Will Bitcoin lose control over money laundering?

[Lembo69]

Money laundering is a means of legalizing illegal money. In the past, people used to use gold, real estate or food to hide black money. But now, since it is the digital era, people are now involved in such manipulations with digital money Bitcoin. Basically, they have chosen crypto for illegal activities. According to various reports, the amount of money laundering through Bitcoin reached about $ 82 billion in 2025. One thing we should know is that the more such activities are done with Bitcoin and the country where it takes place, the stricter the government will enact laws for Bitcoin. It may also happen that the government can take Bitcoin under its control like banks.

There are still many countries in the world where the government considers Bitcoin illegal. In the current scenario, our transactions should actually be kept clear and the government is getting stricter for such illegal activities and is trying to bring Bitcoin under their control. So it would be wise to keep a record of our p2p transactions and to avoid any mishaps with those who are involved in these illegal activities, a document of the transaction must be kept. Moreover, fraudsters have also become a bigger problem, they are snatching their invested money from new investors. Which has become a huge problem at present. So to stay free from such fraud, an investor has to be more careful and not fall victim to fraud. And his seed phrase should be stored in a safe place.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/crypto-money-laundering-hit-82-billion-2025-researchers-say-2026-01-27/

[Bitcoin-Forever]

Let's not make it as if money laundering is only happening in the Bitcoin network; people have been laundering money even through the use of Fiat currency over the years, and atrocities in this manner have always been on the rise.

Any form of fraudulent activity should be seen as a means of laundering money, and the next move you see these scammers make is to find a way of cleaning their dirty coins by any means. We shouldn't allow anyone to make it appear as if Bitcoin is intended for a form of money laundering when we are only to maintain our privacy with Bitcoin and enjoy financial freedom.

[promise444c5]

Bitcoin is actually the last thing a criminal trying to launder money will think of .. every on-chain transaction is transparent. Do you think it’s just like convert to BTC then send the BTC out and boom! the money is clean

You can’t launder money directly without using any additional third party tools/service  to obfuscate it, and that doesn’t mean it’s hidden, it’s just hard or almost impossible to trace using such. So can we conclude they are laundering money using Bitcoin? No.. it’s a bs claim.

[BIT-BENDER]

Well it's not like the traditional system is winning the battle against money laundering. Using Nigeria as a case study from as far back as the military regime the Fiat currency has been used to launder money in federal, state and down to local government. Bitcoin did not begin the money laundering situation in Nigeria or in any part of the world.
For me I think the fight against money laundering will be continually there will never be a time that the whole world will be absolutely free from money laundering.

In as much as it may seem that Bitcoin is the news space for this dubious act the Fiat currency is still the highest space for such, in some cases where Bitcoin has been used the case has been solved so is it with the Fiat currency. In a nut shell the fight may neve end.

[Mia Chloe]

Bitcoin is actually the last thing a criminal trying to launder money will think of .. every on-chain transaction is transparent. Do you think it’s just like convert to BTC then send the BTC out and boom! the money is clean

I'm afraid you're wrong lol... Bitcoin is pretty much the first step to launder money. It's stable enough has enough value and is decentralized. Come to think about it? What else could they ever use? Yeah yeah you can say privacy coins but in reality they come after it has been successfully stolen via bitcoin.

Stables can be frozen, at least most if em'. privacy coins on the other hand can be very difficult to get actually. We barely have enough trusted DEX providers.

[Tonimez]

Laundering money by bitcoin involves a tech savvy criminal element and also requires a traceable third party medium to launder the money. Let's say a P2P transaction is used to buy the bitcoin, the exchange is a centralised medium that can be monitored, the launderers details can easily be accessed so it's nothing to hide. That level of bitcoin transaction is highly traceable since Blockchain is public.

Money laundering is even easier with fiats because they can easily stack it in notes for years without being discovered by anyone but not bitcoin. A corrupt system is a corrupt system and money laundering will not stop until the government has decided to do something about it.

[Charles-Tim]

You failed to complete your topic.

