift in how this laundering activity occurs and by whom.
The report reveals that Chinese-language money laundering networks (CMLNs) have increased their share of known illicit laundering activity to approximately 20 percent in 2025. This regional connection is further evidenced by the off-ramping patterns observed.
Six discrete services process $16.1 billion in inflows in 2025
Compared to other laundering endpoints, since 2020, inflows to identified Chinese-language money laundering networks grew 7,325 times faster than those to centralized exchanges, 1,810 times faster than those to decentralized finance (DeFi), and 2,190 times faster than intra-illicit on-chain flows.
While Chinese-language money laundering networks are by no means the only facilitator of on-chain crypto laundering, Chinese-language Telegram-based services now account for a disproportionate share of the attributed global on-chain money laundering landscape. In doing so, they process funds from a wide range of on- and off-chain criminal activity.
The report identified six discrete service types that make up the Chinese crypto money laundering ecosystem. Together, these services processed $16.1 billion in inflows in 2025. The number of active entities that comprise these networks has risen from a small handful only a few years ago to over 1,799 active on-chain wallets in 2025.
“The biggest change in Chinese money laundering networks in recent years is a rapid transition to crypto from reliance on informal value transfer systems like the traditional Black Market Peso or Fei Qian approaches to underground banking. Crypto offers an efficient way to discreetly move funds across borders without having to rely on the complex manual network of informal ledgers in various countries that used to be the norm,” said Chris Urben, Managing Director at Nardello & Co.
CMLN ecosystem processes almost $44 million per day
The speed to scale of these operations is equally concerning. The time it takes for each service type to process $1 billion since the first known address of its category receives funds reveals both a remarkably rapid time-to-scale and striking differences between service types.
Black U services reached this milestone in just 236 days, while running point brokers required 843 days and OTC services 1,136 days. Money mules (1,277 days) and money movement services (1,790 days) operate more slowly, while gambling insider services have yet to reach the billion-dollar threshold.
Overall, the Chinese-language money laundering ecosystem in 2025 is processing almost $44 million per day.
“Very rapidly, these networks have developed into multi-billion dollar cross-border operations offering efficient, value-for-money laundering services that suit the needs of transnational organized crime groups across Europe and North America. As to why these networks have developed so fast, the short answer is that they are an unforeseen consequence of the imposition of capital controls in China,” said Tom Keatinge, Director at the Center for Finance & Security (CFS) at RUSI.
Keatinge added that wealthy individuals seeking to move money out of China and evade these controls provide the impetus and liquidity pool needed to service organized crime groups based in the West. The professional enablers of this capital flight provide the services necessary to match these two independent yet mutually beneficial needs.
