Chinese Crypto Scammers on Telegram Are Fueling the Biggest Darknet Markets Ever

"When black markets for drugs, guns, and all manner of contraband first sprang up on the dark web more than a decade ago, it seemed that cryptocurrency and the technical sophistication of the anonymity software Tor were the keys to carrying out billions of dollars worth of untouchable, illicit transactions online. Now, all of that looks a bit passé. In 2025, all it takes to get away with tens of billions of dollars in black-market crypto deals is a messaging platform willing to host scammers and human traffickers, enough persistence to relaunch channels and accounts on that service when they're occasionally banned, and fluency in Chinese."

"The ecosystem of marketplaces for Chinese-speaking crypto scammers hosted on the messaging service Telegram have now grown to be bigger than ever before, according to a new analysis from the crypto tracing firm Elliptic. Despite a brief drop after Telegram banned two of the biggest such markets in early 2025, the two current top markets, known as Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee, are together enabling close to $2 billion a month in money-laundering transactions, sales of scam tools like stolen data, fake investment websites, and AI deepfake tools, as well as other black market services as varied as pregnancy surrogacy and teen prostitution."

"The crypto romance and investment scams regrettably known as "pig butchering"-carried out largely from compounds in Southeast Asia staffed with thousands of human trafficking victims-have grown to become the world's most lucrative form of cybercrime. They pull in around $10 billion annually from US victims alone, according to the FBI. By selling money-laundering services and other scam-related offerings to those operations, markets like Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee have grown in parallel to an immense scale."

Telegram-hosted Chinese-language marketplaces now underpin a massive ecosystem of crypto money laundering and scam-services, enabling tens of billions in black-market deals. Elliptic's analysis identifies two dominant markets, Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee, facilitating close to $2 billion monthly in laundering, stolen data sales, fake investment sites, AI deepfakes, and other illicit services including pregnancy surrogacy and teen prostitution. The growth followed only a brief drop after Telegram banned major markets in early 2025 because operators simply relaunch channels and accounts. Pig-butchering romance and investment scams, tied to human-trafficking compounds in Southeast Asia, alone extract roughly $10 billion annually from U.S. victims.

Read at WIRED