Chainalysis And TRM Join Wildlife-Trafficking Crackdown To Trace Crypto Wallets

Chainalysis and TRM Labs have joined a new United for Wildlife push to disrupt the payment networks behind illegal wildlife trafficking, bringing blockchain analytics into a broader campaign against one of the world’s largest illicit markets.

The initiative was launched during the United for Wildlife Business Forum in London, where technology, payments, telecom, transport and crypto companies agreed to target the online listings, money movement and logistics channels used by trafficking networks.

The crypto sector’s role is focused on financial tracing. Chainalysis, TRM Labs, PayPal, Luno, Tether and Circle are part of the group committing to track and disrupt financial flows behind wildlife trafficking while working with law enforcement. The work puts blockchain analytics firms into an environmental-crime category that has historically relied on cash, informal brokers, social platforms, online marketplaces and cross-border payment routes.

Illegal wildlife trade generates up to $23 billion a year and threatens around one million plant and animal species. The market includes ivory, rhino horn, pangolin scales, exotic pets, rare timber and other protected wildlife products, with traffickers using digital platforms to reach buyers and payment rails to move proceeds across borders.

Wallet Tracing Targets Smuggler Payment Routes

The coalition is not treating crypto as the only payment channel. It is adding wallet tracing to a wider enforcement stack that also includes platform detection, bank monitoring, mobile-money surveillance and transport screening.

Blockchain analytics can help investigators follow funds after a wallet is identified, map clusters, flag exchange deposits, connect payment routes and support seizure or freezing requests when funds touch compliant services. That same workflow has already become standard in hacks, ransomware, sanctions cases and exchange investigations. Chainalysis recently signed a cooperation agreement with South Korea’s National Police Agency to improve crypto-investigation training, tracing and evidence standards.

Wildlife trafficking creates a different investigative problem. A buyer may find a product on a social platform, pay through a processor, mobile-money account, stablecoin wallet or exchange account, and receive goods through shipping or courier networks. The financial trail can split across fiat rails and crypto rails, especially when brokers use wallets, OTC desks or exchange accounts to move value between jurisdictions.

Chainalysis has previously identified crypto use inside organized-crime flows, including wildlife sales, with traffickers using wallets, exchanges and crypto ATMs to move proceeds across borders. Those traces do not identify every criminal by themselves, but they can give investigators transaction hashes, addresses, counterparties, timing and off-ramp leads.

AI And Platforms Attack The Sales Funnel

The online side of the campaign focuses on removing illegal listings before buyers reach payment. Google, Meta, TikTok, Alibaba, eBay and other platform operators agreed to advance AI-based detection and prevention tools aimed at wildlife-trafficking content across search, social and e-commerce surfaces.

Those platforms represent a large share of global digital discovery. United for Wildlife said participating companies working through the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online account for about one-fifth of the global e-commerce market and reach roughly 90% of the world’s social media users.

Telecom and transport firms are also part of the same enforcement map. Vodafone, Vodacom and Safaricom are using AI and transaction-monitoring systems across M-Pesa, while British Airways and Heathrow are launching passenger-awareness work. The World Shipping Council is adding AI and machine-learning screening tools for high-risk shipments across a fleet that carries more than 90% of global container traffic.

For crypto, the campaign extends the use of blockchain forensics beyond hacks and sanctions. Public ledgers can preserve payment trails long after a listing disappears, while exchange deposits and stablecoin movements can give investigators points where freezing, subpoenas and account-level evidence become possible. The same tracing logic used in illicit stablecoin-flow investigations can apply when wildlife traffickers use crypto as one leg of a larger payment chain.