Cryptocurrency is frictionless, transnational, loosely regulated transactions have long promised the ability to pay anyone in the world for anything. More than ever, this includes human beings: victims of forced human trafficking scam compounds and the industrial-scale sex trade, bought and sold in crypto deals carried out with impunityoften in public view.
In a new study released today, cryptocurrency tracking firm Chainalysis found that cryptocurrency-funded transactions for the purpose of human trafficking – largely forced laborers trapped in compounds across Southeast Asia and forced to work as online scammers, as well as in sex trafficking prostitution rings – saw explosive growth in 2025. According to the company’s analysis, based largely on tracing across blockchains the cryptocurrency used by these criminal operations, researchers found that crypto transactions for human trafficking increased by at least 85% year over year. The total amount of these transactions, according to Chainalysis, now amounts to at least hundreds of millions of dollars per year, although it declined to give an exact figure for this sales total because it views its measurements as a conservative estimate that likely underestimates the true scale of the problem.
“It’s a continuation of a story of industrialized mining,” says Tom McLouth, an analyst at Chainalysis. “The emergence of borderless, low-cost payments has created the possibility of a more rapid expansion of human trafficking. »
The human trafficking operations identified by Chainalysis in its research were primarily Chinese-speaking criminal groups posting advertisements for their deals on the messaging service. Telegram. Many messages were found on “collateral” black markets that operate on Telegram channels, such as Xinbi Guarantee and the recently disappeared Tudou guaranteewhich offer deposit services that accept and hold cryptocurrencies to protect users from being defrauded. Chainalysis claims to have also identified other independent Telegram channels selling prostitution services.
By identifying trafficking operations from these Telegram posts as well as information from law enforcement and other partner groups, the company’s analysts were able to trace the operations’ transactions, which are almost entirely conducted with “stable coins“, cryptocurrencies pegged to the US dollar to avoid volatility, like Tether and USDC. Much of the profits from human trafficking operations have also flowed into the same Telegram-based collateral markets that serve as vast, multi-billion dollar money laundering hubs, with sellers willing to offer money in exchange for dirty crypto.
Scam rings in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos that exploit forced laborers, most 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 they have ensnared hundreds of thousands of conscripted scammers. Chainalysis claims, however, that the majority of the measurable growth it traced in crypto-funded human trafficking actually came from sex trafficking operations. He found detailed Telegram ads in Chinese describing the profiles of sex workers available by the hour, for longer-term arrangements, and even international services offering to fly sex workers to places like Macau, Taiwan, Hong Kong or other “overseas” destinations.
Some ads referenced suspected sex trafficking of minors, such as “Lolitas” and “real high school kids,” Chainalysis found. The company’s analysis of the operations’ crypto transactions also clearly shows that their payments are made to entities that supervise large numbers of women and girls, not independent sex workers. Chainalysis found that 62% of transactions for the typical prostitution rings it examined were between $1,000 and $10,000, while for international sex trafficking operations in particular, it found that almost half of transactions exceeded $10,000, suggesting “organized criminal enterprises operating on a large scale,” as the company describes it.
“We’re not talking about a sex trafficker or a pimp having three, five or 10 victims,” McLouth says. “We are talking about hundreds of victims.”
Although crypto has likely fueled the growth of the sex trafficking trade, McLouth notes that the ability to track cryptocurrency across blockchains may also have exposed to scrutiny an industry that has long thrived in secret. “It’s new visibility on one of the oldest crimes in existence,” McLouth says.
On the human trafficking industry scam side, Chainalysis also found Telegram messages offering payments for the arrival of a new forced worker at a scam complex, ranging from $8,888 (a figure likely chosen due to Chinese cultural associations with the number eight being lucky) and $22,000 per individual worker.
“Resort No. 7 is making a grand entry into the market. All agents are welcome to compare prices and inquire,” reads the translation of a Chinese-language Telegram message seeking Chinese-speaking workers for a resort in Cambodia. “Typing skills are required, good health is required, standard Mandarin is required, no forged documents, no mental issues are required. … Direct operation from the precinct, personnel interviewed in the company, immediate payment.”
