Billion-Dollar Telegram Scam Market Gets Canned — You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

Picture the scene: Telegram, that digital watering hole of the garrulous masses, has pulled the rug from under the feet of Haowang Guarantee, a black marketplace so colossal that even Aunt Agatha would blanch (and she once harpooned a marlin with a wheel of Stilton). The total takings? Oh, not much — just a trifling $27 billion, which, as we all know, is precisely the amount one loses down the back of the sofa on a bad day. 😏

On a Tuesday dripping with consequence, Haowang Guarantee — self-described as the “world’s largest-ever illicit online marketplace” (What ambition! What moxie! What hope that your mum won’t find out!) — announced Telegram’s rather brusque intervention. Having been blocked, be-NFTed, de-channeled and ungrouped by the steely hand of Telegram as of 13 May 2025, the marketplace pronounced, with all the dignity of a butler sacked for hiding cufflinks in the trifle, that it would cease operations “from now on.” Farewell, sweet prince; flights of crypto angels sing thee to thy blockchain rest.

One can’t help but raise an eyebrow at Haowang Guarantee’s clientele: a veritable United Nations of crypto rapscallions sprinkled throughout Southeast Asia. The setup allowed entrepreneurial third-party vendors (presumably sporting trench coats and shifty eyes) to peddle all sorts of digital odds and dubious ends.

Telegram Blocks Darknet Marketplace Haowang Guarantee

Word on the digital grapevine has it that Telegram’s solution involved an almighty purge — accounts vanishing like soufflés at an all-boys’ school. Contributing to this cyber-carnage was the analytical blitzkrieg of Elliptic, that firm which peeks under the rug of blockchain shenanigans. Elliptic, with a flourish, exposed the sorts of hijinks Haowang was indulging in — pig butchering, no less! — and pegged Haowang as the biggest darknet bazaar since the fellow who sold London Bridge to an American in 1968.

With $27 billion wrapped up neatly in Tether’s USDT (crypto aficionados love nothing so much as a good acronym), Haowang had been, by all accounts, the mother of all shady emporiums. Not to be outdone, Elliptic put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, whatever passes for scholarship nowadays) and chronicled the rise and fall of the marketplace, with a passing nod to minor-league operations like Xinbi. Meanwhile, the Australians, never ones to shy from a barney, blocked more than 90 platforms connected with scams, hacks, and enough “pig butchering” to alarm the entire swine population.

Following Elliptic’s investigations — and presumably after someone at Telegram finished their tea — thousands of accounts from Haowang Guarantee and Xinbi found themselves unceremoniously shown the door. A Telegram spokesperson, giving nothing away but a faint air of moral superiority, declared:

Communities previously reported to us by WIRED or reports by Elliptic have all been given the old heave-ho. Scamming and money-laundering derring-do is strictly off-limits on Telegram — unless you count people trying to sell you a dodgy haircut.

Xinbi Guarantee

Not to be left out of the festivities, Xinbi, another Telegram-ensconced marketplace with 233,000 eager beavers, moves about $8.4 billion in USDT (if you’re detecting a theme, congratulations — you’re paying attention). Transactions spiked to $1 billion (quarterly, no less), mostly from helpful souls laundering money with the sort of dedication most people reserve for crossword puzzles.

For bonus mayhem, Germany stormed the castle and shut down eXch, a platform rumored to have a role in the Bybit hack ($1.4 billion, but who’s counting?). What a time to be alive — or, at the very least, to keep your wallet somewhere safe and your crypto under the mattress. 🛌💸

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2025-05-15 13:46