Data reveals
Recent tracking of 151 black-related addresses found: the involvement rate of cross-chain bridges has surged! Although the amount per transaction has not peaked, new trends in two-time cross-chain money laundering paths have emerged — niche chains are becoming the “gold plating pool” for dirty USDT.
Three-step magical maneuver for money laundering
1️⃣ Dirty USDT distribution center: Tron leads the way
• Black market's first choice for collecting dirty money: Tron due to low Gas + pseudo-privacy features as cover
• Data evidence: over 60% of black-related USDT was “pre-washed” through Tron
2️⃣ Cross-chain evasion technique: jumping to second-tier chains
• Core transfer stations: Kava, Arbitrum, OpBNB, and other low liquidity chains
• On-chain evidence: over 75% of dirty money transfers across bridges are moved to smaller exchanges in ≤2 transfers
• The more niche, the safer? Second-tier chains with less than 10,000 daily active users have become disaster zones
3️⃣ Mixing coins for withdrawal: exploiting small exchange risk control loopholes
• Money laundering endpoint: CEX/On-Ramp platforms supporting niche chains
• Fatal weakness: 38% of small exchanges did not verify the source chain of funds (data source: ChainAegis Q2 2025 risk control report)
Three major pain points in regulation
🔸 Address morphing technique: change the contract address each time you cross a chain, traditional tracking requires more than 5 mapping tools
🔸 Bridge risk control exposure: Among the TOP 20 cross-chain bridges, only 3 verify blacklists in real-time
🔸 Small exchanges' AML display: 90% of the exchanges involved in the case did not trace the source of the first two layers of transfers
Risk control breakthrough points
✅ Lifeline for project parties
• Bridge projects must connect to issuer blacklist APIs (e.g., Circle, Tether)
• Case: After a bridge integrated real-time interception, the volume of black-related transactions dropped by 67% in a single month
✅ Warning light for exchanges
• Beware of sudden large deposits from “non-mainstream chains → mainstream chains” (e.g., Kava → BNB Chain)
• Mandatory Source-of-Fund investigation: must penetrate to the pre-cross-chain address
✅ Lifeline for users
• Use caution with “low Gas bridges”: black address pollution pools can cause normal users to be banned
• Recommended chain checking tools: Debank cross-chain path tracking + Arkham entity labeling
Data insights (key conclusions in bold)
Cross-chain money laundering accounts for only 3.8% of the current total dirty money, but the month-on-month growth rate has skyrocketed by 200% (2025H1 data). The regulatory blind spots of second-tier chains and cross-bridges are being exploited crazily by the black market.
Binance risk control practices
• Launched “three-layer penetration verification” for deposits on 13 niche chains
• Blocked cross-chain contaminated funds of $220M+ in Q2 2025
• User reminder: Using Binance Bridge automatically triggers address screening
