From South Asia to the U.S.: Where Crypto Grew Fastest in 2025
TRM Labs released its 2025 Crypto Adoption Index, showing how crypto usage keeps expanding far beyond trading. Between January and July, India, the U.S., Pakistan, the Philippines, and Brazil topped the global rankings. The U.S. saw a 50% surge in activity, while South Asia became the fastest-growing region overall.
Stablecoins now account for nearly one-third of all on-chain activity, surpassing $4 trillion in volume this year - an 83% jump from 2024. Adoption also grew in regions officially banning crypto, such as Egypt and Morocco, where peer-to-peer trading remains active.
TRM’s report stands out for the precision of its geographic insight. The firm likely achieves this accuracy through advanced location tracing, giving it one of the best datasets in the industry for mapping real-world crypto adoption.
Europe Freezes Russia’s $50B Crypto Lifeline - the A7A5 Stablecoin
In its 19th sanctions package, the European Union took the unprecedented step of banning the A7A5 stablecoin - a ruble-backed digital asset issued by Kyrgyz firm Old Vector and tied to sanctioned Russian bank Promsvyazbank. The move also blacklisted Grinex, a successor to the sanctioned Garantex exchange, along with several Kyrgyz and Russian financial intermediaries.
TRM traced how A7A5 was developed by Russia’s A7 LLC, a cross-border settlement platform owned by sanctioned oligarch Ilan Shor, and used to sustain crypto payment rails after Garantex’s takedown.
Chainalysis showed that A7A5 processed over $51 billion since launch, operating as a closed-loop system for sanctioned entities rather than a retail token - with trading mostly limited to weekdays, suggesting corporate use.
Meanwhile, Global Ledger emphasized the compliance implications: the ban also targets exchanges where A7A5 volumes were highest, closing off long-used channels for sanctions evasion.
Tracing Fentanyl Money Flows: Chainalysis and Coinbase Join Forces
As fentanyl continues to drive record overdose deaths, Coinbase and Chainalysis teamed up on a targeted “sprint” to map and disrupt the crypto flows supporting synthetic opioid trafficking. Using Chainalysis intelligence, Coinbase’s team traced over 17,000 transactions linked to rogue chemists and darknet vendors, uncovering how millions in Bitcoin - the traffickers’ preferred currency moved through exchanges and mixers before reaching U.S. and overseas buyers. The operation led to dozens of account removals and 41 law enforcement referrals across 12 countries, including Europe and Australia. The effort highlights how proactive analytics and private–public coordination can expose the digital infrastructure behind one of the world’s deadliest criminal economies.
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