Money Laundering through Crypto-Assets in the Digital Space: The Prohibition Dilemma, the Limits of Supervising Virtual Asset Service Providers, and the Challenge of Digital Evidence — A Comparative Critical Reading in Light of the FATF Standards

Abstract

In an era of accelerating digitalization in which crypto-assets increasingly intersect with traditional financial infrastructures, money laundering has ceased to be a mere post-offence conduct carried out through traceable banking channels. It has become a composite technical operation distributed across blockchains (public distributed ledgers), cross-chain bridges, unhosted wallets and decentralized platforms, whereby the apparent transparency of the public ledger coexists with genuine opacity as to identity. This study examines whether the Algerian model of comprehensive prohibition of virtual assets, as enshrined in Law No. 25-10 of 24 July 2025, can contain the phenomenon, in comparison with the licensing-and-supervision model adopted by French and European law, and in light of FATF Recommendation 15 and related standards. It further analyses the problems of digital evidence associated with on-chain data, and the limits of search, seizure, confiscation and international cooperation. The study concludes that effectiveness is determined less by the choice between prohibition and licensing than by the State's capacity to build an integrated intelligence-and-judicial visibility over intermediaries and over the blockchain itself, one that reaches beyond the territorial limits of the legal text.