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Summary:
- Although Huione was announced as closed, with its website and Telegram channel disappearing, there is no significant decrease in transaction data. According to our data, the activity is not only continuing but even increasing.
- Huione's persistence suggests that its service is effective as an embedded money laundering network that only partially depends on physical infrastructure.
- Recent trends, especially the imminent FinCEN final rule designation, provide an important opportunity to re-evaluate Huione's involvement in organized crime and international fund transfers.
- Following the previously published article about Huione and its guarantee services, this article examines Huione's continuing role as a large-scale money laundering hub.
Even after "Huione" was officially announced as closed, with its website and Telegram channel shut down, its activity has not decreased but increased. Our data shows that this platform continues to process transactions worth billions of dollars, demonstrating an extremely resilient system that functions almost independently of external infrastructure.
Huione (also known as Haowang) announced its business closure, but its veracity is unclear. On May 1, 2025, FinCEN took measures to designate the Cambodia-based Huione as a primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act. If this measure is confirmed, Huione will be blocked from the US financial system. However, there is almost no impact on transaction volume.
Huione's continued business activities suggest broader trends in money laundering networks in Chinese-speaking regions, particularly those centered on guarantee services. Huione's ability to operate large-scale businesses using complex infrastructure indicates a shift towards more decentralized and embedded financial systems to avoid traditional enforcement. Addressing such networks may require updated enforcement strategies that focus on their underlying complex structures, not just surface-level interventions.
Huione Continues Large-Scale Money Laundering Activities Even After FinCEN Designation
This measure is the second instance where FinCEN applied Sections 311 and 9714 to illicit crypto asset financing, following the action against Bitzlato (exchange). As a Section 311 measure is considered a protective rule rather than an asset freeze, it offers a regulatory advantage of isolating bad actors without immediate judicial review.
While awaiting final determination, US banks typically respond quickly to Section 311 proposals, often severing transaction relationships simultaneously with the announcement to avoid regulatory risks. Through this "risk avoidance" effect, Huione likely lost access to US dollars from the notification date, but transaction data suggests limited impact on operations.
After FinCEN's announcement, data suggests transaction volume is increasing rather than decreasing. While it's too early to assess long-term impacts, this initial trend may reflect the operational resilience of the platform and guarantee ecosystem, potentially indicating complex money laundering networks that avoid major exchanges under US jurisdiction.
Anticipating regulatory measures and seemingly avoiding major exchanges, the crypto asset trading platform Huione has re-emerged with an inconspicuous new domain Huione.me while maintaining its old logo. In this regard, Huione appears unaffected by recent infrastructure disruptions. Huione[.]me's social media accounts (including Telegram channels) remain active, and communication between the company and users continues.
On crypto asset platforms, the token XOC linked to Huione and the stablecoin USDH provided by Huione are also listed for trading.
Types of Money Laundering Services in Guarantee Platforms
Money laundering through guarantee services is facilitated through various services. These services can be categorized into several key types within "fund transfer services".
- Card Transfers: Many vendors impose restrictions on prepaid card fund transfer services based on user types, likely recognizing the potential for criminal history review or law enforcement investigation.
- Fiat and Stablecoin Exchange: Cash and crypto asset direct transactions often occur directly or through unregistered intermediaries.
- Multifaceted Money Laundering: Complex money laundering methods combining multiple funding sources and exchange routes.
- Physically Present Exchanges: Some services even provide transportation means to directly receive cash, indicating real logistics behind on-chain money laundering.
- Card Transfers: Many vendors impose restrictions on prepaid card fund transfer services based on user types, likely recognizing the potential for criminal history review or law enforcement investigation.
Machine Translation Caption: Always in cash directly, no intermediaries whatsoever. Causing slight customer anxiety, but prioritizing pure white money, clean funds, transaction safety, customer service first, nationwide delivery from 50,000 yuan!
The activities suggest deep integration with other criminal networks, often advertised using coded language under clear security protocol disclaimers. The sophistication and quantitative expansion of these services continue, with essentially no operational impact from the announced closure.
Response to a Broader Guarantee Ecosystem
Outside of Huione, other guarantee services within the same ecosystem are showing various trends. Some services have shown growth after Huione's closure, but none match Huione's scale. This supports the theory that users have not migrated to other services, but instead new funds are flowing into the ecosystem, and users continue to operate using existing money laundering networks rather than relying on other guarantee platforms.
The Telegram-based service "Tudou Danbao" (reportedly with Huione holding 30% of its shares) saw nearly 3,000% growth month-over-month, but when viewed in terms of actual amount rather than rate of change, its scale is minimal compared to Huione's ongoing operations. Huione's infrastructure is processing funds at a fundamentally different scale compared to visible competitors. Rather than experiencing user migration and slowing growth, Huione's core processing capacity remains almost entirely intact.
Even after closing its public infrastructure, Huione continues its operations, and its multiple redundancies highlight the limitations of current approaches to combating deeply rooted criminal financial networks.
What Should Be Done to Eliminate Law Enforcement Silos
The current issue is not whether Huione is active (which is clearly the case), but what interventions are necessary to effectively halt its activities. At present, the data shows one clear fact: Huione's "closure" has not slowed its operations.
This persistence represents a broader challenge posed by organized crime groups operating extensive on-chain money laundering networks that exploit detection blind spots and operate at scale. This challenge requires an ecosystem-wide response, meaning a sustained multi-faceted enforcement strategy. Critically, such efforts must be conducted across borders. Particularly, cross-border collaboration and real-time information sharing between financial intelligence units, law enforcement agencies, and regulatory bodies are essential to tracking transaction flows, tracing intermediaries, and filling enforcement gaps exploited by cross-border networks.
Equally important is the role of blockchain intelligence. As money laundering networks increasingly leverage crypto assets, advanced blockchain analysis can visualize illegal transaction patterns and reveal infrastructures undetectable through traditional methods. Integrating Chainalysis with international cooperation can enhance the precision, scope, and impact of disruptive activities.
In other words, countering modern on-chain money laundering ecosystems like Huione requires not just stricter regulation, but informed, unified action. No single institution can solve this problem alone. However, by combining collective efforts and collaborating in enforcement, concrete results can be achieved.
This material is for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide legal, tax, financial, or investment advice. Recipients should consult their own advisors before making these types of decisions. Chainalysis has no responsibility or liability for any decision made or any other acts or omissions in connection with Recipient's use of this material.
Chainalysis does not guarantee or warrant the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, suitability or validity of the information in this report and will not be responsible for any claim attributable to errors, omissions, or other inaccuracies of any part of such material.
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