On November 17, 2025, The New York Times (in collaboration with ICIJ) published an exposé titled “The Crypto Industry’s $28 Billion in ‘Dirty Money’.” The article paints a dramatic picture: as crypto goes mainstream (even President Trump’s family is involved), at least $28 billion from hackers, scammers, and cybercriminals allegedly flowed into major exchanges over the past two years. The insinuation is clear – despite industry claims of improved safeguards, crypto platforms like Binance and OKX are still magnets for illicit loot. The piece strings together everything from North Korean hackers and Cambodian crime syndicates to “pig butchering” romance scams, all funneled into the crypto ecosystem. If you felt a sense of déjà vu reading that, you’re not alone. The mainstream press and particularly The Times has settled on a familiar formula for crypto coverage: start with an eye-popping dollar figure of “dirty money,” add a dash of political intrigue, sprinkle in some heartbreaking scam victims, and conclude that the entire crypto industry is complicit or out of control. I do not think that anyone (serious) disagrees that illicit finance in crypto is a problem. But this regurgitated, boilerplate “expose” is both old and counterproductive.
Yes, there are dirty dealings in crypto, and, yes, they should be discussed. However, no, they’re not unique to crypto – nor are they as rampant (proportionally speaking) as headlines suggest. By inflating the spectacle of crypto crime while ignoring broader context, pieces like this may actually undermine meaningful criticism and sound policy.
Sensational Numbers Without Context
The NYT article’s centerpiece is the $28 billion figure of illicit crypto flowing into exchanges in two years. Twenty-eight billion dollars of “dirty money” certainly sounds horrific. But what’s missing is any sense of scale or comparison. How big is $28B relative to the overall crypto market? How does it compare to dirty money in traditional finance? On these points, the article is conspicuously silent.
For perspective, global crypto transaction volume is enormous – Chainalysis estimates it at tens of trillions annually. In that context, illicit addresses received just 0.14% of total crypto transaction volume in 2024, down from 0.61% in 2023. In fact, the share of crypto activity tied to any crime has historically stayed below 1%. The NYT’s $28B figure, spanning 2024-2025, is roughly on par with that trend (Chainalysis pegged known illicit crypto flows at ~$46B in 2023).
Now consider the traditional financial system: by all accounts, it dwarfs crypto in both size and criminal abuse. The United Nations estimates that 2–5% of global GDP is laundered money – that’s $800 billion to $2 trillion every year sloshing through banks, shell companies, cash smuggling, etc. for illicit purposes. A recent Nasdaq report put the figure even higher, at $3.1 trillion in 2023 alone flowing through the global financial system from fraud, drug trafficking, human trafficking, and other crimes. In comparison, the dirty crypto flows that the Times is so alarmed about amount to a tiny fraction of that. Even if there’s more illicit crypto activity yet to be uncovered, it’s likely one or two orders of magnitude smaller than the river of dirty money coursing through fiat channels.
Why doesn’t the Times mention any of this? Providing such context would greatly change the reader’s perception. $28 billion over two years, in a vacuum, sounds like a scandalous sum implicating an entire industry. But $14B per year is almost a rounding error next to the trillions in traditional money laundering. It’s also a drop in the bucket relative to the legitimate crypto economy. In 2024, known illicit crypto transactions totaled ~$40–50B; meanwhile the overall crypto market topped $2 trillion in market cap and saw hundreds of trillions in transaction volume. The vast majority of crypto usage is above-board – trading, investing, payments, gaming, etc. Indeed, by percentage, illicit crypto activity remains minuscule (on the order of 0.1–0.5%).
None of this is to minimize the harm done by that illicit 0.1%. Those $28B in tainted funds correspond to real hacks, scams, and extortions that devastated thousands of victims. We should absolutely care and crack down. But the Times’ failure to contextualize the number is telling. It suggests an intent to sensationalize rather than inform. A balanced take might have noted, for instance, that crypto’s share of global illicit finance is still very small – and that criminals continue to favor traditional methods (cash, banks, trade-based laundering) by far. Instead, the article leans into a narrative that crypto exchanges are awash in crooks’ cash, implicitly far more than other financial institutions. That narrative is misleading.
Law Enforcement Can Track Crypto – That’s How We Know About the $28B
Ironically, the very ability of investigators and journalists to trace $28B in “dirty money” is a testament to crypto’s transparency, not its opacity. The article itself acknowledges that researchers identified illicit funds on exchanges by analyzing public blockchain records and known criminal wallet addresses. Blockchains are public ledgers – every transaction is recorded openly for anyone to inspect. This is a double-edged sword for criminals. Yes, they can move funds pseudonymously without an immediate bank gatekeeper. But they also leave a permanent trail of breadcrumbs. With modern blockchain analytics, illicit actors stick out like a sore thumb (if you know what patterns to look for). As one crypto tracing expert noted, law enforcement can often “identify and disrupt” crypto-based schemes because of the blockchain’s traceable properties, not in spite of them.
