De-risking has been a stubborn problem in crypto for years, and regulation alone has not fixed it. That is exactly why the conversation around crypto AML, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, and institutional trust still matters so much in 2026.
In this interview, Jelizaveta Paskovskaja, Money Laundering Reporting Officer at CryptoProcessing by Coinspaid, explains why banks still hesitate, what makes a crypto business look credible, and how the industry’s understanding of money laundering risk has become far more mature. The big change is simple: crypto companies are no longer being judged only by assumptions but by controls, governance, and evidence.
Why De-Risking Still Shapes Crypto Banking Access
De-risking has been a recurring issue for crypto for years. Why is it still such a major business problem, even as the industry becomes more regulated?
Because regulation does not automatically create trust. It gives the market a framework, but banks and partners still need to feel that they understand the business, the controls, and the residual risk. Crypto has made real progress, but many traditional institutions still prefer the comfort of a simple “no” over the work of building a proper risk-based view. That is why de-risking is still such a big issue.
When banks or financial partners assess a crypto company today, what signals make them see one firm as credible and another as too risky?
The biggest signal is whether the company looks and behaves like a serious financial institution. Partners want to see strong governance, clear ownership, and real compliance ownership inside the business. They also want evidence that controls are not just written on paper, but actually work in practice: documented onboarding, timely escalations, regular reviews, and proof that issues are remediated.
Transparency matters, too. So does consistency. If a company can clearly explain its products, its customer base, its risk exposure, and how it manages those risks, that creates confidence.
Where does legitimate risk management end and excessive de-risking begin?
Legitimate risk management is about understanding the risk and managing it properly. Excessive de-risking starts when an institution moves away from individual assessment and defaults to excluding the whole category.
For example, if a bank refuses to work with a fully licensed crypto payment provider solely because it operates in crypto, without looking at its client mix, controls, or transaction monitoring, that moves away from a risk-based approach toward broad exclusion. In the long run, that does not make the financial system safer. It may simply push activity into less transparent channels.
What Credible Crypto Compliance Looks Like In 2026
What does “good crypto compliance” actually look like in 2026 if the goal is not only to prevent money laundering, but also to build long-term institutional trust?
Good compliance in 2026 is proactive, not reactive. It is built into the business, not added on top of it. It means strong governance, clear accountability, a mature risk assessment, robust onboarding, ongoing monitoring, sanctions controls, and a compliance team that can actually influence decisions.
At CryptoProcessing by Coinspaid, that also means keeping risk assessments current, applying KYB-led onboarding, screening customers and transactions, monitoring on-chain and off-chain activity, escalating alerts through clear internal processes, and continually refining controls as typologies evolve.
But beyond the technical side, it also means being a company that banks and regulators can trust to act consistently, communicate openly, and manage risk responsibly.
In practice, what do regulators, banks, and partners expect from a crypto business that wants to be treated as a serious financial company rather than a high-risk exception?
They expect discipline. They expect the company to know its customers, know its products, know its risk exposure, and know how it controls that risk.
They also expect proper governance and a compliance function that is not symbolic. In practice, that is supported by solid onboarding, regular review cycles, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, escalation procedures, staff training, and a compliance function with real authority and resources.
They want to see that the business can operate like a financial institution, not just like a tech company with a payments flow.
For a payments infrastructure provider like CryptoProcessing by Coinspaid, what makes money laundering prevention especially complex compared with more conventional payment environments?
The main difference is speed and scale. Crypto payments move fast, the ecosystem changes quickly, and flows can be cross-border and multi-layered.
That is why money laundering prevention requires a strong, adaptive framework: layered onboarding controls, ongoing monitoring, sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, and crypto-specific intelligence. It does take resources, time, and continuous adjustment, but that is exactly what responsible risk management looks like in a fast-moving environment.
How Money Laundering Risk In Crypto Has Evolved
A lot of the hesitation still comes back to money laundering concerns. From your perspective, how has the understanding of money laundering risk in crypto evolved in recent years?
It has become much more mature. A few years ago, many people still spoke about crypto AML risk in very general terms. Today, the discussion is much more specific. That is partly because the industry itself has matured and partly because regulation has become more detailed.
In Europe, for example, MiCA and the broader focus on sanctions, Travel Rule, transaction monitoring, and source-of-funds expectations have pushed firms and partners to look at concrete typologies rather than broad assumptions. People now talk about typologies, transaction patterns, sanctions exposure, wallet behaviour, source of funds, and source of wealth.
That is a big step forward, because it means the industry is no longer being judged only by assumptions. It is being judged more by facts.
What are the biggest misconceptions traditional financial institutions still have about money laundering risks in crypto payments?
One common misconception is that crypto is automatically anonymous and impossible to trace. In reality, many blockchain transactions are pseudonymous rather than anonymous, and with the right tools, they can often be traced and analysed.
Another is that all crypto businesses are the same and should be treated the same way. A licensed payments provider, a custodian, an exchange, and a peer-to-peer platform can have very different risk profiles, customer bases, and control environments.
The third misconception is that blockchain analytics alone solves the problem. It is an important layer, but it still has to be combined with KYC/KYB, sanctions screening, source-of-funds checks, ongoing monitoring, and strong governance.
Are compliance expectations becoming more aligned across the market, or do crypto companies still have to navigate very different standards depending on the jurisdiction or partner?
The direction is clearly toward more alignment, especially in Europe, where MiCA creates a harmonised framework for crypto-asset service providers and supports cross-border scaling. In the US, the GENIUS Act was signed into law in July 2025 and established the first federal framework for payment stablecoins.
Even so, standards still vary meaningfully across jurisdictions and counterparties. Regulators may be moving closer together, while banks and partners often apply their own internal thresholds, which can be stricter than the legal minimum. So yes, the baseline is becoming more harmonised, but companies still need to navigate very different expectations depending on where they operate and who they are dealing with.
Looking ahead, what will increasingly separate crypto firms that win market access from those that remain stuck on the margins?
The difference will be credibility. The firms that win will be the ones that can show they are well governed, well controlled, and easy to understand from a risk perspective.
They will not just say they are compliant. They will be able to prove it, including through strong anti-money laundering controls and evidence that those controls work in practice. And that proof will matter more and more, because market access now depends more on proven credibility and operational maturity.
In other words, the winners in crypto AML will not be the loudest companies. They will be the ones who can explain their risk clearly, act consistently, and earn trust the hard way.
Closing Thoughts
What stands out from this conversation is that crypto compliance is no longer just about avoiding fines or passing a basic review. It has become a trust signal.
The firms that bank, scale, and keep access to the financial system are the ones that can show real governance, real monitoring, and real accountability. That matters because the market is moving away from broad suspicion and toward specific, evidence-based risk assessment.
In the next phase of crypto AML, the companies that stand out will be the ones that prove their controls work, explain their risk clearly, and operate as financial institutions that partners can rely on.
