Elliptic: Chinese Telegram scam markets fuel biggest darknet bazaars

Elliptic identified two leading channels, Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee, and estimated they are handling close to $2 billion a month in transactions combined. The firm said the markets broker money-laundering services and sell scam infrastructure including stolen personal data, fake investment websites, and deepfake tools, alongside other illicit listings such as prostitution and surrogacy services.

Elliptic linked the rise of these marketplaces to so-called pig butchering scams, which it said are frequently run from compounds in Southeast Asia and have been associated with human trafficking. The FBI has estimated that pig butchering operations extract roughly $10 billion a year from victims in the United States.

The report contrasted the Telegram ecosystem with earlier dark web markets. Elliptic estimated that Huione Guarantee, a Chinese-language market that later rebranded as Haowang Guarantee, facilitated about $27 billion in transactions from 2021 to 2025. U.S. authorities have described AlphaBay as the largest market of the Tor era, with more than $1 billion over roughly two and a half years.

Telegram banned Huione Guarantee in May 2025 after the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network described it as a money-laundering operation. Elliptic said Tudou Guarantee, in which Haowang Guarantee holds a stake, now processes about $1.1 billion a month, while Xinbi Guarantee processes about $850 million a month after a suspension and relaunch. Elliptic said it monitors around 30 similar markets on Telegram.

Telegram told WIRED in June 2025 that it reviews reports case by case and opposes blanket bans. Elliptic and other analysts disputed that framing, saying most activity they observed was tied to criminal services. Elliptic added that USDT is the dominant asset used across these markets and noted that stablecoin issuers can freeze funds under certain conditions.

As GNcrypto reported on 17 December 2025, U.S. Senators Elissa Slotkin and Jerry Moran introduced the SAFE Crypto Act, a proposal to set up a Treasury-led crypto-fraud task force that would include the Justice Department, FinCEN and the Secret Service, alongside exchanges, stablecoin issuers, custodians and blockchain analytics firms, to share intelligence, study common scam playbooks and coordinate asset recovery steps. The bill’s sponsors cited the FBI IC3 2024 report, which logged nearly 150,000 crypto-related complaints and about $9.3 billion in losses, with people over 60 the largest group filing those reports.