The center of the world's largest black market has shifted from the Dark Web to Telegram. Chinese-language black market platforms, including "Potato Guarantee" and "New Coin Guarantee," which serve Southeast Asian scam groups, are laundering money, selling scam tools, engaging in prostitution, and even human trafficking on a monthly basis, amounting to $2 billion. Experts criticize the passive attitude of Telegram and stablecoin issuer Tether as one of the main culprits behind the rapid expansion of this transnational criminal economy.
Telegram as a New Generation Black Market: How Did Potato Equity and New Coin Equity Grow?
Ten years ago, Dark Web markets relied on Tor anonymity technology and cryptocurrency to facilitate the illegal trade of drugs and guns, but today the black market no longer hides and has moved openly to Telegram.
According to a report by Wired citing blockchain tracking company Elliptic, the Chinese cryptocurrency scam market has formed a complete ecosystem on Telegram, offering everything from fake investment website templates and AI-generated deepfake videos to tools like dummy accounts, and even cross-border money laundering, document forgery, human trafficking, and sex trafficking services—all available for purchase.
The two largest black markets on Telegram, Tudou Guarantee and Xinbi Guarantee, handle a total of up to $2 billion in money laundering and criminal transactions every month.
Elliptic added that the majority of these scams are carried out by the "pig butchering" industry, which operates in Southeast Asian fraud parks. These companies obtain money laundering services through these black markets, allowing fraudulent funds to flow rapidly around the world.
$27 billion! The largest Telegram black market in history in the Chinese-speaking world.
The Telegram black market is surprisingly smaller than the Dark Web of the past.
AlphaBay, once a Dark Web giant, handled approximately $1 billion in transactions in two and a half years, while Russia's Hydra handled $5 billion in seven years. However, Huione Guarantee, the predecessor of the Chinese Telegram dark web market, handled a staggering $27 billion in transactions between 2021 and 2025, surpassing the total of all other Dark Web markets combined.
Elliptic stated bluntly: "The Telegram black market ecosystem, which is mainly based in Chinese, has grown into the largest online illegal market in history."
In May of this year, with the seizure of Huiwang and its subsequent crackdown by the United States and the United Kingdom in October, users quickly migrated to Tudou Equity and Xinbi Equity, which boosted their scale.
Experts: Telegram and Tether are complicit by turning a blind eye.
In response to external revelations about the rise of the black market, Telegram officials stated they would refuse to block it again: "China's strict capital controls force people to seek alternative methods of cross-border remittances, and Telegram should not hinder 'financial freedom'."
However, Erin West, director of the anti-fraud initiative Operation Shamrock, strongly refuted this, pointing out that the vast majority of these black market activities are related to money laundering scams: "Telegram is fully capable of stopping the fraud industry, yet it chooses to become an accomplice to fraud."
He also criticized that, as the core payment tool for the Telegram black market, Tether should have the ability to freeze funds, but it rarely intervenes in these money laundering activities.
Tether's inaction allowed black market funds to flow globally at near-zero cost, making it an accomplice to the fraud empire.
The transnational crime industry chain is expanding: Experts call for the establishment of an international anti-fraud alliance.
Southeast Asian scam parks, the Telegram black market, and Tether's financial transactions have formed a highly sophisticated black market supply chain.
Jacob Sims, a researcher at the Harvard Asia Center, points out that current international efforts to combat fraud are completely inadequate to keep up with the more than $10 billion in damages caused by fraud each year, not to mention the entrenched human trafficking rings and other human trafficking problems.
To combat this fraud industry, transnational cooperation at a level close to counterterrorism is necessary; otherwise, the industry will continue to expand rapidly.
This article, titled "Telegram in Chinese becomes the world's largest black market: potatoes and new coins guarantee $2 billion in illicit funds every month," first appeared on ABMedia, a ABMedia .
