Catenaa, Wednesday, February 04, 2026-Illicit actors captured an estimated $158 billion in cryptocurrency last year, TRM Labs has said in a report.
It said that that amount marks a 145% rise in nominal value from 2024, though their share of overall crypto activity declined.
According to TRM’s Crypto Crime Report, illicit volume fell to 1.2% of total transactions in 2025, down from 1.3% in 2024 and well below 2023’s peak of 2.4%.
The firm also introduced a new metric comparing illicit activity relative to deployable crypto liquidity. Using this measure, criminal actors absorbed 2.7% of available crypto capital in 2025, down from 2.9% in 2024 and 6% in 2023, indicating a declining proportion of new market inflows being captured.
TRM highlighted that geopolitical pressures shaped illicit flows, with Russian, Iranian, Venezuelan, and North Korean actors driving sanctions evasion, hacks, and money laundering.
Sanction-related crypto transfers increased about 400% year-over-year, with tokens like A7A5 acting as hubs for coordinated Russian-aligned operations. Chinese-language escrow and underground banking networks also expanded sharply, reaching $103 billion in adjusted volume.
Most crypto thefts in 2025 targeted operational infrastructure such as wallets and key management rather than smart contract exploits, resulting in $2.2 billion in losses.
Only a handful of large incidents, including North Korea-linked attacks, accounted for most global losses, while scams like pig butchering and pyramid schemes dominated organized fraud.
Stablecoins were heavily used in criminal activity, representing roughly 84% of fraud inflows.
Despite the record nominal figures, TRM emphasized that illicit crypto activity remains a small fraction of the broader market and is increasingly integrated into global financial infrastructure.
