The top darknet markets in 2026 and the hidden exposure risks they create for licensed exchanges. Learn how to protect your business.
Executive Summary
On October 28–29, Yulia Murat, together with Lex Fisun, CEO and Co-Founder of Global Ledger, joined the 9th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Cryptoassets in Vienna, hosted by UNODC and organised by Europol and the Basel Institute on Governance.
The conference brought together regulators, law enforcement agencies, and industry experts to explore how real-time data, intelligence sharing, and risk-based supervision can strengthen global resilience against crypto-enabled crime.
This PDF summarises the insights Yulia Murat shared during her session “How Crypto Supercharges Money Laundering and Strategies to Keep Up.” Yulia spoke about how speed has become a defining threat in the digital era, supported by findings from Global Ledger’s 2025 report on how fast crypto is laundered.
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Event Context
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Insights Shared by Yulia Murat
Based on the findings, Yulia Murat highlighted the core challenges crypto businesses, CEXs, and regulators face today.
Speed is the new primary threat
Stolen assets often reach exchanges within minutes, far faster than alerting mechanisms. There is a critical time gap between an incident and industry-wide awareness.
Image 1. The speed of crypto laundering
If funds are already in flow before the hack is publicly reported, then investigators and compliance teams have a significant time-related disadvantage.
CEXs are the most attractive targets
Centralised exchanges (CEXs) are the most attractive targets as high-value single points of failure, accounting for about 54% of total losses.
Hackers continue to use a broad mix of techniques. That is, incident types are diverse, but the numbers are heavily skewed by the Bybit hack, which inflated malicious approval cases. Other leading categories include key compromises and rug pulls.
Image 2. Targeted entity types and amounts lost visualisation
Main crypto laundering techniques
Chain-hopping, cash-outs via limited KYC CEXs, DeFi use, and mixer services are the most common laundering methods in 2025. But surprisingly, hackers laundered 4.4x more via bridges than mixers in H1’25, according to the same report.
Key Takeaways
Speed as a weapon
Speed has become the defining threat, with stolen assets often reaching exchanges within minutes.
CEXs remain the prime attack targets
Centralised exchanges remain the primary targets, representing more than half of all recorded losses.
Cross-chain movement is the new blind spot
Cross-chain movements are the new blind spot, making it harder to distinguish legitimate from illicit flows.
Recommended Solutions
Real-time tech-driven intelligence sharing
Tech-enabled collaboration between VASPs, FIUs, and regulators.
Automated real-time alerts
Notifications in seconds, not hours or days.
Risk-based tech-enabled controls and supervision
Dynamic scoring, proactive escalation flows, and continuous monitoring.
