Most governments and media do not like cryptocurrencies. One of the most quoted reasons is the money laundering risk associated with crypto. They have created a public perception that Bitcoin is closely associated with criminals. Janet Yallen, the US Treasury Secretary, has even claimed that cryptocurrencies are "used mainly for illicit financing".

I will explain in this article why this is not even close to the truth. 

• Cryptocurrency transactions are even more transparent than bank transactions. Since crypto and their blockchains are based on Distributed Ledger Technology (DTL), every single transfers or transactions are completely transparent and can be traced by literally everyone with just one click. All the information are public, any any regulators and law enforcement agencies can simply use these information to trace flows of funds. In addition, most major cryptocurrency exchanges requires some Know Your Customer (KYC) procedure before a fully functional account can be opened. As such regulators will be able to tell the true identity of the fund's beneficiary when it is being converted to fiat currency via these cryptocurrency. The 100% transparency is definitely not good for any money launders. When we compared it to the traditional financing system, the transactions would be extremely difficult and time-consuming to trace when the fund has travelled through 6 intermediary banks in 4 difficult countries. 
• Cryptocurrency can be used by criminals. Don't traditional banks can be used as well? Banks around the world are being used by criminals and all types of scammers everyday. When you read the newspaper, you will find fraudsters use traditional banks to receive and process funds in 99.9% of these cases. However you wouldn't hear any government officers calling for "closures of banks" because some criminals have used them to process their funds. If the same logic follows, why should cryptocurrency be curtailed as suggested by Ms Yallen? In fact, the Chainalysis 2021 Crypto Crime Report finds that illegal activities only accounts for 0.034% of all cryptocurrency transactions in 2020. It is definitely not "mostly used for illicit financing".
• There are other much more easier ways for money laundering than cryptocurrency. For example, criminal can simply go to the a jewelry shop, buy a gold bar, head the gold bar to anyone he wants to paid, and the recipient of the gold bar can than sell the gold bar. Another easy way for money laundering is to sell a rubbish "artwork" at a very high price. In this way, the buy is effectively paying a large sum of fund to the seller. In fact, commodities & artwork are very commonly used for money laundering (and casinos as well). Obviously we should not commodities and artworks trading just because some bad guys are using them for bad purpose. Then why should it be a concern for cryptocurrency, which is much more transparent and traceable?   

Money laundering is not even a valid concern for cryptocurrency. It is just an excuse for haters to go against it.