Crypto Mixing Is Back — And Criminals Adapted Faster Than The Rules Did
When US crypto regulators cracked down on Tornado Cash in 2022, the belief was easy: shut down the instrument, shut down the issue. It didn’t work out that method.
New research from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) reveals that coin mixer utilization has climbed again towards pre-ban ranges — and that the individuals most successfully pushed out by the sanctions weren’t the criminals, however strange customers in search of monetary privateness.
Railgun Now Dominates A Recovering Market
According to CCAF researchers Wenbin Wu and Keith Bear, whole crypto mixer transactions reached roughly 32,000 in 2025 — a major bounce from roughly 21,000 in 2024 and 16,000 in 2023.
Usage has been climbing steadily because the US Treasury lifted its sanctions in opposition to Tornado Cash on March 21, 2025.
Railgun, a protocol that screens deposits in opposition to lists of flagged addresses, now handles 71% of all mixer transaction quantity. Tornado Cash accounts for round 25% of 2025 transactions, whereas Privacy Pools holds the remaining 5%.
Both Railgun and Privacy Pools try and filter out identified unhealthy actors earlier than crypto funds enter the system. But experiences from CCAF word a significant hole — blacklists are up to date solely as new exploits are found, leaving a window the place funds from freshly flagged addresses can nonetheless cross by.
Sanctions Scared Off Legitimate Users More Than Criminals
The 2022 crackdown induced rapid disruption. Tornado Cash’s day by day transactions collapsed by 97% inside days. Across the broader mixer market, quantity fell 45%. But the disruption was uneven.
Wu advised researchers that sanctions “primarily deterred compliant customers whereas illicit actors tailored” — first by migrating to different platforms, then to cross-chain bridges and decentralized exchanges altogether.
Deposit patterns inform the identical story. Before 2022, centralized exchanges — which require identification verification — contributed meaningfully to mixer funding. After the ban, these deposits basically vanished. By 2025, 95% of all crypto mixer funding got here from unlabeled pockets addresses with no recorded entity ties, up from 76% in 2020.
Most Transactions Now Happen Within 24 Hours
Before the ban, most mixer exercise occurred greater than 24 hours after pockets creation. That sample has flipped. Researchers say this sooner habits is “according to customers in search of to keep away from identification.”
Still, a 2023 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis paper discovered that solely round 30% of Tornado Cash site visitors might be linked to illegitimate sources — a reminder that privateness instruments serve lawful functions too. The demand, from each camps, by no means went away.
Featured picture from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
