Global Ledger’s five-year review found that 10 centralized crypto exchanges accounted for 90.9% of flagged inflows from 2021 through 2025, highlighting the concentration of on-chain exposure among platforms in its benchmark.
The firm estimated $187.75 billion in high-risk exposure across 99 centralized exchanges. The estimate included flagged links tied to funds moving into and out of the platforms, based on Global Ledger’s risk classifications. It measures exposure rather than counting transactions confirmed as illegal.
The five-year dataset covered $36.28 trillion in activity involving Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), as well as Tether (USDT) on Tron. Global Ledger traced connections around entities it marked high risk, with paths limited to five blockchain hops. The results cover only those assets and links within that tracing limit.
Measured against exchange liquidity, flagged inflows averaged 0.68%, while outflows averaged 0.42%, Global Ledger reported. The largest platform readings were 7.79% for inflows and 24.78% for outflows. The gap between averages and peaks shows that flagged-flow rates varied across exchanges.
Sanctions represented $74.09 billion in combined exposure over the five years, according to Global Ledger. In 2025, they accounted for 62.2% of flagged inflows. That share describes sanctions within the flagged inflow pool, not their proportion of all exchange flows.
The findings point to concentrated flagged inflows as well as wide variation in the highest exchange-level readings, according to Global Ledger.
A recorded link to an entity marked high risk does not show that the connected funds came from unlawful activity. The data also do not reveal whether an exchange or customer knew about the connection or chose to take part in wrongdoing.
