Roughly $16 billion in illicit crypto flowed through Chinese-language Telegram-based networks in 2025.
Chinese-language networks now account for about one-fifth of the roughly $82 billion in crypto money laundering activity recorded in 2025, according to new research shared with The Defiant.
In a report released today, Jan. 27, blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis said that these networks — which largely operate across Telegram and affiliated “guarantee” platforms — processed an estimated 20% of illicit crypto flows over the past five years.
That expansion has far outpaced the growth of laundering routed through centralized exchanges or DeFi protocols, the report noted.
According to Chainalysis, Chinese-language money laundering networks handled over $16 billion in 2025 alone, equivalent to roughly $44 million per day, across about 1,800 active wallets.
At the center of the ecosystem are so-called guarantee platforms, including Huione and Xinbi, which function as escrow-style marketplaces primarily used to exchange illicitly obtained funds. While enforcement actions have disrupted some of these hubs, Chainalysis said that vendors typically shift to alternative channels with little lasting impact on their operations.
“A combination of nationally-based laws, barriers created by borders, poor information sharing, and limited crypto tracing and asset recovery capabilities mean that crypto offers criminals a low risk/high reward method of benefiting from their criminality,” Chainalysis wrote in the report.
Earlier this month, Chainalysis also warned that crypto scams are becoming harder to trace as bad actors move deeper into DeFi, increasingly using decentralized exchanges and cross-chain bridges to hide the origin of stolen funds.