This paper examines whether cryptocurrency-based laundering requires substantive criminal-law redefinition or, rather, procedural adaptation within decentralised financial environments, particularly in relation to organised criminal structures. It argues that the principal tensions arise not at the level of substantive criminalisation, but within the evidentiary and enforcement frameworks through which laundering operations linked to organised crime are investigated and prosecuted. Decentralised architectures complicate the attribution of transactions to natural persons and organised criminal groups, hinder timely access to off-chain data held by foreign service providers, and challenge the effectiveness of freezing, seizure and confiscation mechanisms. These issues are analysed through the Italian legal system, which serves as a relevant case study for observing tensions between an advanced anti-mafia and asset-oriented enforcement framework, EU preventive harmonisation, and the evidentiary constraints generated by decentralised financial infrastructures. The paper further examines the challenges of international cooperation in a borderless digital environment, highlighting the mismatch between high-speed blockchain transactions and territorially bounded judicial mechanisms. In this context, recent EU reforms – including the 2024 Anti-Money-Laundering ‘Single Rulebook’ and the establishment of the Anti-Money-Laundering Authority – represent significant steps towards supervisory harmonisation, yet do not eliminate bottlenecks affecting cross-border evidence gathering and asset immobilisation. The study concludes that crypto-laundering primarily raises questions of procedural adaptation and multilevel coordination rather than substantive redefinition, requiring stronger evidentiary tools, freezing mechanisms and international cooperation frameworks.