What The Ledger Shows
Crypto transactions are recorded permanently on a public ledger. That means money that a hacker or a scammer moves onto an exchange can, in principle, be traced years later -- which is exactly what a joint investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, The New York Times, and 36 other newsrooms did. Their analysis found at least $28 billion tied to illicit activity flowed onto major crypto exchanges over the two years ending in 2025: stolen funds from North Korean state hackers, proceeds of romance and investment scams targeting American retirees, and money moved through Cambodia-based criminal network Huione, which the U.S. Treasury Department formally flagged in May 2026 as a "critical node" for cyberheists and scams targeting Americans.
Binance, the world's largest exchange, received more than $400 million from Huione's own published wallet addresses between July 2024 and July 2025 -- and continued receiving Huione deposits (at least $77 million more) for over two months after Treasury's May 2026 designation. OKX received over $220 million from the same Huione wallets, including $161 million after the designation. Separately, five Binance deposit accounts took in an unexplained $900 million spike in Ether during February 2025 -- the same window North Korea's Lazarus Group was laundering the proceeds of its $1.5 billion Bybit hack, the largest theft in crypto history, through a currency-swapping service. A crypto-tracking firm that reviewed the flows called the stolen Ether "the only conceivable source" for that spike.
The Company Line
Binance's spokeswoman told the Times the exchange "cannot block or reverse incoming transactions" but reacts once suspicious deposits are flagged, calling that reaction "the true measure of compliance." OKX's chief legal officer said the exchange applied "enhanced transaction monitoring" to a Huione-linked wallet even before the May designation and paused Huione interactions in October. Neither company disputes that the deposits arrived; both frame the question as one of response time, not origin.
"Law enforcement can't cope with the overwhelming amount of illicit activity in the space," said Julia Hardy, co-founder of the crypto-investigations firm zeroShadow. "It can't go on like this."
The Timing This Desk Is Watching
None of this happens in a regulatory vacuum, and the timing is the part worth naming directly. In April 2025, the Justice Department dismantled its dedicated crypto-enforcement team, saying prosecutors should pursue the criminals who use crypto platforms rather than the platforms themselves. The following month, Binance -- already under a 2023 guilty plea and that $4.3 billion penalty for processing transactions for Hamas and al-Qaeda -- entered a $2 billion business arrangement with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto venture; the same month, KuCoin, mid-negotiation with the CFTC over its own money-laundering settlement, began listing two new World Liberty coins, a listing that gave the Trump family venture added credibility and reach. KuCoin's eventual CFTC settlement came in at $500,000 -- a fraction of what the agency's own attorneys had reportedly expected before Trump-era leadership rewrote the proposed terms citing an executive order favoring the crypto industry. Changpeng Zhao, Binance's founder, received a presidential pardon in October 2025 after serving a four-month sentence stemming from the same guilty plea.
This is the downstream half of the story tracked in Don't Cause Trouble →: a hollowed-out CFTC and a disbanded DOJ crypto unit are not abstractions. They are the enforcement gap that a documented $28 billion in dirty money moved through in the two years this analysis covers, on exchanges that are simultaneously doing direct business with the president's family.