Investigation the percentage of money laundered through most cryptocurrencies that are used for money laundering. USDT is mainly used for it, but you mentioned bitcoin.

Almost 95% of money laundered into crypto are in USDT.

[Dr.Bitcoin_Strange]

According to various reports, the amount of money laundering through Bitcoin reached about $ 82 billion in 2025. One thing we should know is that the more such activities are done with Bitcoin and the country where it takes place, the stricter the government will enact laws for Bitcoin. It may also happen that the government can take Bitcoin under its control like banks.

If you have time, read this UNODC article and you will realize that the amount of money that has been laundered through traditional financial system can not even be compared to that of bitcoin or crypto, you can read the data too by Chainanalysis. Now, despite the huge amount of laundered money that goes through traditional financial system, have they consider bank illegal, nope! Why then do some person talk as if bitcoin is the most used method.

 

There are still many countries in the world where the government considers Bitcoin illegal.

Not many countries considers bitcoin illegal or considers owning bitcoin illegal according, so your statement in not so true, although the distinction is that every country have different rules and laws on bitcoin but that doesn't actually mean that bitcoin is illegal in that country but they could have strict laws that prevents businesses from accepting bitcoin, depriving people from using bitcoin for payment, preventing banks from interacting with bitcoin or any crypto transaction just like Nigeria banks which warns against crypto transactions but that doesn't mean that individuals are banned from owning bitcoin and other crypto.

Based on my findings, there's no universally agreed number, so the exact number of country where bitcoin is completely illegal is not really so exact because some countries bans Bitcoin outright, while other country only restrict some activities and even those countries which we might say has ban bitcoin completely still have citizens using bitcoin but it's unknown to the government.

The important distinction is that banning Bitcoin does not always mean that simply owning Bitcoin is illegal.

[Hypnotizer]

~
Money laundering is a means of legalizing illegal money. In the past, people used to use gold, real estate or food to hide black money. But now, since it is the digital era, people are now involved in such manipulations with digital money Bitcoin. Basically, they have chosen crypto for illegal activities.

In this “digital era” there’re more sophisticated ways to launder money and even though crypto is used to launder some of these illegal funds, it’s the same for other big assets like Gold and real estate as you mentioned.

According to various reports, the amount of money laundering through Bitcoin reached about $ 82 billion in 2025. One thing we should know is that the more such activities are done with Bitcoin and the country where it takes place, the stricter the government will enact laws for Bitcoin. It may also happen that the government can take Bitcoin under its control like banks.

That’s not true.

“$82 billion was laundered using cryptocurrencies in 2025”  that’s what your source said, they didn’t explicitly said it was through “bitcoin” as you depict it. Maybe you’re using bitcoin to refer to the entire crypto space.  

 Btw bitcoin isn't the most dominant cryptocurrency used in money laundering… these launderers want to hide their footsteps as much as they can and bitcoin doesn’t allow that because everything is on the blockchain.

Also, the government can’t “take Bitcoin under their control like banks” it is not possible, they can only enforce strict KYC/AML rules for centralized entities dealing with bitcoin and people using them.

[Exitoral]

You kept saying under government control. Seems you have forgotten what Bitcoin truly is. The government can't bring Bitcoin under control. What I think you should mean was every business around Bitcoin will be brought under their control not Bitcoin itself. We all know Bitcoin is an independent digital money.

The government can't do anything to Bitcoin at all.

[MorganaX]

Bitcoin is actually the last thing a criminal trying to launder money will think of .. every on-chain transaction is transparent. Do you think it’s just like convert to BTC then send the BTC out and boom! the money is clean

I'm afraid you're wrong lol... Bitcoin is pretty much the first step to launder money. It's stable enough has enough value and is decentralized. Come to think about it? What else could they ever use? Yeah yeah you can say privacy coins but in reality they come after it has been successfully stolen via bitcoin.

Stables can be frozen, at least most if em'. privacy coins on the other hand can be very difficult to get, actually. We barely have enough trusted DEX providers.

