The UK's National Crime Agency has elevated crypto assets to third place on a list of nine priorities for tackling economic crime, a ranking published jointly with the Financial Conduct Authority in July 2025 and validated by the Home Office and the Treasury. The move reflects growing concern within the agency over what its national strategic assessment, published in 2026, describes as an "innovative use of crypto products to evade detection and move illicit value at scale."
The NCA estimates that hundreds of billions of pounds in criminal money pass through UK financial institutions every year, spanning what it calls "new and traditional" channels. Since April 2024, the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act has given NCA officers the power to seize and freeze crypto assets without a prior arrest, converting the funds into pounds sterling.
Two operations, concrete numbers
The agency pointed to two operations as evidence of its approach. Operation Destabilise, made public in late 2024, targeted Russian-speaking networks accused of exchanging drug trafficking cash for cryptocurrencies. It resulted in 128 arrests and more than £25 million seized in cash and crypto within the UK. The NCA described the networks involved as "high-harm laundering networks that pose the greatest illicit finance risk to the United Kingdom."
Operation Atlantic, reported in April, brought together the NCA, the US Secret Service, and exchanges including Coinbase, Binance, Kraken and Tether for a week of joint work at NCA headquarters. The operation identified more than 20,000 victims of approval phishing and froze $12 million. Chainalysis estimates that more than $1 billion has been stolen through approval phishing since 2021.
A cautious line on privacy tools
The strategic assessment also cites a February 2026 report from the Royal United Services Institute, "Privacy-Enhancing Technologies in the Crypto Industry," which grew out of a roundtable organised by the Home Office and the National Economic Crime Centre in July 2025. The NECC said it wants "a more proactive, intelligence-led crypto capability to inform our response to cross-cutting priorities."
Rather than calling for a ban on privacy-enhancing technologies, the RUSI report argues for building trust through compliance features. Allison Owen, a former RUSI research associate and the report's author, told Decrypt: "Building trust through the integration of compliance features will ultimately broaden the adoption of this technology."
The UK's position contrasts with the European Union's approach. Under anti-money laundering rules adopted in 2024, crypto asset service providers in the bloc will be banned from holding anonymous accounts and from processing enhanced-anonymity tokens such as Monero and Zcash starting in July 2027. In the United States, the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control removed Tornado Cash from its sanctions list in March 2025.
A shifting regulatory landscape
The NCA's new priority sits alongside other recent shifts in UK crypto oversight. The FCA reopened retail access to crypto-backed exchange-traded notes in October 2025. The UK's simplified anti-money laundering registration regime for crypto providers has been in place since 2020, forming the baseline against which the agency's newly stated priorities and operational results will be measured in the years ahead.
