Placement brings illicit funds into the financial system, layering obscures them, and integration returns them as apparently legitimate wealth. On public blockchains layering still leaves a record, so path analysis across hops, services, and chains can connect the final funds to their source.
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Glossary term
What is Layering?
Layering is the stage of money laundering in which criminal proceeds are moved through a series of transactions to distance them from their source, after placement and before integration. In crypto, layering can use many hops, mixers, bridges, chain hopping, peel chains, and rapid swaps between assets to make the path harder to follow.