Sanctioned entities received an estimated $104 billion in cryptocurrency during 2025, a 694% jump on the year before, according to researchers at the Royal United Services Institute, the London-based defence and security think tank. The figure is an estimate rather than an audited total, but it is the stated reason RUSI’s Centre for Finance and Security chose 24 September to launch a Crypto and International Security Taskforce, with funding from the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.
A convening body, not a regulator
The first thing to understand about the taskforce is what it cannot do. It has no power to write rules, freeze assets, or bring prosecutions. It is a study and coordination body that will bring together senior government officials, law enforcement and regulatory authorities, researchers, and private-sector specialists, then channel their findings into recommendations for policymakers. Its influence will therefore be measured in what gets adopted, not in any enforcement action of its own.
The evidence behind the urgency
RUSI’s urgency rests on a set of assembled claims rather than a single event. Beyond the $104 billion estimate, its researchers point to organised-crime groups moving billions in illicit proceeds through crypto and exploiting gaps between national rules. The institute also cites a Financial Action Task Force warning that criminal networks could develop their own stablecoins engineered to resist freezing and seizure, and it argues that generative AI is speeding up malicious activity faster than investigators can respond while nation-states plug into illicit crypto supply chains first built for cybercriminals.
A dual-use framing
The taskforce will hold a series of meetings across three areas: mapping how illicit actors use crypto for organised crime, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, and political interference; assessing the regulatory, law-enforcement, and industry tools available to counter that use; and examining legitimate applications such as civil-society and humanitarian aid. The third stream is the notable one. RUSI is treating crypto as a dual-use technology rather than a purely criminal one, an approach that stands apart from framing that sees the asset class only as a laundering vehicle.
From meetings to recommendations
Tom Keatinge, director of the Centre for Finance and Security, framed the stakes as a policy problem. “As crypto becomes further embedded in the toolkit of criminal networks and hostile states, understanding both the risks and the legitimate uses has never been more urgent,” he said. Chainalysis co-founder and chief executive Jonathan Levin stressed the counterpoint: cryptoassets are transparent, he argued, so “a more transparent financial system can be a safer one.” Kinga Redlowska, head of CFS Europe, tied the issue to access: “When access to money is used as an instrument of repression, financial autonomy becomes a matter of security.”
Findings from each meeting will feed into a final set of recommendations, to be shared at a capstone conference and at a special session during RUSI’s SIFMANet Summit in London in December 2026, focused on sanctions circumvention. The honest read for a policy audience is that the headline $104 billion number is directional, not precise. The taskforce’s real test will be whether its recommendations travel from a think tank’s meeting rooms into the design of sanctions, supervision, and enforcement.
Adapted from RUSI Launches Crypto and International Security Taskforce.