Glossary
AML
Anti-Money Laundering: a set of rules and procedures financial institutions follow to detect and report transactions associated with illicit funds.
AML rules require regulated entities to monitor transactions, investigate suspicious activity, and file reports (SARs, STRs) with financial-intelligence units. They sit alongside KYC at the edges of the crypto system — banks, exchanges, payment processors — even though the on-chain rails themselves are permissionless.
Specialized chain-analysis vendors (Chainalysis, TRM, Elliptic) sell the tools that exchanges and law-enforcement agencies use to apply AML controls to public-blockchain transactions.