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11/07/2026 8:43 pm
TL;DR: Cryptocurrency is reshaping money laundering, fraud, DeFi exploitation, ransomware and cross-chain criminal activity, while investigators increasingly use blockchain transparency and analytics to trace assets and cases, according to Chainalysis. The governance issue is no longer whether crypto is criminally useful, but whether controls, investigation workflows and identity assurance can keep pace.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Chainalysis: the 2026 Crypto Crime Report
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should organisations reduce crypto scam losses before transfers happen?
A: Organisations should place stronger verification before authorisation, not after loss.
Q: Why do blockchain analytics and identity evidence need to be connected?
A: Blockchain data shows where value moved, but identity evidence explains who initiated the action, from which environment and under what trust conditions.
Q: What do security teams get wrong about crypto compliance and fraud?
A: Teams often treat compliance and fraud as separate workstreams, but they usually fail together when identity evidence is weak or fragmented.
Practitioner guidance
- Strengthen account assurance for high-risk flows Require step-up verification and tighter recovery controls for wallets, exchanges and money movement workflows where account takeover would directly enable theft or laundering.
- Correlate identity and transaction evidence Link login, device, recovery and transfer events in the same case workflow so investigators can move from alert to attribution without manual stitching.
- Harden approval paths for value movement Add behavioural checks and secondary review for transfer authorisation, especially where trust has been built over multiple interactions before the final action.
What's in the full report
Chainalysis's full report covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- Case studies showing how laundering networks adapt across chains, services and intermediaries
- Data-driven breakdowns of scam, DeFi and ransomware patterns that support practitioner benchmarking
- Investigator workflows for tracing assets, building cases and coordinating recovery across teams
- Source analysis on how blockchain analytics changes the pace and quality of financial crime response
👉 Read Chainalysis's 2026 Crypto Crime Report for analysis of laundering, scams and ransomware →
Crypto crime trends in 2026: what fraud and security teams need?
Explore further
11/07/2026 9:12 pm
Crypto crime is now an identity problem as much as a payments problem. The report describes criminal use of scams, laundering and cross-chain activity, but the enabling weakness often sits earlier in the chain: weak account assurance, poor recovery controls and insufficient behavioural verification. That is why fraud teams and IAM teams need a shared operating model. When identity assurance fails, crypto becomes just another high-speed monetisation layer.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Who should own fraud response when crypto scams cross platform and law-enforcement boundaries?
A: Ownership should sit with a coordinated response model that includes security, investigations, compliance, and legal teams. Internal analysts need clear authority to preserve evidence, escalate suspicious patterns, and coordinate external referrals. The key is documented handoff, because identity abuse in crypto often spans multiple jurisdictions and actors.
👉 Read our full editorial: Crypto crime is evolving faster than traditional fraud controls
