Money laundering just requires value movement. You can launder money through anything that can be exchanged for value.
Discussion
This is why the idea of ""money laundering" doesn't make sense. There is a previous action that obtained said value by some other illegal means. Hiding it doesn't seem like a crime. Maybe destroying evidence is but again destroying the evidence is not really any more of an ethical issue than the actual crime committed. Is hiding a murder weapon ever a consideration in criminal counts or sentencing? I never heard of a thief being charged with throwing his gloves in a dumpster.
We then have to parse gifts, favors, patronage... all kinds of value are transferred all the time. Is it money laundering when the bar tender says "on the house" When does it start or end?
Yeah, there has to be an initial act that deems the funds "illicit" in the first place (funds are stolen, funds are proceeds from crime, etc.). Then the act of laundering it is moving it, exchanging it, layering it, etc. in order to usually get the funds into a position where one can use them without worry. Also, the trail of funds ("follow the money") is usually a good way to identify the suspect behind whatever that initial act was, so laundering can be a way of hiding or obfuscating evidence too. In fraud schemes, there are sometimes people involved in the theft that simply just move (or launder) the stolen money. Classic example is the fraud mule.
So if someone hacked your bank account and sent all your funds to some fraud mule's account, then the mule sent it onward to another mule and kept a small amount, and the next mule did the same, then eventually the remaining stolen funds end up with the original suspect again, you could build a criminal case and say the suspect hacked, stole, etc. and each of the mules laundered stolen funds, maybe more. That is the idea behind it.
If money laundering statutes didn't exist though, you could likely still hold people accountable for doing these things though. Could try arguining the mules are complicit with the original theft.
The State and the traditional financial industry have built a financial surveillance system though in the name of preventing money laundering. And a lot of the AML/BSA crowd seems to forget that the funds have to be illicit in the first place. The industry is hyper focused on reporting and KYC. It is ugly.
Not worth the trade offs in my opinion. But we know the controls are not really in place for crime detection and prevention, but control.