Kazakhstan’s Crypto Purge: Over 1,000 Illegal Coin Trading Platforms Shuttered in Sweeping Crackdown
Kazakhstan just delivered a brutal reality check to the crypto underworld.
The country's financial watchdog swung a massive regulatory hammer this week, dismantling more than a thousand unlicensed digital asset exchanges in a single, coordinated strike. This isn't a gentle nudge toward compliance—it's a full-scale demolition of the shadow market.
The Anatomy of a Crackdown
Authorities targeted platforms operating without the mandatory licenses from the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC). The operation focused on entities skirting anti-money laundering (AML) rules and investor protection standards—the very frameworks designed to separate legitimate finance from the wild west.
The move signals a decisive pivot. Kazakhstan, once a haven for mining, is now aggressively policing the trading landscape. The message is clear: operate in the light, or get switched off.
Regulation as a Growth Signal
Forget the FUD. Major players see this as a bullish cleanup, not a bearish attack. Binance, for instance, has been actively working with Kazakh regulators for over a year. This crackdown doesn't hurt established, compliant exchanges—it vaporizes their illicit competition.
It's a classic playbook: legitimize the space by eliminating bad actors. The government isn't banning crypto; it's forcing it to grow up. This creates a safer, more transparent environment for institutional capital—the kind of money that doesn't park in Telegram-channel pump-and-dumps.
The Global Ripple Effect
Kazakhstan's action is a bellwether. Watch for other nations to follow suit with their own enforcement sweeps. The era of 'ask-forgiveness-not-permission' in crypto trading is slamming shut. The new era demands licenses, compliance officers, and real know-your-customer (KYC) checks.
This regulatory pressure cooker is separating the protocols with staying power from the fly-by-night schemes. It's painful for some in the short term but essential for long-term adoption. After all, you can't build the future of finance on foundations of fraud and regulatory arbitrage—well, you can, but eventually the men with badges show up.
The purge is complete. The over one thousand illegal gateways are dark. The path forward is paved with regulation, for better or worse. The industry's teenage rebellion is over; welcome to adulthood, with all its paperwork and quarterly reports. Sometimes, the most bullish thing for prices is a government shutting things down—just ask any banker about the value of a limited competition license.
Hundreds of illegal crypto exchange services taken offline in Kazakhstan
The Financial Monitoring Agency of Kazakhstan (AFM) has prevented more than 1,100 unlicensed online exchangers from providing services in the Central Asian nation.
The figure was announced by its head, Zhanat Elimanov, who reported on the watchdog’s operations in 2025 to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev this week.
Quoted by the Kazakhstanskaya Pravda daily on Monday, the official revealed his subordinates have completed investigations into 1,135 criminal cases involving money and returned 141.5 billion tenge (over $277 million) to victims of such crimes last year.
The government body has also dismantled 15 criminal groups and 29 organizations providing cash services outside the law and thwarted the activities of 22 shadow crypto exchanges allegedly laundering proceeds from drug trafficking and fraud schemes.
Meanwhile, the financial sector has stopped dealing with approximately 2,000 companies and 56,000 individuals suspected of money laundering. A total of 2.1 trillion tenge of criminal flows (over $4 billion) have been detected with the help of 35 payment institutions.
The AFM has also frozen some 20,000 bank card accounts used by money mules working for criminals, Elimanov added during the briefing of the president. For his part, Tokaev issued a number of instructions in key areas of responsibility for the agency.
Kazakhstan keeps cracking down on illegal crypto activities
Kazakhstan, which became a hotspot for cryptocurrency mining and other crypto activities in the wake of a Chinese ban a few years ago, has been taking steps to regulate the space while cracking down on illegal activities.
In 2025, its government lifted some restrictions on the minting of digital coins and sought to expand crypto trading outside the narrow legal framework of the Astana International Financial Center (AIFC), as reported by Cryptopolitan.
As part of efforts to turn the country into a Eurasian crypto hub, the Kazakh authorities intend to legalize investments in digital assets, although payments with them will remain prohibited beyond a special pilot project called CryptoCity.
At the same time, unauthorized cryptocurrency transactions have been the target of coordinated law enforcement actions involving multiple institutions.
In September, officials said they had seized $10 million worth of digital coins from a large crypto pyramid scheme that defrauded investors not just in the country, but in other post-Soviet states such as Belarus and Russia.
Later that month, Kazakhstan dismantled what was described as the largest crypto money laundering service in the region, an exchange platform called RAKS, which had been quite popular on the dark web.
Then, in October, the AFM announced it had busted almost 130 unlicensed crypto exchanges, allegedly seizing nearly $17 million in virtual assets from their operators.
In November, the Ministry of Internal Affairs revealed it had opened more than 1,000 criminal investigations into cases involving cryptocurrencies in the past two years. It also estimated the financial damages caused to victims at over $15 million.
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