U.S. authorities moved to restrict or seize roughly $52 million in cryptocurrency allegedly connected to Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based platform accused of facilitating fraud and money laundering, the Department of Justice said. The action raised the cumulative value of assets frozen, seized, recovered, or otherwise restrained in the wider Xinbi investigation to about $938 million, according to the DOJ.
The case places a major offshore crypto-enabled payment network under coordinated pressure from U.S. prosecutors, Treasury sanctions officials, and foreign law enforcement. Xinbi Guarantee allegedly offered services used by online fraud operations, particularly across Southeast Asia, while processing payments through digital assets and conventional currency channels.
The Treasury Department said Xinbi, established around 2022, had processed more than $24 billion in transactions. Treasury alleged that the platform served clients connected to North Korean hacking groups and sanctioned organizations, including the Jin Bei Group and entities associated with Prince Group.
Telegram channels and wallets targeted
A federal court approved the seizure of Xinbi Guarantee’s Telegram channels on Sept. 7, according to the DOJ. Authorities also took control of two payment wallets holding about $12 million and sought to freeze 47 additional wallets allegedly tied either to money laundering or providers of fraud-enabling services.
The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control added Xinbi Guarantee, Safew Technology, and Anwen Technology to its sanctions list on Sept. 9. Sanctions generally prohibit U.S. persons and businesses from dealing with designated entities and can expose foreign institutions to secondary-risk scrutiny if they facilitate significant transactions for sanctioned parties.
The DOJ said investigators were also sent to Madagascar to support local authorities at 13 suspected scam compounds. The operation involved the processing of more than 3,200 electronic devices, suggesting investigators are pursuing evidence beyond blockchain addresses and payment wallets.
Xinbi’s alleged activity illustrates how Telegram-based marketplaces can serve as an operating layer for fraud networks: advertising services, connecting intermediaries, organizing payments, and recruiting workers in a single online environment. Seizing public-facing channels can disrupt that infrastructure even when wallet activity shifts to new addresses.
North Korea-linked employment schemes remain a parallel risk
The Xinbi enforcement action arrived alongside fresh attention on North Korea’s use of overseas IT workers to obtain access to foreign companies. A July alert issued by the U.S. government and partner agencies warned that North Korean workers may use third-country identities and employment arrangements to secure remote roles, with wages potentially routed back to North Korean organizations.
Reporting on the practice described workers from countries including Iran and Lebanon being recruited through LinkedIn and, in some cases, working as part-time “interview assistants” for crypto-denominated pay. Such placements can create risks beyond payroll fraud, including access to internal systems, proprietary data, customer records, and cryptocurrency infrastructure.
CrowdStrike data cited in the reporting put cryptocurrency losses attributed to North Korea-linked hackers and threat actors at more than $2 billion in 2025, a 51% increase from the prior year. The figure underscores the overlap between cyber intrusions, fraudulent employment, and digital-asset laundering networks that enforcement agencies are increasingly treating as connected problems.
Congress weighs tax treatment and market-structure rules
U.S. policymakers are also preparing to address parts of the domestic digital-asset framework that remain unresolved. The House Ways and Means Committee is scheduled to consider two cryptocurrency tax bills on Sept. 16: H.R. 9175, the Mining and Staking Tax Clarity Act, and H.R. 9172, the Applying Existing Tax Anti-Abuse Rules to Digital Assets Act.
The mining and staking proposal concerns when taxpayers would recognize income from newly created tokens. The anti-abuse bill would consider applying wash-sale treatment, a rule used in securities markets to limit tax-loss harvesting, to digital assets.
In the Senate, lawmakers are scheduled to hold a first procedural vote on the CLARITY bill on Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. Eastern time, according to the report. Representative Warren Davidson has sought removal of Section 305, which the report said would permit platforms and stablecoin issuers to freeze suspicious transactions for 30 days, potentially extending the period to 180 days following a law-enforcement request.
South Korea is facing a related policy debate. A petition seeking a two-year delay to virtual-asset taxation collected 50,764 signatures, enough to qualify for National Assembly committee review. The government has maintained a January 2027 implementation target, while the ruling People Power Party has argued that tax-reporting infrastructure is not yet ready.
Banks test tokenized deposits for cross-border payments
While enforcement agencies focus on illicit payment channels, Swift has begun a pilot with 17 banks, including Citigroup and Mitsubishi UFJ, to test tokenized deposits for around-the-clock cross-border transfers.
Tokenized deposits are digital representations of commercial-bank deposits. Unlike many stablecoins, they remain direct claims on the issuing bank. Swift’s pilot will test whether the structure can support near-instant transfers while reducing settlement delays and fees associated with international payments.
The project reflects a growing distinction in the market between permissionless crypto payment networks and bank-led tokenization systems built around regulated institutions. Swift’s test remains a pilot, but participation by major banks gives tokenized deposits a route into existing international payment relationships rather than requiring consumers or businesses to move funds into a separate crypto-native system.
Market activity remains uneven
Digital-asset prices were modestly lower over the past 24 hours, according to the supplied market snapshot, with Bitcoin down 0.53%, Ether down 1.65%, and Solana down 2.50%. The global digital-asset market capitalization was estimated at roughly $2.65 trillion as of Sept. 14, 2026.
Price action among individual tokens was sharply mixed. Filecoin gained more than 21% in the supplied figures, while Lisk rose nearly 55%, demonstrating that activity remained concentrated in selected assets rather than reflecting a uniform market move. Zcash, XRP, BNB, Dogecoin, and TRON were among tokens reporting declines.
DeFiLlama data showed Robinhood Chain revenue had declined for five straight days since Sept. 7. Revenue for the previous 24 hours was listed at $723,077, while seven-day revenue stood at $8.66 million and 24-hour decentralized-exchange volume reached about $1.346 billion. Pons, a launchpad in the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, reported more than $12 billion in cumulative trading volume after two months, though it also said the PONS token’s market capitalization had nearly halved during that period.
The contrast between high turnover and weakening token valuations is a reminder that on-chain volume can measure trading activity without establishing durable demand for a project’s token.
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