Then, Telegram watched impassively as those black marketeers rebranded, rebuilt, and returned to business as usual on the messaging service's platform. Its main channel now has 289,000 users by Elliptic's count, close to the 296,000 users that Haowang Guarantee had at the time Telegram banned it. Xinbi Guarantee, too, has relaunched on new channels and regained hundreds of thousands of users, Elliptic says. “Telegram recognized this was illicit activity and the kind they didn't want to be hosting, and so they deleted the channels and banned the associated usernames. !”WIRED reached out to Tudou Guarantee for comment via an administrator's Telegram account but didn't receive a response.