Illicit $8B crypto market Xinbi incorporated in Colorado: Elliptic

A Colorado-incorporated firm has been linked to a Chinese illicit marketplace that has served scammers in Southeast Asia and has been used to channel billions of dollars worth of crypto.

The marketplace, called Xinbi Guarantee, has received $8.4 billion, primarily in Tether (USDT) stablecoin transactions to date, blockchain security firm Elliptic reported on May 13. 

Merchants on the Chinese-language, Telegram-based marketplace sell technology, personal data, and money laundering services to Southeast Asian scammers who target victims using pig butchering scams. 

On its website, Xinbi describes itself as an “investment and capital guarantee group company” and claims to operate through Xinbi Co. Ltd, a Colorado-incorporated company incorporated in 2022. 

“In January 2025, the corporation was updated to ‘Delinquent’ for failing to file a periodic report,” Elliptic reported.

Key services offered on the black marketplace are money laundering services, which are the largest category, as well as technology such as Starlink equipment for scammers, stolen personal data for targeting victims and fake IDs and other fraudulent documents.

Xinbi is the second-largest illicit online marketplace discovered so far, with transaction volume growing rapidly. Q4 2024 saw over $1 billion transacted, and evidence links the platform to North Korean hackers laundering stolen funds, the Elliptic researchers said. 

Related: Largest ‘illicit online marketplace’ has grown 51% in 6 months: Elliptic

Elliptic identified thousands of crypto addresses used by Xinbi Guarantee and the merchants on it, and stated that the $8.4 billion in transactions “should be considered as lower bounds of the true volume of transactions on the platform.”

The platform, which has 233,000 users, operates on a “guarantee model,” requiring vendor deposits to prevent fraud. 

In July 2024, Elliptic exposed a similar Telegram-based Chinese marketplace known as Huione Guarantee.

The firm found that the wider Huione Group of companies had facilitated over $98 billion in crypto transactions.

In early May, it was designated by the US Treasury as a money-laundering operation and was to be severed from the US banking system. 

These platforms also provide a window into a “China-based underground banking system,” based around stablecoins and other digital payments, “which is being leveraged for money laundering on a significant scale,” Elliptic concluded. 

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