Currency Transaction Report (CTR)
A mandatory report financial institutions must file for cash or cash-equivalent transactions above a specified threshold, used to support anti-money-laundering oversight.
A Currency Transaction Report is a mandatory filing that financial institutions, including many crypto exchanges operating as regulated money services businesses, must submit to financial regulators whenever a customer's cash or cash-equivalent transaction exceeds a specified reporting threshold. Unlike a Suspicious Activity Report, which is filed based on suspicion of wrongdoing, a CTR is filed automatically based purely on the transaction's size, regardless of whether anything about it seems suspicious.
CTRs exist specifically to give regulators and law enforcement visibility into large currency movements that could be used for money laundering, even when no single transaction on its own looks suspicious, and they form part of the broader framework established under the Bank Secrecy Act (see Kaavon's "Bank Secrecy Act (BSA)" glossary definition). A crypto exchange's obligation to file CTRs is generally tied to processing a cash deposit or withdrawal above the threshold, rather than to crypto-to-crypto trading activity that never touches fiat currency directly.
Examples
- A crypto exchange processing a customer's large cash deposit above the regulatory threshold is required to file a Currency Transaction Report, regardless of whether the deposit looks suspicious.
- Unlike a Suspicious Activity Report, a Currency Transaction Report is triggered automatically by transaction size alone, not by any judgment about the transaction's legitimacy.