Stablecoins, Sanctions And Surveillance: Why 2025 Reshaped Crypto’s
From record onchain volumes to geopolitics-driven crypto crime, 2025 structurally shifted how regulators and institutions engaged with digital assets, with stablecoins at the center.
As crypto markets entered 2026, one theme became increasingly clear: Last year was less about speculation and more about infrastructure, regulation and real-world use. Across jurisdictions, regulators and institutions moved from theory to implementation, reshaping how digital assets are supervised and used.
A defining feature of this shift was the rise of stablecoins. While Bitcoin (BTC) continues to dominate crypto market capitalization, stablecoins now account for more than half of all onchain transaction volumes globally. Their increasing role in payments, remittances, and trading has placed them firmly in the center of regulatory attention, particularly as governments grapple with financial stability and compliance risks.
In this week’s episode of Byte-Sized Insight, Cointelegraph explores how these changes played out in practice, drawing on insights from Matthias Bauer-Langgartner, head of policy for Europe at Chainalysis.
Bauer-Langgartner said, “2025 has been a year of stablecoins.”
He began by highlighting that this isn’t particularly new, as their dominance has been building for years. According to Chainalysis data, stablecoins now “clearly dominate the crypto assets landscape with more than 50% of transactional volumes,” even as Bitcoin retains roughly half of total market capitalization.
That growth has made stablecoins attractive for legitimate use cases and for illicit ones.
He added that criminals favor stablecoins because they are liquid, globally accessible, and avoid volatility. Still, that same structure creates enforcement leverage.
“Centralized stablecoin issuers typically have the ability to freeze or even burn stablecoins,” he said, calling it “an extremely powerful tool to combat financial crime.”
Beyond individual scams and hacks, 2025 also marked a shift toward state-linked crypto activity.
Source: CoinTelegraph
