Tether freezes $39.3 million USDT related to Xinbi guarantees

TEDA freezes approximately US$39.3 million of USDT related to New Currency Guarantees

Tether has frozen approximately US$39.3 million of USDT held in 10 TRON addresses related to the Xinbi Guarantee. Blockchain investigators have linked this Chinese guarantee market to billions of dollars in crypto transactions.

MistTrack was the first to report the freeze, with affected wallet balances ranging from 1 USDT to approximately 10.8 million USDT. TRM Labs describes the new coin guarantee as one of the largest illegal crypto markets in Southeast Asia, with transaction volume of approximately US$24.2 billion since 2022. The action follows a previous USDT freeze on funds related to Huione Guarantee, another Telegram-based guarantee market.

Freeze details and market impact

MistTrack, an on-chain tracking platform developed by SlowMist, first reported that TEDA blocked the circulation of approximately 39,273,713 USDT in 10 addresses. Hours ago, TEDA froze approximately 39,273,713 USDT in 10 TRON addresses related to the "New Currency Guarantee". Following the freezing of funds related to Huiwang guarantees, this marks another blow to the illegal Telegram hosting platform.

The balance confirmed by MistTrack is unevenly distributed among the 10 TRON addresses. Data shared by the platform shows that the largest address holds approximately 10.78 million USDTs, and three other addresses each hold approximately 8 million USDTs. Another wallet holds approximately 2.04 million USDTs, and two addresses hold approximately 1.28 million and 1.17 million USDTs respectively. At the moment represented by MistTrack data, three other addresses only held 1 USDT.

MistTrack's trading map directly connects a large wallet starting with TWPma8x to a new coin guarantee. The map shows that funds were transferred to the address from multiple wallets marked as "Guaranteed Merchants", and then the funds were sent to another new coin Guaranteed Address.

Although the tracking company did not identify in a public statement the specific enforcement request that led to the freeze, and TEDA did not publicly detail the reasons for targeting these addresses at the time, the move is one of a series of cases where stablecoin issuers restricted USDT on the TRON network. In June, more than $72 million was frozen after chain investigator ZachXBT traced a wallet that received 120.2 million USDT and transferred funds through exchanges and cross-chain routes. A month later, TEDA reportedly froze USDT balances in 131 TRON wallets associated with Chainalysis to ISIS-K after U.S. sanctions authorities added more than 100 cryptographic identifiers associated with the organization to the sanctions list.

Data compiled earlier by BlockSec found that TEDA blacklisted 4163 addresses in 2025, freezing 1.26 billion USDT on Ethereum and TRON networks. During a 30-day period covered by the study, more than $514 million was frozen at 370 addresses.

Transaction scale and illegal activities guaranteed by new coin

According to TRM Labs, new coin guarantees appeared on Telegram around 2022 and developed into one of the largest illegal crypto markets in Southeast Asia. The blockchain intelligence company estimates that the total transaction volume processed by the platform since its creation is approximately $24.2 billion, including an observed inflow of $12.1 billion since May 2025.

The market mainly serves Chinese users and operates through a hosting model. Guaranteed markets connect merchants and buyers and provide transaction infrastructure, with cryptocurrencies often used for settlement. TRM Labs has linked new coin guarantees to fraud operations, money laundering networks and cybercriminal gangs operating in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Early estimates of new coin guarantee activity are low as investigators continue to identify transactions related to the platform. Research released by Elliptic in May 2025 pointed out that since 2022, at least US$8.4 billion in USDT transactions have been linked to new coin guarantees, and found that its user base increased from 119,000 in August 2024 to 233,000 in May 2025.

Surveys show that merchants in the market are associated with services used by online scammers, including money laundering, forged identities and stolen personal information. Elliptic found that of the $235 million related to the WazirX hack, approximately $220,000 USDT approved addresses guaranteed by the new coin.

As of February 2026, TRM Labs estimates that despite enforcement measures against Telegram-based markets, transaction volume in the new coin has reached US$17.9 billion since mid-2025. Its profile of the new currency then put its total transaction volume since 2022 at US$24.2 billion.

SGD guarantees continued operations after Telegram cleanup

In May 2025, after blockchain researchers recorded their activities, Telegram deleted thousands of channels related to the new coin guarantee and the Huiwang guarantee. However, the new currency quickly resumed operations. TRM Labs found that the platform was back on Telegram within a few days, while certain suppliers related to Huiwang Guarantees and Huiwang Payments were also actively using the new currency.

The platform later began transferring some operations away from Telegram. TRM Labs said it has migrated to SafeW, a messaging service, and launched NewPay (also known as Xincoin Payment), a crypto-wallet that does not require Know Your Customer (KYC) inspections.

Enforcement actions on the competitive guarantee market have changed activities across the industry. After Telegram removed the public channels guaranteed by Huiwang, researchers found that users and merchants were turning to alternative solutions. Elliptic has identified more than 30 Telegram markets that will operate after Huiwang's closure, of which Tudou Guarantee has received a large number of relocated users.

The new coin has shown special resistance to these disturbances. TRM Labs said its daily inflows nearly doubled in the months after Telegram's May 2025 ban, while trading volumes related to Haowang, Huiwang and Tudou fell sharply.

Previous freeze targeted USDT related to Huiwang

Before freezing the new currency, TEDA had taken similar actions against funds related to Huiwang. In July 2024, the issuer froze more than US$28 million in a TRON wallet associated with Bitrace to Huiwang Group's guarantee business. Bitrace subsequently reported that Huiwang attempted to circumvent the restrictions by activating another address and transferring 114,800 USDC from the affected wallet.

Huiwang Guarantee As a custody market, USDT connects suppliers and customers through Telegram, and USDT is widely used for payments. Researchers linked vendors on the platform to money laundering, stolen data and online fraud tools. Huiwang later developed its own stablecoin USDH. Elliptic said the token is being promoted as an alternative in a different way than the USDT and cannot be frozen by the issuer.

Telegram's May 2025 action subsequently removed channels related to Singapore Dollar and Huiwang, but TRM Labs later discovered that the two networks had begun rebuilding or shifting activities to other channels and services. Trading volume in the new coin continued to rise after these restrictions, reaching the total of US$24.2 billion cited by TRM Labs in March 2026.