Crosschain Laundering Rises 200% in Two Years to $21B: Elliptic

At least $21.8 billion in illicit or high-risk crypto has flowed through crosschain swaps, up from $7 billion in 2023, according to estimates by UK-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Elliptic attributes 12% of those movements to North Korea.

Crosschain swaps were once a niche activity reserved for advanced traders and decentralized finance (DeFi) users, but they’ve evolved into a core component of money laundering. Illicit actors no longer simply send crypto through mixers or dump tokens on a single decentralized exchange (DEX). Nowadays, the…