Consider some recent examples absent from the NYT piece: U.S. authorities have seized billions in stolen crypto by following on-chain trails (from the Colonial Pipeline ransomware Bitcoin ransom to large chunks of the 2016 Bitfinex hack loot). Global investigators are now adept at following the money on-chain, mapping out wallets associated with groups like North Korea’s Lazarus Group or various darknet markets. In the article, investigators tracked $900M of Ether stolen by Lazarus to deposit accounts on Binance simply by observing the flow through swapping services. That wasn’t because Binance invited them – it was because you can’t hide a transfer of that size on Ethereum’s public ledger. Likewise, the Times/ICIJ team traced Cambodian firm Huione’s wallets depositing over $600M combined into Binance and OKX. How? Huione helpfully published some of its wallet addresses, and from there the blockchain does the rest – every incoming transfer and outgoing deposit is visible with a few clicks. This transparency is a nightmare for criminals attempting to launder funds at scale. As Chainalysis reported, direct transfers from known illicit entities to exchanges have actually plummeted (from ~40% of illicit crypto inflows in 2021 down to ~15% in 2025) as criminals resort to more convoluted paths to evade detection. They know exchanges are being watched.
Yet the Times article’s framing doesn’t give crypto any credit for this built-in transparency. It doesn’t highlight that, unlike fiat bank transfers done in secret, crypto’s open ledgers let third parties (not just governments) uncover suspicious flows. On the contrary, the piece maintains a tone that crypto is a shadowy free-for-all – “overwhelming” law enforcement with crime. One quoted source claims “it can’t go on like this.” But if anything, the data suggests law enforcement is coping better: analytics firms and inter-agency task forces have ramped up, and many criminals are getting caught or frozen out precisely because their crypto transactions are traceable.
None of this is to say crypto makes law enforcement’s job easy – criminals do employ obfuscation tricks (mixers, privacy coins, layering funds across thousands of addresses). But it’s far from the untraceable Wild West often portrayed. In fact, even the scam stories the Times tells demonstrate law enforcement reach. A Minnesota father’s $1.5M loss to a pig-butchering scam was partly traced to Binance accounts; Binance, when subpoenaed, provided KYC info (which turned out to be likely stolen identities of unwitting “money mules”). A Canadian victim’s funds were traced to OKX deposit accounts, which the exchange eventually froze (months later) after recognizing suspicious patterns. These anecdotes show both the possibilities and limits of enforcement. Crypto makes it possible to follow the digital paper trail, but cross-border crime is still hard to bust at the source. The framing, however, skips straight to blaming the exchanges and “crypto industry” writ large, rather than noting how such investigations are even possible.
Criminals Prefer Cash (and Weak Links in the Chain)
A crucial missing piece in the NYT article is what happens after the “dirty money” reaches a crypto exchange. The story ominously notes that once funds are on a major exchange, the trail goes cold to outsiders – we can’t see the off-ramps. True enough: once a criminal converts their crypto to dollars or moves it off the platform, on-chain analysis ends. But that’s the point: to actually enjoy their loot, criminals ultimately need to convert crypto into traditional money or goods. Crypto is rarely the end of the road; it’s a means to an end (moving value) before cashing out. And those cash-out points are where traditional financial channels often come back into play.
The Times piece briefly mentions “crypto-to-cash desks” – unofficial money changers operating out of back rooms from Kyiv to Dubai, where you can swap Bitcoin for a bag of cash, no questions asked. These are essentially unlicensed money transmitters that use exchanges as liquidity sources. But notice, criminals using these services are implicitly admitting that cash is king. They can’t spend millions in Bitcoin easily on the ground, so they withdraw and physically launder it into dollars, euros, renminbi, etc. In 2024, such crypto-to-cash operations processed an estimated $2.5B in Hong Kong alone, and funneled over $500M into Binance, OKX, and Bybit, according to the article’s data. That is concerning – and it highlights that the weak link is often at the interface of crypto and fiat. These money shops operate much like traditional hawala or black-market exchangers that criminals have used for decades with cash. Again, nothing new under the sun – just a new technological flavor.
