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

Chinese‑language crypto scam networks on Telegram have quietly built the largest online black‑market ecosystem ever recorded, with blockchain analysts estimating around 2 billion dollars in illicit transactions every monthfar surpassing infamous darknet markets such as Silk Road, AlphaBay, and Hydra. By late 2025, investigators tracking on‑chain flows and open Telegram channels concluded that these sprawling “guarantee” markets now sit at the core of the global crypto‑crime economy, operating in plain sight through public and semi‑public chats rather than hidden Tor sites.​

The shift marks a dramatic evolution of online crime infrastructure. Instead of drug or weapons markets, Chinese‑language Telegram ecosystems are designed to supply everything needed to run industrial‑scale fraud operations, especially “pig‑butchering” investment and romance scams that systematically groom and drain victims over weeks or months. Within these channels, vendors openly advertise laundering pipelines, OTC brokers, rented bank and exchange accounts, KYC‑bypassing services, as well as access to fake trading platforms and cloned websites that make fraudulent schemes look legitimate to unsuspecting users. Analysts describe this as the industrialization of social‑engineering crime, where scammers no longer build their own tools but plug into an on‑demand supply chain that runs almost entirely through Telegram.​

At the center of this ecosystem are Chinese‑language “guarantee” markets—platforms that act as escrow, reputation, and logistics hubs for criminal buyers and sellers. Investigations in 2025 highlighted Huione (also known as Haowang) Guarantee, Tudou (Potato) Guarantee, and Xinbi Guarantee as the dominant players, collectively processing tens of billions of dollars in Tether (USDT) since 2021. Blockchain‑intelligence firm Elliptic estimates that Huione Guarantee alone moved roughly 27 billion dollars in crypto before its takedown, making it the largest illicit online marketplace ever seen—bigger than any dark‑web market in history by total volume. Despite enforcement actions, activity did not disappear; it fragmented, rebranding into successor channels that rapidly attracted much of the same traffic.​

These markets are tightly linked to pig‑butchering crime hubs and human‑trafficking compounds across Southeast Asia. Investigative reports and on‑chain tracing connect many of the Telegram channels’ biggest customers to scam centers in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos, where trafficked workers are forced under threat of violence to run scripted chats with victims worldwide. The platforms supply them with stolen identity data, SIM cards, mule networks, as well as AI‑driven deepfake video and voice tools to impersonate partners, financial advisers, or customer‑support agents. US and regional authorities estimate that these pig‑butchering schemes now generate tens of billions of dollars in losses annually, with US victims alone losing around 10 billion dollars a year, much of it ultimately flowing through Chinese‑language Telegram markets.​

By the end of 2025, Elliptic and other firms reported that just two of these Chinese‑language Telegram markets were moving around 2 billion dollars in crypto every month, a scale one analyst said has no rival elsewhere in illicit crypto use. Under growing scrutiny, Telegram did cooperate in some high‑profile cases: Huione Guarantee was removed in mid‑2025, and Xinbi briefly disappeared after detailed evidence from investigators and mounting regulatory pressure. However, Telegram has also signaled that it will not implement blanket, proactive bans on this category of channels, framing the issue partly as a question of financial freedom for Chinese users facing strict capital controls. Regulators, meanwhile, have escalated. In October 2025, the US Treasury’s FinCEN formally designated Cambodia’s Huione Group, a conglomerate linked to Huione/Haowang Guarantee a primary money‑laundering concern, seeking to isolate it from the US financial system and putting the Telegram markets squarely on the radar of global banks and compliance teams.​

For victims and for the broader crypto industry, the implications are profound. The world’s largest “darknet markets” are no longer on the dark web at all, but operating in the open on a mainstream messaging app, powered by Chinese‑speaking scam syndicates and an increasingly sophisticated service economy built around fraud. Without coordinated crackdowns by messaging platforms, exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and regulators, investigators warn that these markets will continue to scale, normalizing multi‑billion‑dollar monthly flows of stolen funds and further eroding trust in the crypto ecosystem.