Stablecoin activity has accelerated sharply over the past year, with 2025 marking a clear inflection point. Monthly volumes climbed steadily through early 2025 before surging in the second half of the year, repeatedly exceeding $1 trillion in monthly transaction value, according to a new report by TRM Labs.
This growth stands out not just for its scale but for its consistency, suggesting that stablecoins are increasingly being used as foundational payment and settlement infrastructure rather than as a byproduct of speculative trading cycles. Even after brief pullbacks late in the year, volumes remained far above levels seen in 2023 and most of 2024.
Sanctions evasion and large-scale money laundering lead illicit stablecoin activity
With this increased adoption comes greater focus on the role of stablecoins in enabling illicit activity, with critics often treating stablecoins as a uniform risk across all forms of crypto-enabled crime. The data, however, tells a more nuanced story.
Stablecoins do not support all illicit activity equally. Their impact depends heavily on the type of crime involved. Sanctions evasion and large-scale money laundering are deeply reliant on stablecoins, which offer speed, liquidity and insulation from volatility.
By contrast, scams, ransomware and hacking activity make more selective use of stablecoins, often favoring bitcoin or other assets at the point of offense before turning to stablecoins later in the laundering process. Understanding these distinctions is critical to interpreting stablecoin risk and designing effective policy responses.
Illicit stablecoin activity hits 5-year high
In 2025, illicit entities received $141 billion through stablecoin wallets, with $72 billion linked specifically to the A7A5 token. This was the highest level observed in the past five years.
Rather than reflecting broad-based growth across all crypto-enabled crime, the 2025 increase points to deeper reliance on stablecoins within specific activity types where they offer clear operational advantages, particularly sanctions-linked networks and large-scale money movement services.
The growth in illicit stablecoin usage is increasingly shaped by sanctions-related activity, but that category is influenced by multiple dynamics.
By 2025, stablecoins accounted for 86 percent of all illicit crypto flows and 42 percent of all volumes when removing A7A5 volumes. This figure is driven in large part by activity associated with sanctioned wallets and networks.
Any transactions involving wallets designated by OFAC are, by definition, considered sanctions-related, and many of these designated services, including Russian exchanges such as Garantex, have historically operated primarily using stablecoins.
In 2025, this pattern expanded further with the emergence of A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin whose activity is almost entirely concentrated within sanctions-linked ecosystems.
Illicit goods and services, human trafficking show near-total stablecoin usage
Beyond sanctions, stablecoin adoption varies sharply by illicit category, reflecting different operational needs. Scam and investment fraud activity shows high stablecoin usage but not universal reliance, consistent with fraud schemes that still target volatile assets during speculative cycles before converting into stablecoins for laundering.
By contrast, categories such as illicit goods and services and human trafficking show near-total stablecoin usage, suggesting these markets prioritize payment certainty and liquidity over price appreciation.
Banned or controlled substances sit closer to the middle, reflecting a mix of legacy crypto payment norms and growing stablecoin adoption, while child sexual abuse material (CSAM) vendors show much lower stablecoin usage, likely due to reliance on alternative payment methods and more fragmented transaction structures.
Stablecoins as laundering infrastructure
The report also reveals that illicit financial services rely on stablecoins, which is consistent with TRM’s prior research on guarantee services, which also heavily prioritize stablecoins for transactions. Activity tied to these entities expanded rapidly from 2022 through mid-2025, rising from well under $1 billion per quarter to peaks above $17 billion, before a sharp decline in late 2025.
The fact that roughly 99 percent of this volume is denominated in stablecoins reinforces the role these services play as laundering infrastructure, not speculative venues. Guarantee services function primarily as money movement and settlement layers, and stablecoins offer the speed, price stability, and low transaction costs required to support large-scale high-frequency laundering, escrow and cash-out operations.
The sustained growth through 2024 and into 2025 underscores how deeply embedded stablecoins have become in industrialized laundering ecosystems, even as enforcement pressure increases. The late 2025 decline was due to the crackdown affecting Huione and the Huione-backed Haowang Guarantee in October 2025.
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Shaping effective policy responses
Looking ahead, the data suggest that stablecoins will remain central to both legitimate crypto activity and the most consequential forms of crypto-enabled crime, making them a critical focus for regulators, financial institutions and law enforcement.
Overall, stablecoin usage has matured into core financial infrastructure, with sustained growth across multiple chains and clear evidence of real-world payment and settlement use. On the illicit side, adoption is increasingly uneven and shaped by operational needs: sanctions-linked networks, laundering facilitators and front-company exchanges rely heavily on stablecoins, while other crime types use them more selectively.
Understanding where stablecoins function as systemic rails rather than incidental tools will be essential to anticipating risk, targeting enforcement and shaping effective policy responses in the years ahead.
