General information, not legal or tax advice. Rules change; check the authorities in your country. Status 23 October 2026.
"Bitcoin is for criminals" is a common objection. The data gives a more precise picture.
The numbers (Chainalysis, January 2026)
- Illicit addresses received at least $154 billion in 2025, a record, driven mainly by sanctioned entities.
- That is still estimated at below 1% of all attributed crypto transaction volume.
- Stablecoins accounted for 84% of illicit volume. The FATF also reports that most on-chain illicit activity now involves stablecoins.
These are estimates from one private analytics firm, based on addresses it has identified, and they are revised upward over time.
Sanctions
On 28 November 2018 the US Treasury for the first time put bitcoin addresses on its sanctions list, linked to two Iranians who exchanged ransomware payments. Regulated exchanges now screen deposits against such lists.
The ledger cuts both ways
Every bitcoin transaction is public forever. That is a privacy cost for honest users, but it has also helped investigators trace hacks and darknet markets, as in the Silk Road case. Cash leaves no such trail.
The honest frame
Criminals use every form of money. Bitcoin's answer to the crime problem is transparency at the ledger level and law enforcement at the edges, without giving anyone a switch to freeze everyone.