On-chain illicit funds top $75B but are increasingly hard to cash out

The volume of illicit funds on-chain has surpassed $75 billion, Binance Research reported via X. According to the research, these funds have increased annually since 2016, growing by 28% in 2025 from the previous year. However, they account for less than 1% of total transaction volume, and cashing them out is structurally blocked by surveillance systems. Binance Research explained that wallets are detected during the Know Your Transaction (KYT) phase, while withdrawal paths are blocked at the Know Your Customer (KYC) stage. Furthermore, stablecoin issuers can freeze funds, and law enforcement agencies can conduct direct seizures. The firm added that even the largest mixers, which are tools designed to anonymize transactions, have a daily processing capacity of around $10 million, meaning it would take over 100 days to launder $1 billion. While more than 80% of these illicit funds have been moved from their initial addresses, every transaction path remains on the ledger, ensuring that tracking is never broken.