Please enlightened me more on this your claim about Bitcoin being the first taught of choice when it comes to money laundering because am quite confused, I have heard a lot of cryptocurrency in general being a main route of laundering money but say using Bitcoin that's not common even if the image painted around the world makes it look easyto useg Bitcoin for such purposes.

And you talked about stability, how is Bitcoin more than stable than the other lots of stable coins out there in the market? And again promise444c5 already cleared on the possibility that would make using Bitcoin for such purpose difficult so please I would like to get insight

[Gozie51]

Bitcoin actually didn't have control of money laundering from the beginning because Satoshi didn't intend that anything about bitcoin should be private. That is why it is made public through the public ledger technology where everything transaction is traceable by running analysis on blockchain. So in the early days of bitcoin, like during 2-5 years of its creation, I think bitcoin technology wasn't really understood so also the law enforcement agencies didn't understand it and they didn't have laws to guide on it but presently, everyone seem to know that bitcoin is never meant for money laundering because the transactions are in blockchain. With that, government has made mixers red flag and most exchanges are KYC enabled. In other words, if you use any of these services to transact in btc, you are likely to be traced or flagged if you are laundering money.

So launders now use monero or usdt.

[Mia Chloe]

And you talked about stability, how is Bitcoin more than stable than the other lots of stable coins out there in the market? And again promise444c5 already cleared on the possibility that would make using Bitcoin for such purpose difficult so please I would like to get insight

First let's start with you answering the inline questions I asked in my reply you quoted. That aside bitcoin is stable for a laundering case infact you'll end up with a total amount more than the initial stolen amount over longer periods of times months or more... Besides how much has bitcoin price moved this month? Just a couple thousand dollars which obviously a hacker or scammer is prepared to let go.

Plus you think all the coin joins and mixer cases you see out there are for privacy alone? Laundering can't be 100% perfect but if a scammer online had a choice he'll start with bitcoin.

[Alvin_talk]

Well  according to United nations office on drugs and crimes (UNODC), the estimated amount of money laundered through traditional fiat system ranges from 800 billion dollars to 2 trillion dollars[1]. This is very high when compared to the figure you quoted in the OP about money laundered through bitcoin, so why haven't government enacted stricter regulations for fiat.

Generally, I do not see money laundering as an issue here since it is common with all currency. The truth is that some politicians are afraid bitcoin will expose their illicit acts, that's why they try to paint bitcoin black. If they place stricter regulations on Bitcoin, it is because they are scared bitcoin will expose their fraudulent activities and nothing else.

[1] https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/overview.html

[Sobz]

Even before bitcoin was created money laundering have always been in existence.  People do money laundering in different way and different things are being used as a tool it doesn't mean things that are been associated to money laundering are bad. Even if bitcoin seize to exist today their will still be money laundering.  Bitcoin doesn't not promote money laundering or any illegal activity, even the bank and cash that is being controlled by the government has something to do with money laundering and this doesn't make them bad.

[Sonia_123]

Not only in our country, money laundering happens everywhere, we are not the first neither is Bitcoin the first to be involved in money laundering if possible which I don't see happening, what about your local currency and others currencies mainly usdt used, being also a victim in our country has anything be done about it even if complained, we just have to understand that laundering Bitcoin will be more difficult than fiat since it can be done by hackers  and harden criminals but fiat laundering can be done by anyone.

 Bitcoin is a digital currency not fiat that can be seen always, it's transactions does not involve third party and it's block-chain. Fiat has the highest percentage of money laundering than Bitcoin because fiat has been for long unlike Bitcoin that was created 2009.

[Smartvirus]

Bitcoin wasn’t created for the purpose to resolve the issue with money laundering. Washing of money na something way don Dey since and e go continue to Dey thrive as, criminals no Dey ever stop to Dey innovative with methods to launder money.

Na why you go find certain facilities and services way Dey accept Bitcoin to get AML policies in place. Once they discover say, money way you Dey use run through their system was acquired illegally, you go just accept say, them go invoke the terms there and you fit loss that money.

Bitcoin no Dey fight money laundering, neither will it stop it. It would only serve the purpose of money and asset, that’s all.