Telegram Hosts Largest Crypto Black Market Ever Recorded - Report Reveals

Telegram's encrypted channels have become the epicenter of the largest underground cryptocurrency marketplace in history, according to a new investigation. The platform's privacy features—once hailed as tools for free speech—now facilitate a sprawling digital black market that dwarfs previous dark web operations.

How Telegram Became the Underground's Go-To Platform

End-to-end encryption and self-destructing messages create the perfect storm for illicit activity. Anonymous channels bypass traditional financial surveillance, while crypto payments leave minimal paper trails. The combination cuts through regulatory oversight like a hot knife through butter.

The Scale Defies Imagination

This isn't just another dark web marketplace—it's an entire shadow economy operating in plain sight. Thousands of channels move billions in digital assets annually, with everything from stolen credentials to sophisticated hacking tools available for crypto. Traditional financial institutions would kill for that kind of transaction volume, though they'd probably prefer legal customers.

Regulators Play Catch-Up

Global watchdogs scramble to adapt their playbooks. Existing anti-money laundering frameworks crumble against Telegram's architecture, while cross-border jurisdiction issues create enforcement nightmares. The platform's decentralized nature means shutting down one channel just spawns three replacements elsewhere.

The Crypto Community's Double-Edged Sword

Privacy advocates defend the technology's legitimate uses, while critics point to the undeniable correlation between anonymity and illicit activity. This tension mirrors crypto's broader struggle: building revolutionary financial infrastructure while bad actors exploit every loophole. Some traditional bankers probably take notes—after all, they've been finding creative ways around regulations for centuries.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The report exposes an uncomfortable truth: innovation always outpaces regulation. As Telegram's black market grows, it forces uncomfortable conversations about privacy, freedom, and financial oversight in the digital age. The genie isn't going back in the bottle—but someone needs to figure out how to live with it.

Scam markets on Telegram generate record monthly volumes

Elliptic identified two markets, Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee, as the current leaders of this system. Together, they enable close to $2 billion per month in crypto transactions tied to laundering services, stolen personal data, fake investment websites, and AI deepfake tools. The listings also include pregnancy surrogacy services and ads linked to teen prostitution.

These markets supply infrastructure to large-scale romance and investment scams known as pig butchering, which are run mainly from compounds in Southeast Asia. Thousands of trafficking victims are forced to work inside those compounds. The FBI estimates these scams take in about $10 billion a year from U.S. victims alone. By selling laundering and operational tools to those networks, Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee expanded at the same pace as the scams they support.

Tom Robinson, Elliptic’s cofounder and chief scientist, said that these markets are “the biggest ever recorded online.”

Bans fail as platforms and payment rails stay in place

In May, Telegram banned Huione Guarantee after it rebranded as Haowang Guarantee and was named as a money laundering operation by the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Tudou Guarantee, in which Haowang Guarantee holds a stake, expanded quickly, as Elliptic now tracks its activity at about $1.1 billion per month, compared with Haowang’s earlier level of $1.4 billion. Xinbi Guarantee reached around $850 million per month after being banned and relaunching.

In its statement, Telegram said it reviews cases individually and defends user privacy and financial autonomy. Analysts rejected that position. Elliptic and other observers said most activity on Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee is criminal.

Aside from scam services, the markets sell prostitution, including posts that suggest sex trafficking of minors through terms like “lolita” and “young girl.” The scam groups they serve are also widely linked to forced labor inside brutal compounds.

AlphaBay, once described by the FBI as ten times the size of Silk Road, processed only around $1 billion across two and a half years, while Hydra, a Russian market that also served ransomware groups and crypto thieves, handled more than $5 billion over seven years.

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