Chainalysis says 47% of crypto firms launched in 2026 meet compliance standards once considered top-tier.
Nearly half of all cryptocurrency organizations onboarded in 2026 are operating under compliance alerting standards that would have placed them among the most rigorous firms in the industry five years ago, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The company released the findings in a preview of its 2026 Crypto Compliance report on Wednesday.
Chainalysis said approximately 47% of organizations entering the industry this year are using alert configurations, including trigger sensitivity levels and minimum dollar detection thresholds, that would have ranked in the top 10% of strictness in 2020. The firm attributed the shift to heightened regulatory pressure and growing awareness of security threats facing the sector.
The report noted that in 2020, the industry was still establishing baseline norms, with only 10% of firms meeting what were then considered top-tier requirements. That rate began climbing in 2023, with newer entrants now launching with more aggressive monitoring frameworks from the outset.
"Standard compliance configurations today would have been considered industry-leading just five years ago," Chainalysis said. "The industry financial institutions are joining has already built substantial compliance infrastructure, and the bar continues to rise."
Progress has been uneven across monitoring types. Companies have become more consistent in direct monitoring, which tracks funds arriving immediately from a known illicit source. A gap persists in indirect monitoring, which covers funds that pass through intermediary addresses before reaching an exchange or platform.
Crypto exchanges, on average, set significantly higher alerting thresholds for indirect exposure than legacy financial institutions do. In categories such as ransomware, fraud shops, scams, and darknet markets, indirect thresholds are often 10 to 20 times higher than their direct equivalents.
"The industry's gap between direct and indirect monitoring creates an opening for illicit actors to exploit," Chainalysis said. "Organizations that close this gap improve their regulatory defensibility and differentiate themselves as trustworthy counterparties."
The firm added that while the sector has professionalized its handling of direct exposure, it "may not yet be treating indirect risk with equivalent rigor." The push to raise compliance standards has intensified partly in response to state-linked hacking activity, with North Korean-affiliated actors estimated to have caused approximately $2 billion in crypto losses in 2025, according to Chainalysis.
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