Chainalysis counted $154B in illicit crypto inflows for 2025, up 162% from 2024. Stablecoins were 84% of volume; the 343% DeFi figure isn't in the report.
At least $154 billion moved to cryptocurrency addresses Chainalysis has identified as illicit in 2025, up 162% from a year earlier. The blockchain analytics firm called the number a lower-bound estimate in its 2026 Crypto Crime Report; it counts only wallets already tied to known criminal activity, not every on-chain crime during the year.
Stablecoins accounted for 84% of that illicit volume by value. Chainalysis said the share does not imply stablecoins are primarily used for crime; most stablecoin transactions are legitimate. Stablecoins also dominate legitimate settlement, so the 84% figure measures the asset class's role inside a criminal subset, not the probability that a given stablecoin payment is illegal. The concentration gives regulators a clear target. Stablecoin issuers can respond to court orders and freeze addresses, which is harder to do with non-custodial DeFi protocols. Mastercard is testing single-audit stablecoin compliance with Borderless.xyz, an attempt to make one audit cover those obligations across jurisdictions.
Chainalysis also identified Chinese-language money laundering networks, or CMLNs, as a fast-growing endpoint for criminal funds. Those networks took in $16.1 billion in 2025, a figure limited to the CMLNs Chainalysis has identified. Since 2020, inflows to identified CMLNs grew 7,325 times faster than inflows to centralized exchanges and 1,810 times faster than inflows to DeFi protocols, the firm said. The multiples compare a newly charted category with a much larger base, so they describe momentum rather than market share.
Darknet market vendors changed routing in 2024. Chainalysis said vendors sent a larger share of proceeds into DeFi that year. Abacus Market, one such marketplace, received $43.3 million on-chain in 2024, up 183.2% from a year earlier. The sample is a single marketplace, so it is a directional signal, not a measure of aggregate DeFi inflows. DeFi protocols do not sit inside the same compliance perimeter as exchanges, which makes the routing shift worth tracking even at this scale.
The 343% figure for illicit DeFi inflows does not appear in the Chainalysis materials reviewed for this article. The published metrics are the $154 billion lower bound, the 162% annual increase, the 84% stablecoin share, the CMLN inflows, and the Abacus Market growth. No dedicated DeFi breakdown was included for 2025, and the 343% claim has no matching statistic in the firm's published materials.
Because both years are lower-bound counts, the 162% increase can move if Chainalysis retroactively adds labels to the 2024 baseline. The stablecoin share and the CMLN inflows carry the same caveat; the whole report is built on the current version of Chainalysis's address database.
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