As detailed by a whistleblower who contacted WIRED from a fraud resort last year, trafficked workers typically have their passports confiscated by the scam resort’s bosses and are forced to work 15- or 16-hour shifts targeting Western victims with fraudulent text messages. Some are held in debt bondage, while others are more explicitly imprisoned in fortified compounds, beaten and electrocuted for breaking rules or missing cheating quotas.
A Chinese-language article on Telegram featuring sex workers, with descriptions of their measurements and the sexual services they provide.Courtesy of Chainalysis
Common threads between sexual exploitation and the crypto-funded human trafficking sector scam are the use of Telegram as a marketplace platform and stablecoins — particularly the popular stablecoin Tether, according to other reports — as a means of payment, points out Erin West, a former prosecutor in Santa Clara County, California, who runs an anti-scam organization called Operation Shamrock. Both companies could do more to avoid enabling human traffickers, West says: Telegram could ban traffickers’ accounts, or Tether, which unlike Bitcoin functions as a centralized currency, could seize or freeze their assets. Yet she says both companies allow these criminal operations to continue using their tools.
“Why are Telegram and Tether okay with making money from exploiting humans? They know this is happening. This money is transferred to their platform and the discussions take place in open forums,” says West. “There are some very obvious bad actors that we can point to that, if arrested, would significantly hinder the ability to openly discuss and pay for these horrible things.”
Tether did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment. When WIRED contacted Telegram, the company responded in a statement that “criminal activities, such as human trafficking or money laundering, are expressly prohibited by Telegram’s Terms of Service, and we remove this content immediately upon discovery.” He pointed to the page of moderation statistics and his ban last May Telegram channels for Xinbi Garantie as well as an even larger black market, Huione Garantie. (Actually, both markets rebounded in the months that followed, with Xinbi simply rebuilding its Telegram channels and Huione being rebranded as Tudou Garantie.)
“These channels, however, are often the only effective way to transfer money for people living under strict financial controls in countries like China, so reports should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis,” the Telegram statement continued. “In addition to accepting reports from users and NGOs, Telegram has a large team of moderators with custom AI tools who proactively monitor the platform and remove millions of harmful content every day.”
Xinbi Guarantie, for its part, seems aware enough of its vulnerability to a more prolonged Telegram ban to have moved some of its operations to another messaging service called SafeW, as Cryptocurrency tracking company TRM Labs recently noted: but still largely works on Telegram.
Chainalysis’ research on human trafficking also addresses the use of crypto in the sale of child sexual abuse materials (CSAM), which represents a much smaller total of crypto transactions, but whose effects on its young victims cannot be measured in dollars. Chainalysis found that about half of CSAM transactions are less than $100, which it says highlights how cheap and accessible CSAM materials, including Those generated by AI-have become. Even more worrying, he points out that CSAMs from “Hurtcore” and others sadistic online communities who use sextortion tactics to force minors to film explicit videos of themselves are increasingly resurfacing on commercial markets where they are sold for cryptocurrency.
Unlike other sex and human trafficking fraud documented in the report, these CSAM transactions are still largely conducted in Bitcoin, Chainalysis found, although CSAM markets now widely uses Monero– a “private currency” designed to be much harder to trace – to launder their proceeds.
The Internet Watch Foundation, a UK-based anti-CSAM nonprofit that sometimes partners with Chainalysis in its research, claims to have c It has seen a steady increase in the use of crypto for CSAM sales since it began tracking cryptocurrency markets for materials five years ago. Despite Bitcoin traceabilityits transnational payments allow operators to pay to host child pornography in another country – often the United States – making police operations more complex. “It’s easy and crosses borders,” says an IWF analyst who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of his work. “You could be on one side of the world but operate these services on the other side of the world. »
Chainalysis argues that as worrying as crypto fuels human trafficking may be, it also provides law enforcement with an opportunity to take on this industry. According to Chainalysis’ McLouth, some of the vulnerabilities to target could include the centralized stablecoin cryptosystems used by these traffickers, as well as the multi-billion dollar collateral markets running on Telegram and serving as withdrawal points for these exploitative industries.
“Those are some of the biggest opportunities for disruption from law enforcement,” says McLouth. “But they need to move faster. They need to dedicate more resources to understanding how this all works. Because it’s only going to continue to evolve.”
