Stablecoins Took Over the Dark Web: A $154 Billion Headache

Long story short: Bitcoin lost its crown. In 2025 the shady corners of the internet started using dollar-pegged stablecoins for most illicit crypto traffic — to the tune of about $154 billion, with stablecoins making up roughly 84% of that mess. That’s not a tiny pivot; it’s a full-on style change in how criminals move money online.

Why stablecoins became the currency of choice

Stablecoins are basically the boring, dependable cousin of wild crypto: they’re tied to the dollar, don’t rollercoaster in value every day, and move across borders with lightning speed. For crooks who want to settle a payment without waking up to a 30% price swing, that’s a dream.

Beyond the stability, these tokens plug into decentralized finance tools and private service layers that make tracing and policing flows harder. Think of it as a shadow banking system that runs on code: fast, programmable, and less entangled with regular banks and oversight.

So what used to be a Bitcoin-era strategy — hodling in shady wallets and praying for cover — has matured into something far more efficient: laundering-as-a-service, automated exits, and plumbing that lets bad actors treat value like email attachments. It’s modern crime, version 3.0.

The players, the fallout, and why you should care

This shift didn’t happen in a vacuum. Organized laundering networks — particularly sophisticated firms operating out of certain hubs — now offer full-service setups: swapping, layering, hosting, and obfuscation. These outfits work for everyone from fraudsters and ransomware gangs to state-linked actors who want plausible deniability and speed.

Nation-states are also cozying up to the new rails. In one headline-grabbing example, a state-backed token tied to a national currency moved massive volumes in under a year, effectively sidestepping the usual banking chokepoints. Meanwhile, North Korean-affiliated hackers reported some of the biggest haul years ever, with several mega-hacks accounting for huge chunks of the total. Iranian proxy networks and others similarly used crypto corridors for everything from illicit oil sales to arms procurement.

Alarmingly, the on-chain world is bleeding into real-world violence. Criminals are increasingly using crypto to fund human trafficking, and there’s a rising trend of physical coercion — people being forced to transfer funds or hand over access to wallets. That’s a grim reminder that this isn’t just a digital cat-and-mouse game; real people suffer when these systems are weaponized.

To be fair, illicit activity is still a sliver relative to the entire crypto economy — under 1% by value — but the quality of that sliver has changed. It’s more organized, it’s faster, and it’s now a tool for geopolitical maneuvering, not just petty cybercrime.

What’s next? Expect regulators, exchanges, and security teams to try to play whack-a-mole: stricter rules, better on-chain analytics, and cross-border enforcement pacts. That will help, but the core problem is structural: a fast, programmable dollar alternative exists on-chain, and anyone who can build a reliable service around it can enable both mundane and terrifying uses.

So yes, the story of crypto crime is less about meme coins and more about the plumbing. If we want a safer ecosystem, the conversation needs to be about building resilient systems, smarter enforcement, and a little less charm for anyone selling ‘laundering-as-a-service.’