$17 Billion Stolen in One Year: The State of Crypto Crime with Chainalysis

Summary

Eric Jardine, Head of Research at Chainalysis, breaks down the 2025 crypto crime report, revealing nearly $17 billion stolen in scams. Impersonation scams grew 1,400% YoY, fueled by AI tools that remove the trade-off between scale and quality. Scam-as-a-service marketplaces and forced-labor compounds in Southeast Asia professionalize the crime. Despite jurisdictional challenges, enforcement is improving with historic wins, and Jardine argues that crypto's transparency makes it less criminal than traditional finance.

• Total crypto scam value topped $17 billion in 2025, driven by bull-market victim pools.
• Impersonation scams rose 1,400% YoY, using government and corporate deepfakes.
• AI eliminates the old trade-off between scam scale and scam quality.
• Scam-as-a-service sites sell spoofed websites and SMS kits for as little as $500.
• Southeast Asian compounds force trafficked workers into large-scale pig butchering scams.
• DPRK-linked groups like Lazarus focus on big hacks, not volume scams.
• Historic enforcement wins: 61,000 BTC recovered, $15 billion forfeiture.
• Crypto's illicit share remains below 1% of total volume, making it more measurable than fiat rails.