US Treasury seeks public input on AI and blockchain tools to locate crypto money laundering as criminals stole $3B in first half of 2025 with four-second attack speeds.
The U.S. Treasury Department is in search of public feedback on revolutionary techniques to find crypto money laundering, following needs under the these days enacted GENIUS Act.
The 60 day remark period, finishing October 17, focus speciality on artificial intelligence, blockchain tracking, digital identity verification, and application programming combines as potential tools for regulated economic insitutions to combat illicit digital asset activities.
The request comes as crypto criminals increased their missions in 2025, with $$3 billion stolen in 119 separate incidents throughout the first half alone.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent praised the GENIUS Act implementation as “important” to protect American digital asset leadership while increasing dollar accession globally by regulated stablecoin frameworks.
Speed of Crime surpasses Detection Systems by Decades
Lately blockchain analytics disclose the extraordinary speed benefit that crypto criminals keep over traditional safety responses.
Global Ledger’s complete study found that hackers moved funds in just four seconds pursuit the fastest recorded attack, about 75 times quicker than average exchange alert systems can react.
In over 68% of times, attackers relocate robbed funds earlier than the incidents have become publicly acknowledged, with one in four hacks totally laundering assets earlier than any public statements or alerts were published.
The fastest complete laundering technique from very first breach to final deposit took simply 2 minutes 57 seconds, quicker than typical laptop screen timeouts.
Speaking with Cryptonews, Mitchell Amador, CEO of safety platform Immunefi, has formerly highlighted the economic incentive imbalance.
“Most hackers today got that keeping robbing crypto is more problem than it’s well worth because of better on-chain forensics and very actual reputational and felony dangers of keeping marked funds,” he stated.
However, prohibition remains crucial as restoration rates stay dismally low.
Only 4.2% of robbed price range have been recovered all through the first half of 2025, with sophisticated actors like North Korea’s Lazarus organization planning actions to coincide with ordinary transaction activity around noon while companies revel in team of workers transitions and decreased vigilance.
Developed Technology Solutions Race Against Criminal Innovation
Artificial intelligence and machine learning grow to be vital weapons in the anti-money laundering arsenal.
Earlier this year, researchers from Elliptic, IBM Watson, and MIT successfully evolved deep learning models that detect money laundering patterns by studying “subgraphs” – chains of transactions representing Bitcoin laundering activities throughout over 200 million transactions.
“Unlike traditional finance, wherein transaction records is typically siloed making it hard, blockchain gives transparency to use these methods,” Elliptic stated in their step forward research that makes a speciality of multi-hop laundering strategies instead of specific illicit actor behaviors.
Similarly, automated restoration structures are revolutionizing incident response timelines.
For example, Circuit’s technology embeds pre-signed fallback transactions that implement automatically upon hazard detection, shifting assets to secure vaults before attackers can complete their operations.
“Circuit changes this timeline by embedding routinely executable restoration right into a platform’s infrastructure,” explained Harry Donnelly, founder and CEO of Circuit.
“Before any breach, customers generated pre-signed fallback transactions with specific restoration commands that broadcast immediately while attackers are nonetheless in movement.“
Traditional safety tactics face essential obstacles in decentralized environments.
Amador recognized 3 critical blind spots: “Static audits that depend on one-time checks, ignoring incentives that underestimate Web3’s open-ledger attack appeal, and lack of Web3 expertise missing composability or oracle risks.“
The Treasury’s focus on utility programming interfaces, artificial intelligence, and blockchain tracking aligns with industry reputation that “safety swarms” – automated defense networks – represent the future of crypto safety.
These structures compress intervention home windows from hours to seconds, essentially shifting the balance towards defenders.
Notably, oracle manipulation has emerged as an below-mentioned attack vector that industry experts believe deserve greater attention.
“Attackers can make the most weak facts feeds to trick contracts, draining finances or destabilizing stablecoins,” warned Amador.
“Protocols want multi-oracle redundancy and focused bounties, however many forget this important single point of failure.”
The GENIUS Act’s regulatory framework affords felony clarity that executives throughout the industry take it transformative.
Ian De Bode, Chief Strategy Officer at Ondo Finance, has in advance called the legislation “the start of a brand new regulatory era,” noting that “the clearer the policies, the quicker adoption will follow.”
Looking ahead, Treasury’s purpose to collect public input on anti-money laundering technologies stems from the crypto industry’s ongoing fingers race, where criminal innovation always outpaces defensive talents.
As a end result, advanced AI detection and automated reaction structures are becoming critical for protective the developing digital asset ecosystem.
