The U.S. Department of Justice has restrained more than $52 million in cryptocurrency while targeting wallets and online channels linked to the Xinbi Guarantee scam network.

Tether said in a Sep. 11 statement that the DOJ credited the stablecoin issuer’s “proactive assistance” in an operation against Xinbi Guarantee, a Chinese-language marketplace linked to international scam groups.

The coordinated action restrained more than $52 million in cryptocurrency in one day. U.S. authorities also seized two wallets that Xinbi allegedly used to receive about $12 million in payments and sought restraint orders covering 47 additional wallets tied to suspected money laundering.

Xinbi operated as a service hub rather than a single scam site. According to U.S. authorities and blockchain researchers, its vendors connected fraud groups with money launderers, operators of fake investment platforms, and recruiters involved in human trafficking.

DOJ targets Xinbi’s financial infrastructure

Instead of focusing only on individual fraud schemes, the enforcement action went after the payment tools that supported Xinbi’s marketplace. Vendors allegedly used the platform to advertise services, receive payments, and move proceeds from online scams through cryptocurrency wallets.

The two wallets targeted for seizure had collected about $12 million in payments, Tether said. Restraint requests involving another 47 wallets expanded the action to addresses that U.S. authorities associated with money laundering activity.

A post from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia described Xinbi as a Chinese-run network and confirmed that authorities restrained $52 million during the operation. The office said the action raised the Scam Center Strike Force’s running enforcement total to $938 million.

Authorities did not say in the available announcements whether every restrained wallet contained USDT or identify the other digital assets involved. The disclosed figures also refer to different legal steps: two wallets were seized, while the government sought restraints against 47 others.

Xinbi’s payment network had drawn scrutiny well before the latest DOJ action. Blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic estimated in May 2025 that the marketplace had processed at least $8.4 billion in transactions since 2022, according to a report on Xinbi published by Wired.

Elliptic linked the market to money laundering, stolen data, fake investment operations and services used by human trafficking networks. Wired also reported that the business behind Xinbi had been incorporated in Colorado in 2022, giving the case a direct U.S. connection beyond the use of dollar-linked cryptocurrency.

By April 2026, Elliptic estimated that Xinbi’s cumulative transaction volume had reached $21 billion. The firm recorded another $505 million in transactions during the 19 days after the United Kingdom sanctioned the marketplace in March 2026, Wired reported.

Tether assists with wallet restraints

Tether’s involvement gave authorities access to controls that do not exist in the same form for assets such as Bitcoin. As the issuer of USDT, the company can block specific tokens held at identified addresses after receiving valid requests from law enforcement.

CEO Paolo Ardoino said criminal groups should not assume that using cryptocurrency places their funds outside the reach of investigators. According to Ardoino, stablecoin infrastructure allows authorities to trace transactions and stop illicit funds when the relevant wallets have been identified.

Tether said it has worked with more than 340 law enforcement agencies across 67 countries. The company attributed more than $5 billion in frozen assets connected to suspected illicit activity to that cooperation.

The Xinbi action is not the first U.S. case in which Tether has helped investigators trace or control stablecoins. In June 2025, the DOJ filed a civil forfeiture complaint covering about $225.3 million in cryptocurrency connected to investment fraud affecting more than 400 suspected victims.

According to the DOJ complaint, the FBI and U.S. Secret Service traced seven groups of Tether tokens through a laundering network after Tether and crypto exchange OKX flagged suspicious accounts in 2023. The government alleged that the funds came from confidence-based investment scams, often called “pig butchering” schemes.

Reported losses from cryptocurrency investment fraud reached $5.8 billion in 2024, according to an FBI figure cited in the earlier DOJ case. Such schemes commonly begin when fraudsters build trust through social media, messaging services, or dating platforms before directing victims to fake investment websites.

Xinbi rebuilt after an earlier Telegram purge

Telegram blocked channels connected to Xinbi Guarantee and Huione Guarantee in May 2025 after researchers documented their alleged role in crypto scams and money laundering. The two Chinese-language markets had processed more than $35 billion combined since 2021, according to Elliptic data cited by Reuters.

