Cryptocurrency that is frictionless, transnational, low regulation transactions have long promised the ability to pay anyone in the world for anything. More than ever, that anything includes people: victims of human trafficking who are forced scam compounds and the sex trade on an industrial scale, bought and sold in crypto deals done with impunityusually seen by the public.

In the new RESEARCH REVEALS published today, crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis found that crypto-funded transactions for human trafficking—usually forced laborers trapped in compounds throughout Southeast Asia and forced to work as online scammers, as well as sex-trafficking prostitution rings-grow explosively in 2025. According to a strong analysis, based on the majority of tracking the entire blockchains the cryptocurrency used in criminal operations, researchers found that the crypto transaction for human trafficking grew at least 85 percent year on year. The total value of these transactions, Chainalysis says, is now at least in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year-although it refuses to give an exact number for the sales total because it is considered in its measurements to be a conservative estimate that probably undercounts the true scale of the issue.

“This is the continuation of a story of industrialized exploitation,” said Chainalysis analyst Tom McLouth. “The emergence of borderless, low-cost payments has created opportunities for human trafficking to accelerate.”

The human trafficking operations Chainalysis identified in its research were primarily Chinese-speaking criminal groups that posted ads for their offerings on the messaging service. wire. Many of the posts were found on “guaranteed” black markets running on Telegram channels, such as Xinbi Guarantee and the recently gone Tudou Guaranteewhich offers escrow services that accept and hold cryptocurrencies to prevent users from fraud. Chainalysis said it has also identified other independent Telegram channels that sell prostitution services.

By identifying trafficking operations from Telegram posts as well as information from law enforcement and other partner groups, the company’s analysts were able to trace the transactions of the operations, which were almost entirely carried out by “stablecoins“cryptocurrencies pegged to the US dollar to avoid volatility, such as Tether and USDC. Most of the profits from human trafficking operations also flow back to the same Telegram-based collateral markets, which serve as large, multibillion-dollar money laundering hubs, with sellers willing to offer money in exchange for dirty crypto.

Scam compounds throughout Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos that exploit forced laborers, often lured from South Asia and Africa with fraudulent job offers, have been a booming business for years. They now generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue each year, more than any other form of cybercrime, and human rights groups estimate that they have detained hundreds of thousands of conscripted scammers. Chainalysis says, however, that much of the measurable growth it tracks in crypto-funded human trafficking actually comes from sex trafficking operations. It found detailed Chinese-language Telegram advertisements describing profiles of sex workers available on time, for longer-term arrangements, and even international services offering to fly sex workers to locations such as Macao, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or other “overseas” destinations.

Some ads made references to suspected sex trafficking of minors, such as “Lolitas” and “real high schoolers,” Chainalysis found. The company’s analysis of operational crypto transactions also makes clear that their payments flow to entities that manage large numbers of women and girls, not independent sex workers. Chainalysis found that 62 percent of the transactions for the typical prostitution networks it analyzed were between $1,000 and $10,000, while for international sex-trafficking operations in particular, it found that almost half of the transactions were above $10,000, suggesting “organized criminal enterprises operating at scale,” as the company described.