Europol has raised alarms about the increasing sophistication of criminal activities involving digital assets, as highlighted by Burkhard Mühl, head of Europol's European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC). He delivered these warnings at the 9th Global Conference on Criminal Finances and Crypto Assets, held from October 28-29, 2025, which was jointly organized by Europol, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the Basel Institute on Governance.
Mühl emphasized that investigating these crimes places a significant burden on law enforcement agencies of EU member states, and Europol is committed to continued investment to support complex international investigations. The conference focused on how crypto assets and blockchains are evolving and being misused by scammers for sophisticated crimes.
According to the Chainalysis 2025 crypto crime report released in January, illicit cryptocurrency addresses received approximately $40.9 billion in value during 2024. This figure represents only a small segment of overall financial crime proceeds and excludes traditional crimes like drug trafficking where crypto is used for payments or laundering.
Europol has coordinated several major takedowns in 2025, including dismantling a cybercrime network in Latvia that laundered over $330,000 through digital assets, targeting a clandestine hawala banking network that laundered over $23 million using crypto, and smashing a crypto investment fraud ring that profited more than $540 million from over 5,000 victims.
Europe has also experienced a rise in wrench attacks, where criminals use physical assaults to compel cryptocurrency holders to hand over their assets or private keys. France alone has witnessed 16 such incidents in 2025, according to records of known physical Bitcoin attacks.
Challenges in combating crypto-related crimes include their global nature and the need for cross-border cooperation. Diana Pătrut, project manager at the Blockchain Intelligence Professionals Association (BIPA), noted that different blockchain analytics firms produce inconsistent results when tracing transactions, and there is no standardization for wallet attribution, methodology, training, and formatting. She added that training is primarily driven by private sector solutions, leading to confirmation bias, and called for investigators and financial institutions to develop critical assessment capabilities to address the skills gap.
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