Telegram said at the time that scamming and money laundering violated its terms. Xinbi, however, later returned through new channels, while other guarantee marketplaces absorbed business displaced by the removals.

By June 2025, Elliptic found that Tudou Guarantee, a market partly owned by Huione Group, had more than doubled in size and was handling about $15 million in daily crypto payments. Xinbi had also rebuilt its user base, demonstrating that removing messaging accounts had not eliminated the payment networks behind the marketplaces.

The guarantee-market model provided escrow and deposit services intended to keep vendors from cheating their customers. Researchers said operators used the same structure to connect scam groups with sellers of stolen data, laundering services, telecommunications tools and equipment linked to forced-labor compounds.

In Southeast Asia, some scam centers have relied on trafficked workers who were recruited with false job offers and then forced to contact potential victims. U.S. authorities have treated the fraud committed against investors and the trafficking of workers as connected parts of the same criminal system.

U.S. agencies increase pressure on crypto scam networks

The Xinbi operation adds to a series of actions by the DOJ, FBI, Secret Service, and Treasury against overseas networks accused of targeting Americans through fake cryptocurrency investments.

U.S. enforcement has included wallet seizures, civil forfeiture complaints, website takedowns and sanctions against financial companies accused of processing scam proceeds. In each type of action, authorities must identify the specific assets, accounts, or infrastructure connected to the suspected offense.

Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network took separate action against Cambodia-based Huione Group in May 2025, identifying it as a financial institution of primary money laundering concern. FinCEN said Huione had laundered at least $4 billion in illicit proceeds between August 2021 and January 2025.

According to FinCEN’s findings, the total included at least $37 million linked to North Korean cyber theft, $36 million from crypto investment fraud, and $300 million from other cyber scams. The agency also cited weak or absent anti-money laundering and customer-verification controls across Huione’s business network.

Three events could shape currency markets this week, with UK inflation and two key central bank decisions scheduled within just two days.

In this video, Gary Thomson looks at the latest UK inflation data, the Federal Reserve’s unusually uncertain rate decision and the Bank of Japan’s expected policy tightening — and what they could mean for GBP, USD and JPY.

👉 Key topics covered:

✔️ UK Inflation — 16 September — With inflation risks building again ahead of the Bank of England’s September meeting and the UK government’s October Budget, could stronger price growth increase expectations for another BoE rate hike later this year and support the British pound?

✔️ Fed Interest Rate Decision — 16 September — Markets are pricing in around a 62% probability of a 25-basis-point hike. With a September hike far from fully priced in, the decision itself could trigger a notable market reaction. Economic projections and the press conference may have an additional impact on the US dollar.

✔️ BoJ Interest Rate Decision — 18 September — Markets expect a 25-basis-point rate increase, with USD/JPY already falling to its lowest level since February 2026. Could signals about further quarterly hikes provide additional support for the Japanese yen?

With GBP, USD and JPY all sensitive to changing rate expectations, these three events could bring volatility to currency, commodity and equity markets.

💬 Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more market insights every week.

Watch it now and stay updated with FXOpen.

This article represents the opinion of the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand only. It is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, or recommendation with respect to products and services provided by the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand, nor is it to be considered financial advice.

The HIMS token is designed to track shares of the teleheath company Hims & Hers, which trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). On Robinhood Chain, traders can buy and sell the tokenized stock alongside other crypto assets like memecoins.

And that’s what happened with BONER.

The deliberately ridiculous memecoin was paired with HIMS in a liquidity pool, where traders could swap between the two tokens.

At one point, the pool contained 31,198 HIMS tokens, which is more than half of the 58,714 tokenized HIMS shares that were in circulation. That imbalance briefly sent the HIMS token on Robinhood to $132.64, more than four times the $28.84 closing price of the real HIMS shares on the NYSE.

It is a bizarre glimpse of what can happen when real-world assets are put onchain and made usable in crypto markets. As Thomas Probst, a research analyst at Kaiko, tells Magazine:

“A listed stock effectively becomes a composable DeFi asset at an unprecedented scale, in the same way Ether did.”

