A7A5 after the US designation: 89% of the volume is the same tokens going out and coming back

On 1 October 2026 the US Treasury’s sanctions office designated the “A7 Network” a significant transnational criminal organization, and its financial-crimes unit proposed a rule barring US institutions from transmitting funds that involve the network’s sub-agents — in fiat or in crypto. Treasury’s figures: $179.1 billion moved in A7A5 between February 2025 and June 2026, and another $17 billion in fiat through sub-agents with accounts at about 435 financial institutions in 83 countries. The company A7 and the token’s issuer, Old Vector, have been under US sanctions since August 2025.

The designation lists no crypto addresses. So instead of reading a list, we read the token itself.

Between 14 September and 5 October there were 17,309 A7A5 transfers on Tron, between 1,978 addresses. That is 500 to 1,250 transfers a day — for comparison, USDT on Tron makes millions.

Those transfers add up to 347.7 billion A7A5, about $4.1 billion at $0.0118 per token. Almost all of it is in 71 transfers of one billion A7A5 or more. They happened on only ten of the 22 days, never on a weekend, and all between 07:00 and 16:00 UTC — Moscow business hours.

The large transfers follow one pattern. A wallet that holds 37.8 billion A7A5 (about $447 million), TNnWYcH3Ph4WpH4inLJAfrchN3AoujmtRH, sends several billion to a second wallet, TDiUTj2F7744riKE6DhfvHN6dC4xPE3mYw. That wallet passes it on to a third or a fourth. Minutes later the same amount comes back along the same path and returns to the first wallet. Between cycles the middle wallets hold nothing.

The table below is one such cycle from 2 October — the day after the designation. Eight billion A7A5 leave the big wallet at 13:48 UTC and are back at 14:33. In 45 minutes the six transfers add 32.7 billion A7A5, about $387 million, to the day’s volume. No token ended the cycle anywhere other than where it began.

We measured this for the whole period: for every pair of wallets we took the amount that went one way and the amount that came back, and counted the smaller of the two in both directions. That matched back-and-forth is 309.3 billion of 347.7 billion A7A5 — 89%. Three pairs around the one middle wallet account for 57% on their own: 39.0 billion each way with the big wallet, 26.3 billion each way with TLhXpT4h92GYWFVVkkqJ5p3g5KVTYXxncM, and 37.4 billion out to TXndTC73UJVLZmvTsCnhAQMiUdCaVLxTBf against 34.5 billion back.

Take the matched pairs away and 38.4 billion A7A5 remains — about $454 million over 22 days, some $21 million a day. That is an upper bound on value that actually changed hands on Tron, and it still includes one-way moves between wallets that may belong to the same owner.

The small end is clearer. 91.5% of all transfers are under one million A7A5 (about $11,800), and together they carry 1.29 billion A7A5 — $15.3 million in three weeks, roughly $0.7 million a day. On a weekday about 160 addresses are active; on a weekend, 55 to 80.

This is not a new accusation. TRM Labs and Elliptic have said that about a third of A7A5’s volume looks circular and that real use outside A7 is thin; TRM put genuine volume near $75 million a day earlier this year and falling. Our three weeks say the circular share on Tron is now far higher than a third, and the remainder far lower.

Not on chain, in the first days. On 1 and 2 October there were on average 856 transfers a day against 858 on working days in the second half of September; small-transfer volume was 80 million A7A5 a day against 71 million; active addresses 176 against 163. (5 October is in our data only up to about 17:00 UTC, so we leave it out of this comparison.) No mint or burn transfers appear in the period. And on 2 October the billion-sized cycle ran exactly as before.

It does not say who controls any of these wallets, and none of them is on a sanctions list; we have not marked them in our database. “Matched back-and-forth” is arithmetic, not a statement of intent: the movement may be treasury or exchange operations rather than an attempt to inflate numbers — but either way it is not money changing hands. A7A5 also exists on Ethereum and trades inside exchanges whose books are not on chain; we read Tron only. The $179 billion and the other official figures are the Treasury’s.

A7A5’s on-chain balances grow daily (the token pays interest by rebasing), so we give wallet balances in tokens and do not state shares of supply.