Mexico prepares new offensive against the illicit use of cryptocurrencies

Inside the framework of the VIII Mexico-European Union Summit held this week, Overseas Minister Roberto Velasco Álvarez and the Excessive Consultant of the EU for Overseas Affairs and Safety Coverage, Kaja Kallas, introduced the intention to strengthen bilateral collaboration on monetary safety.

The principle focus consists of the combat towards cash laundering and illicit use of cryptocurrencies by transnational legal organizations. Through the press convention on Could 21, Overseas Minister Velasco Álvarez said:

We now have talked as we speak about how there are legal organizations which are finishing up actions at a world stage, akin to cash laundering, in fact additionally what has to do with using cryptocurrencies for the sort of illicit actions. So we intend to keep up a dialogue and search potentialities for cooperation to handle a majority of these threats and actions.

Roberto Velasco, Overseas Minister of Mexico

This declaration marks a concrete step in the direction of a larger coordination between Mexican and European authoritiesnotably with Europol. The target is to enhance the trade of economic and tactical intelligence to trace illicit flows in decentralized networks or as they’re additionally identified, “blockchain”, and different digital belongings.

The initiative is a part of the signing of the Modernized International Settlement, which updates the industrial and political relations between Mexico and the EU in power since 2000.

For the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the announcement is related however not stunning. The European Union has developed some of the superior regulatory frameworks on the planet with the MiCA regulation, which imposes registration, transparency and anti-laundering obligations on cryptoasset service suppliers.

Mexico, for its half, has strengthened its anti-money laundering (AML) rules by means of the Monetary Intelligence Unit (UIF) and has been incorporating reviews of operations with digital belongings.

Consultants from the analysis agency Chainalysis level out that using cryptocurrencies by organized crime tends to focus on stablecoins and transactions on centralized exchanges or DeFi protocols with little supervision.

In response to historic knowledge from the aforementioned researchers, though the proportion of illicit quantity in cryptocurrencies is low (typically under 1% of the full), absolutely the quantities are important at round $154 billion and require specialised on-chain evaluation instruments.

Within the specific case of Mexico, this isn’t the primary time that there was discuss of accelerating efforts towards the illicit use of cryptocurrencies. In March of this yr, CriptoNoticias reported that the nation was making progress in tightening its controls towards cash laundering and terrorist financing within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. The above in accordance with SumSub’s State of the Crypto Business 2026 report.

Mexico-EU cooperation might translate into joint coaching applications, info trade protocols and higher capabilities to establish wallets and addresses linked to legal actions, at all times respecting privateness and human rights frameworks.

Analysts within the cryptocurrency sector akin to Caroline Malcolm, former Vice President of International Coverage at Chainalysis, contemplate that a majority of these worldwide alliances are essential to keep away from world regulatory fragmentation, which might generate regulatory arbitrage and havens for illicit capital.

Nonetheless, they warn that steadiness is vital: tightening controls with out discouraging innovation or respectable adoption of so-called “blockchain know-how,” which is definitely just one a part of Bitcoin know-how.

The dialogue introduced by Overseas Minister Velasco represents a realistic and collaborative method. That is the deepening of already current joint work towards transnational monetary crime. Success will depend upon the sensible implementation of those commitments within the coming months.