Andrew Aleksandrov

In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice and FinCEN announced parallel enforcement actions against Paxful, once described as "the world's largest P2P marketplace."Between February 2015 and April 2023, the platform processed more than 50 million trades worth several billion dollars — and along the

Skeptics of cryptocurrency often cite concerns about crime as the reason they don't trust digital funds. Although it's true that cryptocurrency is not regulated in the same way as fiat currencies, there are strict standards in place that help prevent illicit activity. The Financial Action Task

Most crypto companies treat AML training as a box to check. A one-time onboarding session or an annual slide deck that employees click through without absorbing. In practice, this approach creates one of the most common and most consequential compliance gaps that regulators, auditors, and banking partners identify during

Opening an OKX business account is not only about submitting company documents and filling out a registration form. For crypto startups, OTC desks, payment companies, funds, and any business that holds or processes crypto as part of its operations, the harder part is what comes after the initial form: proving

An AML Audit is the single most consequential test of whether a crypto company's compliance program works — not on paper, but in practice. It is the point at which regulators, external auditors, or banking partners examine whether your KYC Procedures, Transaction Monitoring Systems, Risk Assessments, and Reporting workflows

Most guides on opening a Binance corporate account focus on registration steps and interface navigation. But for crypto businesses, OTC desks, payment providers, VASPs, and trading firms, the real challenge is different: it is about the compliance layer—the documents, the questionnaires, and the evidence of internal controls that a

A crypto wallet on a phone or in a browser often looks like any other finance app — there is a balance at the top, a "Send" button below it, and a list of recent transactions underneath. The difference sits one layer down. What a user actually controls is

Financing criminal operations and laundering their proceeds are events that take place often despite legislation present to prevent their occurrences. Criminals are finding gaps left while securing financial systems, using them to move illegal funds through. The flow of such funds ultimately ruins the integrity of the systems and institutions

Customer Due Diligence (CDD) is the cornerstone of modern Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC). In essence, CDD is the process by which banks, fintechs, and other businesses identify who their customers are, verify that information, assess the customer’s risk profile, and continuously monitor the relationship.

As crypto markets expand and transaction volumes grow, the complexity of identifying suspicious activity within blockchain ecosystems increases. What was once a niche technical exercise has matured into a structured discipline: cryptocurrency investigations now involve coordinated workflows that span analytics, legal documentation, and cross-institutional coordination. It is important to

The cryptocurrency industry is known to make it to the news cycles frequently because of negative happenings like hacks and attacks. As a result, several cryptocurrency users face situations where their funds get depleted from their wallets. Unfortunately, it is only in the aftermath of their loss that most realize

Intro Look up any authorised European crypto firm on ESMA's public register and you will find a column that most licensing conversations skip entirely: which specific services that firm is permitted to provide. Not "crypto licence." Not "exchange licence." A named subset drawn from

Summary This article explores the role of Know Your Customer (KYC) as a foundational pillar of the cryptocurrency sector. It details how identity verification has transitioned from an optional practice to a mandatory legal requirement for regulated crypto businesses. Definition and Purpose. KYC is the process of identifying and verifying

Cryptocurrency is replacing fiat money in several aspects. It was first introduced as a digital currency to replace fiat and aid individuals in peer-to-peer transfers by eliminating centralized entities that hold people's money and oversee their transactions. Crypto users get complete control over their funds and

In 2026, the EU’s MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) Regulation will be fully applied across all member states. Crypto businesses operate under the complete set of MiCA requirements, supported by the final standards issued by ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority) and the EBA (European Banking Authority).  This regulation

A bank account application for a crypto company succeeds or fails based on how clearly the company can explain and document its risk profile. That is the real dynamic behind bank onboarding for crypto businesses—not whether banks “like crypto,” but whether the bank’s compliance team can understand and

In 2025, over $3.4 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen through hacks and exploits — a 24% increase over 2024. Q1 2025 alone accounted for $1.64 billion, the worst single quarter on record, driven largely by the $1.5 billion Bybit breach. North Korean state-backed actors stole at least

Crypto businesses often search for “crypto travel rule” and “FATF Travel Rule” because they need a single, authoritative baseline for the global standard before they begin mapping anything to a specific jurisdiction. The  (FATF) explains that its Standards comprise the Recommendations, their Interpretive Notes (page 31), and the applicable Glossary

This article is not about phishing links, wallet drainers, or seed phrase theft. It is about a different and more financially damaging category of crypto fraud: investment projects that promise returns through trading bots, AI arbitrage, staking, cloud mining, liquidity pools, token presales, or referral-based models—and either cannot