But why would anyone want to trade a memecoin against a tokenized healthcare stock in the first place? And what happens when onchain markets make even more bizarre pairings possible?

Onchain finance is for the ‘crazy ones’

Cast your mind back to summer 2020, when DeFi pioneers were busy farming for yield, deconstructing legacy finance and trying not to get rugged in the process. As Mike Dudas, co-founder of 6th Man Ventures, puts it:

“Onchain finance is for the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in square holes.”

Robinhood Chain seems to be the next iteration of this phenomenon, finding new uses for tokenized stocks no one had even considered until now. In less than three months after it launched, traders on Robinhood have created some wild crypto-native pairings like BONER/HIMS, AI/NVIDIA and SPACEHOOD/SPCX.

Stock tokens where they are the quote asset. Source: DeFi Prime

The basic idea is simple: instead of buying and holding a tokenized stock on its own, users can put it into a decentralized liquidity pool alongside pretty much any other token, and traders can swap between the two, creating a market around the pair.

Related: Robinhood Chain nears $1B TVL as Uniswap drives liquidity: Standard Chartered

One of the launchpads behind the trend, LONG, says its stock-paired markets generated more than $425 million in trading volume over a 24-hour period on Sept. 2, with almost $12 million locked in stock-token liquidity.

Sergej Kunz, co-founder of DeFi aggregator 1inch, tells Magazine:

“The opportunity tokenized equities present is much bigger than assets appearing onchain. […] this is not just about changing the venue. It is about creating an asset that can plug into an open financial system.”

Angelo Aspris, a finance academic at the University of Sydney, notes that this creates an array of new opportunities. 

“Once equity exposure becomes programmable, it can be used as a quote asset, collateral, loanable inventory or margin for derivatives.”

In other words, once a stock becomes a token, it doesn’t have to remain just a stock; it can become one of the building blocks of entirely new DeFi markets.

So, is this actually a new market?

Looking under the hood, there’s nothing particularly revolutionary about the plumbing. The markets are built using automated market makers (AMMs), a type of DEX mechanism that uses liquidity pools and algorithms to set prices and which let traders swap one token for another without a traditional order book or a matching buyer on the other side.

What is new is what those markets can contain. In a traditional stock market, stocks trade against currencies or other conventional financial instruments. In the wacky world of onchain finance, a tokenized stock can become one half of a market with almost anything else that has sufficient liquidity. 

Reid Noch, vice president of US equity market structure and electronic trading at TD Securities, says AMMs remain “very novel when compared to traditional markets.” 

While he finds the idea of making a stock part of the quote and liquidity for another market “interesting,” he says it’s a use case could make institutional adoption a harder sell. He tells Magazine:

“As long as they are primarily used to drive liquidity in memecoins, it will be challenging for more traditional players to take them seriously.”

Stock-paired markets generated more than $425 million in trading in 24 hours. Source: longdotxyz

It may sound like a strange use for a stock token, but there is a logic to it from a DeFi point of view. Traders don’t really need a reason to pair two assets beyond having a market where they can swap between them. 

Related: Robinhood takes stakes in Crypto.com, OG.com in prediction markets deal

And the more important experiment is whether tokenized stocks can become reusable financial building blocks rather than simply digital versions of traditional shares.

Does it actually work?

The BONER/HIMS episode shows that unconventional pairings can have unconventional results. 

Aspris says the extreme divergence between the tokenized HIMS price and the underlying stock was largely a consequence of “thin reserves” and “temporarily restricted issuance,” warning: 

“This creates the conditions for these events and increases the potential for strategic exploitation or manipulation.”

Arbitrage would normally pull the tokenized stock price back to the price of the real stock, but that link can break when liquidity is thin or the real-world market is closed, as Probst explains:

“Arbitrage relies here on a single actor rather than a continuous competitive mechanism like the one seen in traditional stock markets. These pools can therefore produce unreliable price signals, without any real transmission to the reference market.”

