Bangladesh, Oct. 30 -- Bodybuilders and biohackers once had unlicensed injectable peptides to themselves. Now a younger, vainer market is buying them, and some of the vendors used to sell something darker. "Honey, I won't tell you anything." So said "Louise", a WhatsApp saleswoman for Shanghai ERP Peptide Biotechnology, when a Fortune reporter asked this spring why her firm preferred cryptocurrency. "I won't risk sending my boss to jail." Ten vials of an orange powder sold as 5-amino-1MQ, a supposed fat-burner, arrived in late May from a facility in New Hampshire for $109 in stablecoin. Chainalysis, a blockchain-analytics firm, traced about $3.6 million in digital assets to the same company between late January and early June.

Draw one ...