The laundering could be for a whole sets of reason. Two offhand examples; having money available for barred transactions due to sanctions[0] or having untraceable money available for intelligence or other related illicit activities. Some people rather have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it.
Obviously people who have money to launder don’t like the idea of stopping money laundering. The same for people doing drug trade, avoiding international sanctions, tax evasion, etc.
The idea of a government, especially the US, laundering money doesn't really make any sense. Generally, the point of laundering money is to pay taxes on it so it can enter the financial system. Governments (and especially the US who has the most control of international monetary pipelines like SWIFT) can freely do what they want with their money generally, at least within their own countries. Their money is going to make it into the financial system without any laundering.
I kinda misspoke, it's not just laundering per se, more like crypto being a workaround for sanctions generally. If you have crypto in some countries there are ways to withdraw it into cash and buy your kids iphones for days without much kyc. Remember Binance's ties to Russia. Or you can buy guns for your war from North Korea and pay them crypto. But yeah, for laundering there are mixers and friendly banks. NK uses Macao I heard. Russia probably HK.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...
reply