A shockwave rippled through Shenzhen's famed Shuibei jewellery district in late January when Jieweirui, a local gold-trading and retail group built into a livestream brand, abruptly suspended withdrawals and physical deliveries across three linked mini‑program platforms. Local reporting and industry sources say the company's sudden liquidity freeze followed a run of surging precious‑metal prices that exposed large, unhedged betting positions accumulated inside a hybrid retail‑finance ecosystem.
Founded as a traditional gold recycler and supplier in 2014, Jieweirui reinvented itself under the stewardship of a charismatic operator, Zhang Zhiteng, who used short‑form video and livestreaming to build trust among ordinary consumers. The company expanded from physical trade into digital “lock‑price” and “reserved‑price” products offered through three WeChat mini‑programs — Jieweirui, LongYeJin and Jincheng Jinshijie — which together allowed customers to buy rights to future delivery or sale of gold and silver with small upfront deposits.
Beneath the consumer veneer, however, these features functioned economically as options and leveraged bets. Small deposits — sometimes as little as 20 yuan per gram — secured the right to buy or sell at a later, agreed price. The firm retained the counterparty risk, and its platforms permitted internal transfers of account balances and metal inventories among the three apps, creating a closed loop that concentrated both long and short exposures.
Crucially, Jieweirui lacked any financial licences, third‑party custody or transparent hedging in regulated futures markets. Customers’ payments frequently flowed into non‑corporate accounts, according to victims’ accounts, and the company did not publish evidence of reserves or hedging positions. When precious‑metal prices moved sharply in early 2026, the firm’s asymmetric, high‑leverage structure — LongYeJin reportedly offered up to 40x leverage — left it unable to satisfy counterparties on one side of its bespoke, bilateral trades.
Preliminary estimates put the disputed exposure in the tens of billions of yuan, with the incident affecting investors across more than a dozen provinces. While media outlets have circulated widely varying tallies — some citing millions of frozen accounts — the more conservative, corroborated accounts describe tens of thousands of retail investors, many of them older people and stay‑at‑home parents who were drawn in by livestream salesmanship and promises of high recovery prices.
Chinese legal authorities treat the sale of unlicensed investment products and the collection of public funds outside regulatory frameworks as potentially criminal. The Supreme People's Court’s test for illegal fundraising — illegality, publicity, inducement and social reach — maps closely onto the Jieweirui case. The company’s product design effectively sold option‑like instruments without licences, publicity came via livestream channels, inducements appeared in the form of high promised returns or preferential pricing, and the investor base was broad and retail.
The affair is not merely a corporate collapse; it is a cautionary episode for Shenzhen’s industrial upgrading project. Shuibei has spent decades transitioning from low‑end processing to design, branding and e‑commerce headquarters functions. The local ecosystem’s embrace of livestream retail and mini‑program distribution created fertile ground for financial innovation, but also for regulatory arbitrage where consumer trust intersects with speculative products.
Policymakers now face a familiar trade‑off: foster digital commerce and local industrial champions while closing the loopholes that allow ordinary retail channels to package leverage and derivatives without supervision. The likely immediate responses are criminal and administrative investigations, tighter scrutiny of mini‑programs that offer financial‑like products, and potential rules requiring custody, capital cushions and mandatory disclosure for platforms that match retail money with price‑contingent contracts.
For investors, the episode is a reminder that the apparent tangibility of gold and jewellery can be undermined by financial engineering. For regulators, it underlines the urgency of clearer boundaries between retail e‑commerce and regulated financial intermediation. And for the broader economy, Jieweirui’s implosion highlights how reputational risk from a single high‑profile failure can tarnish a valued regional brand and trigger contagion across informal finance networks.