From the Ashes of Huione Guarantee: Telegram's Dark Market Scene Explodes

Holy smokes, folks! The crypto underworld just can’t stay down! After the notorious Huione Guarantee got yanked off Telegram, a whole swarm of new dark market platforms has burst onto the scene. That's right, blockchain sleuths at Elliptic have been digging deep and they've uncovered a wild surge in activity across more than 30 Telegram-based marketplaces since May. It's like watching a hydra – cut off one head, and a bunch more pop up!

Since Telegram kicked Huione Guarantee to the curb, these new platforms are buzzing like never before. Leading the charge? Tudou Guarantee. This bad boy has seen its user base explode, doubling in size and raking in transaction volumes that rival the old kingpin, Huione Guarantee.

Get this: a ton of the merchants who used to sling their shady wares on Huione Guarantee are now setting up shop on Tudou Guarantee. They're back in business, peddling stolen data, money laundering services, and all the scammy infrastructure you could ever want.

But what about Huione Guarantee itself? Well, they tried to keep the party going with some hush-hush escrow services after the shutdown. But their crypto transactions, mostly in Tether (USDT), have nosedived to basically nothing by late May. Talk about a fall from grace!

And here's a twist: some of the activity that looked like it was still coming from Huione Guarantee? Turns out, it might've been mislabeled. Whoops!

Now, let's not forget the bigger picture. Other parts of the Huione empire, like Huione Pay, are still chugging along, processing boatloads of crypto transactions. But these are a whole different beast, with their own wallets and operations, not tied to the old marketplace.

"The closure of Huione Guarantee sent shockwaves through the guarantee market ecosystem," the researchers at Elliptic said. "But guess what? A ton of other Telegram-based marketplaces are still out there, growing like weeds!"

They're calling for Telegram to step up its game and keep yanking these marketplaces if they want to put a dent in the global scam epidemic. It's like playing whack-a-mole, but with higher stakes!

Before its dramatic takedown, Huione Guarantee was the biggest fish in the darknet pond, having funneled over $27 billion in shady deals. It was all in Chinese, acting as an escrow platform for scammers across Southeast Asia and China, connecting shady vendors with their eager buyers.

These vendors were selling everything from fake IDs and SIM cards to surveillance gear and money laundering services. And they were all about those stablecoins like USDT, with deposits to keep things on the up-and-up... or down-and-dirty, depending on how you look at it.

Rebranded domains keep Huione network alive

But wait, there's more! Chainalysis, another group of blockchain detectives, is backing up some of Elliptic's findings. They've found that even though Huione Guarantee's main domain and public channels got the axe, its laundering network is still kicking.

Huione has pulled a sneaky move, popping up under a new domain, Huione.me. They're keeping the old branding and even their tokens like XOC and the USDH stablecoin are still in play, being traded like hotcakes.

And get this: USDH has caught the eye of FinCEN for its shady design that makes it tough for the cops to freeze. It's like a get-out-of-jail-free card for the bad guys!

Chainalysis also noticed that rival marketplaces like Tudou Guarantee are picking up steam, but they're still not touching Huione's old glory days, when they moved over $81 billion in crypto since 2021.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any wilder, TRM Labs dropped a bombshell. They're saying that Huione and its buddies are cooking up their own messaging apps, like ChatMe and SafeW, to dodge Telegram's crackdown. It's like watching a cat-and-mouse game in the digital underworld!