Even without informal cash brokers, consider North Korea’s Lazarus hackers. They steal $1.5B in crypto; what for? Ultimately, to buy weapons, luxuries, or fund operations – all of which require fiat or sanctioned goods. So they use mixers and intermediaries, convert to Bitcoin, then likely find ways to trade Bitcoin for cash or sanctioned commodities via corrupt networks. The crypto is just a conduit. Similarly, the article’s example of drug traffickers and terror groups using Binance (from the 2023 DOJ case) ignores that those groups primarily deal in cash and commodities; crypto was a sideline that got them caught (leading to Binance’s $4.3B settlement). The U.S. Treasury’s 2022 National Money Laundering Risk Assessment stated plainly that while illicit crypto use is growing, it remains “far below that of fiat currency and more traditional methods” for money launderingcato.org. In other words: the average criminal still prefers suitcases of cash, wire transfers through opaque shell companies, and smurfed bank deposits – with crypto only a small piece of the pie.
Why does this matter? Because an article that screams about billions in “crypto dirty money” but ignores the far larger context of dirty money everywhere can mislead readers into thinking crypto is the primary vehicle for global crime. That simply isn’t true, and harping on the crypto angle alone risks distracting from broader anti-money-laundering efforts that should encompass all financial channels. It can also lead to knee-jerk policies singling out crypto, while traditional institutions (where most laundering still happens) get less scrutiny. Effective criticism would ask: how do we improve both crypto and non-crypto AML enforcement collaboratively? The NYT article instead tells a one-sided tale: crypto = the new Wild West of crime, full stop.
The Framing Problem: From Trump to “Crypto Boogeyman”
The Times journalists also chose to frame this issue in a heavily politicized and sensational way. The article’s opening line links the surge of dirty money to President Trump “championing crypto” and making the U.S. “crypto capital.” It points out that Trump founded a crypto startup (World Liberty Financial), pardoned Binance’s founder CZ after the DOJ case, and dialed back a DOJ crypto enforcement team. The clear subtext: crypto crime is flourishing in part because of Trump’s crypto-friendly stance. This makes for a juicy narrative (powerful villain enables shadowy industry), but is it a fair or accurate framing?
One could easily counter that crypto-related crime was thriving long before Trump re-emerged on the scene. North Korean hackers didn’t start stealing crypto in 2025; they’ve been at it for years (the Lazarus Group’s infamous $600M Axie Infinity hack was in early 2022, under a very different administration). “Pig butchering” scams have been proliferating since at least 2021, fleecing victims worldwide regardless of who’s in power. Binance’s lax compliance issues date back to its early rapid growth in 2017–2020 – and it did face a crackdown and major penalty in 2023. By the time Trump took office (again), many of these horses had already left the barn. The article itself acknowledges that even after Binance’s guilty plea in 2023, it continued to receive suspect funds in 2024–25. Is that because of Trump’s policies, or because global criminals keep probing any available weakness? It’s highly debatable.
Tying the dirty money headline to Trump might grab clicks (he’s something of a . . . polarizing figure), but it arguably undermines the seriousness of the issue by reducing it to partisan framing. Readers who support Trump or crypto might reflexively dismiss the entire report as just another biased hit piece (“NYT FUD”, as crypto Twitter would say). Meanwhile, readers who dislike Trump might walk away thinking the solution is simply to elect a more anti-crypto leader, and – poof – the illicit flows will vanish. Both reactions miss the nuanced truth. The fight against crypto-based crime, much like the fight against money laundering broadly, transcends any single administration or nation. It requires global coordination, smarter enforcement techniques, and yes, cooperation from the crypto industry itself. No quick political fix will solve that. By framing it as a quasi-political scandal, the Times invites distraction and finger-pointing, rather than consensus on actual remedies.
For years now, mainstream outlets (oftentimes with The Times leading) have run story after story hyping the evils of cryptocurrency – be it environmental destruction, criminal usage, or scam du jour. To be clear, many of those concerns have some legitimacy. But the coverage is so consistently negative and so rarely balanced by any positive or even neutral developments, that it starts to read like a moral panic. After so many alarmist crypto pieces, the intended audience either tunes out (seeing it as the boy crying wolf yet again), or overreacts. Neither outcome leads to informed, productive discourse.
Undermining Meaningful Criticism
The tragedy of this skewed framing is that it actually undermines meaningful criticism of the crypto industry – the kind of criticism that might lead to real improvements. By casting the issue as “$28B of dirty crypto, oh no!” and implying the entire industry is complicit, the article puts crypto defenders on the defensive and encourages crypto skeptics to cheer from the sidelines. The middle ground – where honest critique and collaborative problem-solving live – gets lost.
