Telegram shuts ‘largest darknet marketplace to have ever existed’

A major Chinese darknet marketplace suspected of facilitating crypto scams and cybercrime has been shut down by the Telegram messaging service, upon which it operated.

The internet’s largest illicit marketplace, Haowang Guarantee, formerly Huione Guarantee, said it will shut down following Telegram’s ban of thousands of associated accounts on May 13. 

“Since all our NFTs, channels and groups were blocked by Telegram on May 13, 2025, Haowang Guarantee will cease operations from now on,” read the notice on the marketplace website.

A report from Wired said that this involved banning thousands of accounts and usernames that served as the infrastructure for the crypto crime marketplace and its vendors.

Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn told the outlet, “communities previously reported to us by WIRED or included in reports published by Elliptic have all been taken down,” before adding that “criminal activities like scamming or money laundering are forbidden by Telegram’s terms of service and are always removed whenever discovered.” 

The Chinese language black marketplace facilitated an estimated $27 billion in illicit transactions, predominantly using the Tether stablecoin (USDT), according to blockchain security firm Elliptic. 

Elliptic researchers also found that the wider Huione Group of companies had facilitated over $98 billion in crypto transactions.

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

The marketplace provided services to crypto scammers, including money laundering, stolen personal data used for pig butchering scams, telecommunications infrastructure and equipment, deepfake software and IDs, and even physical restraint devices used in scam call center compounds across Southeast Asia. 

Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson said it was a “huge win” as the “largest darknet marketplace to have ever existed has been shut down.” 

In early May, the platform was designated as a money laundering operation by the US Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). It was to be severed from the US banking system. 

However, another Telegram-based illicit marketplace called Xinbi Guarantee has been identified by Elliptic, which discovered thousands of crypto addresses used by the merchants on it. 

On May 13, the firm said that it has seen $8.4 billion in transactions so far, but that should be considered as “lower bounds of the true volume of transactions on the platform.”

Xinbi was linked to a Colorado-based company that was incorporated in 2022 but listed as delinquent in January 2025.

Black marketplaces such as these have unveiled a “China-based underground banking system,” based around stablecoins and crypto payments, which is being leveraged for money laundering on a “significant scale,” Elliptic stated.

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