Key Highlights:
— After Tether blocked Garantex wallets, Garantex has moved its liquidity to Grinex, burning and reminting ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5 to cover its tracks.
— Users’ balances are being transferred from Garantex to Grinex, and some customers have already confirmed receiving assets.
— Grinex has already processed over 41.7 million USDT in incoming transactions.
—Meanwhile, Garantex processed over $14.5 billion worth of crypto in 2024, with licensed VASPs being the top targets.
The infamous Garantex website was taken down on March 6, 2025. Earlier, Tether blocked its wallets holding more than 2.5 billion rubles (~ $28 million). However, none of these stopped the Garantex team from continuing to operate. It has launched a new exchange, Grinex.
Global Ledger provides the on-chain and off-chain data proving that Garantex has moved its assets to Grinex to continue operating.
Grinex is Garantex successor. Here’s why
1. Garantex has moved its A7A5 liquidity to Grinex. It tried to cover tracks by burning and reminting assets
A7A5 is a ruble-backed stablecoin launched by a Kyrgyz company Old Vector for Russian Promsvyazbank’s cross-border payment platform A7. The stablecoin was listed on Garantex and BiFinance.
— Garantex has been accumulating A7A5 in its wallet TFwjP…yYUbD for nearly a month, starting February 8, 2025.
— After Tether blocked its wallets, Garantex moved all stablecoins and sent them via a chain of one-time-use wallets to TJkBr…fXXHR.— On March 10, TJkBr…fXXHR sent about 5B of these stablecoins to a system address for burning, reminted them in 10 minutes, and transferred them to TNDjh…Q3rDq. This was done to make the funds look clean.
Nearly all A7A5 supply—96% of the total—was reminted.
— From TNDjh…Q3rDq funds were transferred through multiple one-time-use wallets to the Grinex deposit wallet TGcka…rzUo99.
Currently, the Grinex wallet holds 87.7% of all A7A5 supply.
2. Garantex transfers user balances to Grinex
One of Grinex's managers confirmed in a private conversation with Global Ledger that customers are currently visiting the Garantex office in person. He also noted that clients are moving funds from Garantex to Grinex.
Some users have already confirmed that funds previously blocked on Garantex are coming to their Grinex accounts.
Туда-сюда telegram channel post on receiving funds to Grinex from the Garantex account
3. Grinex promos state that Garantex founders created it in response to sanctions and frozen funds
A Russian-language Coinmarketrating review states that Grinex was launched by the Garantex founder.
4. The UI of the Grinex website resembles that of Garantex
There are visible similarities between Garantex and Grinex’s interfaces.
As of March 20, 2025, Grinex has already processed over 41.7M worth of USDT
GL Counterparty Report with Grinex incoming and outgoing transactions. Mar 2–20, 2025
Last year, Garantex processed $14.5B+ worth of crypto
The Global Ledger research shows that in 2024, Garantex processed over $14.52 billion worth of ETH ($112,771,909), USDT (ERC-20/TRC-20 — $64,820,007), and USDC (ERC-20, $14,335,583,547). Exchanges rank as the top counterparty by the total volume processed.
Out of this sum, more than $11.76 billion was sent to/from virtual asset service providers (VASPs), and licensed ones account for approximately $8.26 billion. It’s ~70.2% of what all VASPs processed and ~57% of all funds processed by Garantex in 2024).
Entities with EU licences make up 78.8% of all licensed entities’ exposure ($6.51 billion).
Garantex overwhelms and outpaces compliance teams, making exposure hard to pinpoint
Garantex exposure is complex to identify. It changes patterns and uses one-time wallets, pass-through withdrawals, and other tactics to overload compliance officers.
Moreover, this is not just a one-time issue. Other illicit actors can use similar tactics to avoid detection. The good news is that with extra effort, these activities can be identified, as our research shows.
Stop illicit patterns in their track with Global Ledger tools!