A more meaningful critique would have asked tough questions like: Why are major exchanges still seeing this volume of illicit inflows? Are their compliance systems failing, or are criminals simply that good at evading KYC? The Times piece gives only a cursory look at this. It notes Binance “could not block incoming transactions” (true, no exchange can prevent someone from sending them crypto) and that both Binance and OKX claim to freeze or investigate once suspicious deposits are identified. But we don’t learn how often they succeed in stopping the launderers versus how often they miss them. Instead of digging into the efficacy of exchanges’ anti-money-laundering programs, the article leaves an impression that these companies are essentially turning a blind eye for profit (citing an academic’s quote that exchanges have “incentive to allow this activity” for the fees). That may be a suspicion, but it’s not a demonstrated fact in the reporting. A serious investigation could have explored, for example, whether exchanges improved their detection after their run-ins with regulators, or whether certain known bad wallets kept popping up without action.
Another meaningful angle: how can regulators and the crypto industry work together to close the gaps? The article briefly mentions the DOJ’s policy shift (focusing on prosecuting criminals using crypto rather than the platforms themselves). This was framed as the administration “weakening” crypto enforcement. But there’s a reasonable debate here: is it more effective to go after the facilitators (exchanges) with big fines, or to devote resources to catching the actual perpetrators (hackers, scammers)? Ideally both, but resources are finite. A nuanced critique might acknowledge that even the toughest KYC/AML on exchanges won’t catch everything – especially when criminals use stolen identities or foreign intermediaries – so law enforcement needs to go to the source. Conversely, it could argue that letting exchanges off easy creates moral hazard. These are complex policy questions worth discussion, but the NYT piece just implies the Trump DOJ went soft to favor the industry, end of story. That’s simplistic. It doesn’t help readers grapple with the real trade-offs in crypto regulation.
By “crying wolf” with giant scary numbers and politicized framing, mainstream outlets risk alienating the very people in the crypto community who do care about cleaning up the industry. Many crypto insiders acknowledge that scams and illicit finance are problems that need addressing (after all, fraud and theft hurt the reputation of the entire space). There is support for reasonable regulations and better security – if done in a fair, informed way. But when the media narrative is constantly “Crypto bad! Crypto criminals everywhere!” the industry tends to close ranks and get defensive. Constructive criticism gets written off as just another attack to fend off. We end up in this polarized shouting match: one side overstates the negatives, the other side denies any problems, and progress stalls.
A Call for Balance
It’s high time we move past the stale trope of crypto as the boogeyman hiding “dirty money” under every rock. The reality is more mundane: Yes, criminals use crypto. They also use phones, cars, banks, and cash. The job of society is to mitigate that misuse while still allowing technology and commerce to thrive. That requires clear-eyed analysis and proportional responses – not moral panic.
Articles like the NYT’s “$28B in ‘Dirty Money’” grab attention, but they don’t truly enlighten the public. They undermine their own cause by stretching facts to fit a sensational narrative. As one policy institute aptly noted, “Exaggerating the connection between crypto and crime” helps neither law enforcement nor the billions of legitimate crypto userscato.org. Inflating the risks while ignoring the benefits (or context) “will not lead to sound policy”cato.org. In fact, it may lead to clumsy crackdowns or missed targets, while the real criminals adapt and continue their schemes.
The crypto industry, for its part, must continue improving its defenses. Exchanges should share information on bad actors, invest in better screening tools, and be quicker to freeze and report suspicious funds. Projects should build compliance and security into their platforms. And yes, when companies fail egregiously, regulators should hold them accountable. There has been progress – major exchanges now routinely work with law enforcement (Binance says it handled 65,000+ law enforcement requests last year) and have significantly beefed up compliance teams. But more can be done, especially at the margins (unregulated offshore players, peer-to-peer marketplaces, etc.). The goal should be to make crypto an extremely unwelcome place for illicit activity – something even Binance publicly claims to want. That won’t happen if the community buries its head in the sand; nor will it happen if regulators treat the entire industry as a scourge.
In the end, combating illicit finance in crypto (and beyond) is a shared challenge. We need reporting that holds everyone accountable – the industry, the regulators, and the criminals – with fairness and facts. Unfortunately, the “dirty money” article delivers more heat than light, more narrative than nuance. It may sell papers (or clicks), but it doesn’t advance the conversation. The crypto world is moving fast and evolving; it deserves criticism, but not caricature. Crying “crypto wolf” repeatedly is getting old. It’s time for a more balanced approach that can actually lead to solutions – before the real wolves exploit the discord to slip through our defenses.
Written by David Lopez Kurtz