Memecoin / stock token pairings are succeeding at scale. Source: @howdymary

Noch is similarly skeptical that these pools will become the primary venue for discovering the price of tokenized stocks:

“I still see price discovery happening more in traditional markets, and AMMs being used [by] arbitrageurs to keep the market in line. […] I struggle with how these markets will drive price discovery given their low volumes compared to traditional markets.”

Maybe price discovery isn’t the point

Memecoin/stock pools may be able to trade around the clock, but these markets are immature and isolated from traditional markets….for now.

That said, they’re already generating real demand for tokenized stocks and testing how those assets behave when plugged into DeFi, says Kunz.

“Memecoin pairs might not be the number one case for tokenized equities, but are yet another source of demand, volume and liquidity for those assets.”

Memecoins may also be just the beginning. If tokenized stocks become established DeFi building blocks, there’s no obvious reason they have to be paired with other stocks or cryptocurrencies. Why not use them against tokenized real estate, commodities, artworks or even tokenized farts? (It’s a thing, look it up).

Of course, that doesn’t mean those markets will emerge, or that they would be popular or make economic sense. But the BONER/HIMS experiment shows that once real-world assets become composable onchain, markets can emerge around all kinds of combinations that TradFi would never have dreamed of. Aspris notes we are just at the beginning of this experiment, however:

“The experiment is useful and the direction is clear, but calling tokenized equities a finished DeFi primitive would be ahead of the facts.”

Magazine: Token buybacks are booming. But are they good for crypto projects?

Metaplanet CEO Simon Gerovich said the Japanese Bitcoin treasury company will further amend its Series 10 stock acquisition rights amid shareholder backlash over dilution concerns.

Metaplanet will reduce the number of potential shares underlying the rights by 131.3 million, from 319.464 million to 188.19 million, by resetting the conversion ratio from 1:696 to 1:410, the level before its September 2025 international share offering, Gerovich announced in a Friday X post.

Shares already delivered through prior exercises will not be returned or canceled. The reduction applies to the number available through future exercises.

The change will extinguish more than $220 million in warrant value and increase the company’s Bitcoin per fully diluted share by about 8.8%, according to Gerovich.

Metaplanet will withdraw its plans to transfer up to 90,000 rights to a long-term officer and employee incentive vehicle and develop a new compensation program with a leading global compensation consultant. Under the amended terms, all unvested rights will face additional exercise restrictions, with one-third becoming exercisable in each of 2029, 2030 and 2031.

The change follows shareholder criticism of the option pool’s expansion from 46 million shares to 319.5 million. Metaplanet said it fixed the pool at 319.5 million shares on Aug. 18, but some shareholders called on it to cancel the 273 million additional potential shares created by the expansion.

In a Friday X post, VanEck’s head of digital asset research, Matthew Sigel, called the adjustment a “meaningful concession” that better aligns management with shareholders.

On Aug. 31, Metaplanet disclosed that Gerovich exercised rights to acquire 92,000 shares under the Series 10 pool. Gerovich said he recused himself from the board’s deliberations and vote on the adjustment because he is a Series 10 holder.

On Aug. 18, the company acknowledged that expanding the pool “amplifies the dilution borne by existing shareholders.” 

Related: Metaplanet buys 2,823 BTC, surpasses 43,000 in Bitcoin holdings 

Metaplanet plans Hong Kong asset management subsidiary

Metaplanet also announced Friday plans to establish Metaplanet Asset Management Asia Limited in Hong Kong with $1 million in initial capital later in September.

The subsidiary will conduct trading in Bitcoin, equities and credit products during Asian market hours.

The new entity is part of Metaplanet’s “Project Nova,” which aims to build a Bitcoin-centered platform spanning asset management, securities, capital markets and other financial services.

In June, Metaplanet agreed to acquire Siiibo Securities in a 2.1 billion yen ($13.1 million) deal to form a securities arm.

Metaplanet stock price, 5-day chart. Source: Yahoo Finance

Metaplanet shares fell 3.8% on Friday, bringing their five-day decline to 15%, according to Yahoo Finance.

Magazine: Bitcoin adoption metrics say one thing, price action says another