Kazakhstan takes down over 1,000 illegal coin trading platforms in crackdown

The financial authorities in Kazakhstan have restricted access to a staggering number of online platforms providing crypto exchange services over the past year.

The tally comes amid efforts to comprehensively regulate and expand the legal crypto market in the country, which aims to become a regional hub for digital assets.

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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