Overview

• Chainalysis estimates nearly $15 billion sits in wallets directly tied to crimes and about $60 billion resides in downstream wallets linked to illicit activity.
• Darknet market administrators and vendors control roughly $46.2 billion, underscoring the concentration of long-standing illicit operations.
• Bitcoin accounts for about 75% of criminal balances, while stablecoins appear more dispersed because issuers can freeze assets and offenders diversify risk.
• Direct transfers from illicit entities to centralized exchanges have fallen to around 15% from over 40% in 2022, with mixers and cross-chain bridges increasingly used to obscure flows; roughly $7 billion reached exchanges in the first half of 2025 versus an average of $14 billion annually since 2020.
• Chainalysis says its data has supported more than $12.6 billion in seizures worldwide, and Coinspeaker reports U.S. executive orders creating crypto reserve frameworks for seized assets, a claim not corroborated by the other cited coverage.