According to a recent report by blockchain analytics platform TRM Labs, by 2025, less than 0.5% of stablecoin transactions will be related to illegal activities.
Analysis by TRM Labs shows that illicit financial flows account for approximately 0.4% of overall activity, highlighting that the use of stablecoins remains overwhelmingly legal.
TRM stated that 2025 was the first year that the monthly transaction volume of stablecoin activity exceeded US$1 trillion multiple times, with throughput continuing to be stable rather than a short-lived speculative peak.
In 2024, stablecoin transaction volume experienced unprecedented growth, with total on-chain transfers exceeding $27.5 trillion, growing by nearly 20% in 2025 to at least $35 trillion.
The concentration and scale of illegal activity follows a similar trajectory. In 2025, illicit entities received $141 billion in stablecoins, the highest level in five years, with $72 billion pegged to the A7A5 token, a ruble-pegged stablecoin operating in sanctions-related networks.
Oleg Ogienko, director of regulatory and overseas affairs at A7A5, told CoinDesk, “TRM Labs is trying to call all Russian foreign trade illegal. But that is of course a false statement.”
In an interview at Consensus Hong Kong 2026, Ogienko took a more defiant tone, saying he wanted to debate anyone who accuses him of violating compliance laws through his stablecoin company.
“We fully comply with Kyrgyzstan’s regulations. We do not do anything illegal,” he said. “We have KYC procedures and we have AML mechanisms embedded in our infrastructure. We do not violate any Financial Action Task Force principles.”
However, A7A5’s issuing and affiliated entities Old Vector LLC and A7 LLC, as well as the reserve-holding bank Promsvyazbank (PSB), are subject to U.S. Treasury sanctions, prohibiting the U.S. dollar-denominated financial community from interacting with them.
TRM Labs reports that stablecoins will account for 86% of all illicit cryptocurrency flows by 2025, underscoring their dominance in high-risk ecosystems. Sanctions-related networks will consolidate significantly in 2025, with direct transaction volume in the A7 ecosystem alone reaching at least $83 billion. These networks increasingly resemble parallel cross-border financial systems rather than isolated actors.
In contrast, 2024 is an expansion phase. From 2022 to mid-2025, money laundering infrastructure such as guarantee services expanded rapidly, peaking at more than $17 billion per quarter, with approximately 99% of transaction volume denominated in stablecoins. But institutionalization and centralization in 2025, especially through A7 and front company exchanges, has not yet reached the same scale.