According to a TradingView news post referencing Cointelegraph, a report released by the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) reveals that U.S. banks processed approximately \$312 billion in illicit transactions for Chinese money laundering networks between 2020 and 2024, averaging over $62 billion per year.
FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki described the scale of these operations, stating that “these networks launder proceeds for Mexico-based drug cartels and are involved in other significant, underground money movement schemes within the United States and around the world.” The report also highlights that these Chinese criminal networks are implicated in "human trafficking and smuggling, healthcare fraud and elder abuse, and real estate money laundering," tallying $53.7 billion in suspicious real estate transactions.
Despite these findings, the article emphasizes that cryptocurrency continues to receive disproportionate blame for money laundering activities, particularly from pro-banking figures such as Senate Banking Committee member Elizabeth Warren, who insisted that “Bad actors are also increasingly turning to cryptocurrency to enable money laundering.”
However, data from global sources show that crypto’s share of illicit activity is comparatively small. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that over $2 trillion is laundered globally each year, whereas Chainalysis attributes just $189 billion in illicit crypto volumes over the past five years. As Angela Ang, head of policy and strategic partnerships at TRM Labs, remarked: “Illicit activity is but a small fraction of the crypto ecosystem. We estimate that it is less than 1 % of overall crypto volume.” Furthermore, she commented that “FinCEN’s findings align with a broader pattern – these underground banking networks function as a shadow financial system for organized crime worldwide, operating at the seams of banking systems.
