Less than 0.5% of stablecoin transactions were linked to illicit activities in 2025, according to a recent report from blockchain analytics platform TRM Labs.
Illicit flows accounted for about 0.4% of overall activity, underscoring that stablecoin usage remains overwhelmingly legitimate, TRM Labs analysis showed.
TRM said 2025 was the first year that stablecoin activity exceeded several times $1 trillion in monthly trading volume, with sustained performance rather than short-lived speculative spikes.
In 2024, stablecoin transaction volume saw unprecedented growth with total on-chain transfer volume surpassing $27.5 trillion, and in 2025, it increased nearly 20% to at least $35 trillion.
Illicit activity followed a similar trajectory of concentration and scale. In 2025, illicit entities received $141 billion in stablecoins, the highest level seen in five years, of which $72 billion was pegged to the A7A5 token, a ruble-pegged stablecoin that operates within sanctions-linked networks.
Oleg Ogienko, Head of Overseas and Regulatory Affairs at A7A5, told CoinDesk that “TRM Labs tries to label all Russian foreign trade as illicit or illegal. But this is, of course, a wrong statement.”
In separate comments during an interview at Consensus Hong Kong 2026, Ogienko was even more defiant, saying he was looking to debate anyone who accuses him of violating any compliance laws through his stablecoin company.
“We fully comply with Kyrgyz regulations. We don’t do illegal things,” he said. “We have KYC procedures and AML mechanisms built into our infrastructure. We do not violate any Financial Action Task Force principles.”
However, Old Vector LLC and A7 LLC, the issuing and affiliated entities of A7A5, and Promsvyazbank (PSB), the bank that holds the reserves, are sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, preventing the dollar-denominated financial world from interacting with them.
The TRM Labs report said stablecoins accounted for 86% of all illicit crypto flows in 2025, underscoring how dominant they have become within high-risk ecosystems. Sanctions-related networks consolidated dramatically in 2025, with the A7 ecosystem alone generating at least $83 billion in direct volume. These networks increasingly resemble parallel cross-border financial systems rather than isolated actors.
By comparison, 2024 represented an expansion phase. Laundering infrastructure such as escrow services expanded rapidly from 2022 to mid-2025, peaking at over $17 billion per quarter, with approximately 99% of the volume denominated in stablecoins. But the institutionalization and centralization seen in 2025, particularly through the A7 and shell company exchanges, had not yet reached the same scale.
