The T3 Financial Crime Unit, an initiative set up by major cryptocurrency companies to curb illicit activity, has been quietly disbanded, one of its founders has confirmed, at a time when crypto-related crime is soaring.

The Tron Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO), which oversees the Tron blockchain, worked with stablecoin issuer Tether and analytics firm TRM Labs to set up T3 in September 2024, with Binance, the largest crypto exchange, joining a year later.

T3 planned to create a “safer and more secure” crypto industry, it said at the time, amid concerns that the technology is widely used for criminal money-laundering.

In 2025, the group said it had frozen a total of $250 million (£185.6m) in assets globally as it worked with law-enforcement agencies.

A spokesperson for the Tron DAO said T3 had been “very successful” and acknowledged that it had “concluded”, but said Tron would continue to work with law enforcement to help stop illicit activities on the blockchain.

Tether said it would continue to work with TRM to disrupt and interdict illicit funds, and was participating in the Beacon intelligence-sharing initiative founded by TRM last year.

The organisation’s confirmation came after a report by Bloomberg, which said the alliance had broken down and was terminated as of late August, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

Crime wave

The initiative suffered from poor response times and a lack of coordination among members, Bloomberg’s report said.

Binance was recently hit by a record $6.3bn theft, with about half of the stolen funds frozen by industry players, while hardware wallet makers including Coinkite and Ledger have also been hit by hacks.

Most of the funds stolen from Binance have been laundered through the Tron blockchain, Elliptic said in a statement earlier this week.