You Won’t Believe Where $1 Billion in Tether Just Vanished: Huione & the Curious Crypto Caper 😳

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If there’s one thing the modern world can always count on, it’s that those sporting the world’s stiffest collars and firmest handshakes—your major centralized exchanges, those grand financial watering holes—never see a lurking circus coming until the elephants are already in the punch bowl. Exhibit A: nearly $1 billion in USDt, waltzing out from wallets tied to Huione, the scandal magnet whose market was allegedly “shut down” with the subtlety of a hedgehog in a balloon shop. This, according to the good number-crunchers of Global Ledger.

Turn the calendar back to May 1—when the US FinCEN pounced upon Huione and tacked a “primary money laundering concern” badge on its lapel under the all-hallowed PATRIOT Act. What followed was a hallelujah chorus of forensics experts, divided right down the middle—like a Yorkshire pudding at a boarding school, really—over whether Huione had actually shut up shop, or was just pulling an exceedingly dark disappearing act.

Enter Global Ledger, issuing receipts like an aggrieved valet. According to their research, between May 1 and June 17, wallets with a whiff of Huione about them pushed $10.13 billion in Tether (USDt) across Tron and another $219 million via Ethereum. The amount that flopped into centralized exchanges? That would be $942.9 million. As exclusive as a gentlemen’s club at two in the morning—if that club held meetings in the shadows and exclusively accepted crypto.

Yury Serov, who presumably has a magnifying glass the size of a dinner plate and leads investigations at the Swiss blockchain analytics concern, explained that movement from Huione wallets into the big exchanges abounds, oft via such indirect routes it makes a game of Clue look like a hornpipe. “Nested service providers, OTC desks, layered transactions—basically, cloak and dagger meets spreadsheets,” he said. “It all seems to connect back to the exchanges, suggesting business as usual—just with a different hat on.”

Polish Registrations and Stealthy Shenanigans

Thanks to FinCEN’s stern talking-to, US banks have been barred from entertaining Huione’s custom, a conglomerate headquartered in Cambodia, registered in Hong Kong, and probably operating out of whichever country serves the best cocktails. Unhelpfully for the authorities, Huione’s hobbies allegedly include laundering money for online fraudsters, North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and that charming subgenre known as “pig butchering” scams (not, as the name suggests, anything to do with actual livestock). Some even say Cambodia’s ruling Hun family pops up in the supporting cast.

The troupe includes these plucky subsidiaries:

  • Huione Guarantee, a Telegram-powered ironmonger’s (specializing in illicit wares)

  • Huione Pay, where “fiat” and “crypto” frolic arm in arm

  • Huione Crypto, a would-be centralized exchange with global ambitions.

For reasons known only to those who’ve made a habit of outfoxing Polish registry officials, Huione Crypto secured a Poland address in mid-2023, but does most of its business amongst the mangroves and tuk-tuks of Cambodia. Still, as of July 8, they’re listed in Poland’s business register—quite possibly because nobody ever gets round to deregistering anything before coffee.

Global Ledger points out—the Poland entity, the wallet antics, the formal nods from licensing authorities—yes, all pointedly part of Huione’s greater menagerie. “The transaction flows are tangled up like a bowl of spaghetti,” adds Serov (paraphrasing, but you get the drift).

One by one, Huione’s websites and social channels went offline with all the dignity of a cat caught mid-bath, only to pop up again under fresh domains—because, as every schoolboy knows, a good villain never retires, he just gets a new URL. Super-exchange.co, for instance, still lets users in as of July 8, even after posting a strictly worded notice about suspending services on June 30, 2025. Who says cybercrime lacks a sense of irony?

Shutdown or Shh… Don’t Tell Anyone?

Huione Guarantee was the belle of the scam ball—a fabulously dodgy Chinese-language Telegram bazaar flogging everything from stolen data to laundered loot. Touted as the biggest darknet market since someone invented “incognito mode,” it logged a dizzying $24 billion in trade volume before the lights flickered. On May 13, the operators—trading under the nom de guerre “Haowang Guarantee”—announced they were “suspending operations,” in that time-honoured tradition of wink-wink shutdowns, and redirected fans to Tudou, where Huione is said to hold a 30% slice. Diversification, old sport!

Oddly enough, activity around Huione-linked services hasn’t so much declined as put on a fake moustache. Chainalysis, a New York-based blockchain analytics outfit, claims in its June report that Huione’s dark market dealings have been ticking up, not down.

Elliptic, on the other hand, sniffily disagrees and says that, barring a bout of mass hallucination, Huione Guarantee’s transactions have flatlined—though Huione Pay continues to hum along, making money like a banker with a printing press and a blindfolded regulator.

“These two things—Huione Pay and Huione Guarantee—are as different as port and prune juice,” Elliptic tells the world. “The former still juggles vast piles of cash, the latter not so much as a tuppence.”

Elliptic further observes that every time a major scammer marketplace croaks, a hydra’s worth of new ones pop up in succession, as if on cue. At last count: three dozen aspiring replacements and counting. There’s no rest for the wicked or the blockchain analyst.

Darknet Markets: The Sequel Nobody Ordered

This boom in upstart markets post-Huione mirrors the old Hydra Market saga. In 2022, Hydra was the top-earning darknet market—until it was brusquely invited to leave by sanctions from the US Treasury. The void left was quickly filled by other unmentionables, all delighted to step in and siphon off the anxious clientele.

Shutting down one cybercriminal bazaar rarely stops the music; at most, it causes everyone to swap costumes and dance in a different room. Russia’s Garantex got sanctioned, changed its name to Grinex (because that’s much less suspicious) and happily pushed $1.66 billion from linked wallets into other exchanges, according to Global Ledger’s tireless snooping.

Not to be outdone, eXch—a swapping service with an allergy to Know Your Customer formalities—nodded along with German authorities, then quietly started up again after the “shutdown” (it’s pronounced “pause for dramatic effect”). TRM Labs says it’s all rather hush-hush, as usual.

As for Huione, it’s still keeping busy via “indirect” means, holding 30% of Tudou (the next big thing in digital shenanigans). And with wallet activity for Huione Pay and its exchange service pulsing merrily along, one can only conclude: in crypto crime, every ending is more of a season finale cliffhanger than actual closure. 🍸💸

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2025-07-08 16:43