Galaxy Research: The "$28 billion encryption illegal transactions" reported by The New York Times and ICIJ are seriously distorted.

According to Wu, Galaxy Research stated that the “$28 billion in illegal cryptocurrency transactions” reported by The New York Times and ICIJ is severely distorted, lacking comparative scale, and ignoring the larger money laundering issues within the traditional financial system. Galaxy pointed out that $28 billion only accounts for 0.52% of the total inflow of BTC, ETH, USDC, and USDT exchanges so far in 2024, which is almost negligible in the total inflow of $5.3 trillion. The volume of illegal cryptocurrency transactions in 2024 only accounts for 0.14%–0.4% of on-chain transaction volume and continues to decline, far below the United Nations' estimate of the traditional financial system's money laundering scale of $800 billion to $2 trillion annually. Galaxy emphasized that on-chain transparency makes it easier to trace illegal activities, and ICIJ's ability to conduct investigations is precisely because “cryptocurrency is publicly accessible and traceable.” At the same time, stablecoins have become the most regulated digital currencies under the GENIUS Act and MiCA.