Online gambling networks have continued moving funds in digital assets through Huionepay and TudouGuarantee in recent weeks, after law enforcement agencies shut them down and arrested their operators.
Huionepay and TudouGuarantee, according to investigators at Bitrace, received about 414 million USDT over 53 days following their closures.
The collaboration between Guarantee Platforms, online gambling platforms, and crypto payment providers has become extremely common in the online gambling industry——
After joining a Guarantee Platform, online gambling platforms integrate third-party crypto payment providers’… pic.twitter.com/vmWyyPOggR
— Bitrace (@Bitrace_team) January 22, 2026
The funds were generated by online gambling platforms, which continued issuing settlement services through third-party channels and Telegram mini apps, where gamblers now deposit and withdraw funds.
Telegram marketplace is inactive, gambling settlement services still operational
According to an analysis by Elliptic, Tudou’s public Telegram guarantee marketplace has effectively stopped processing transactions. Despite that, Elliptic’s open-source analysis shows the network around Tudou was still operating through private channels and associated wallets.
Since its launch, Tudou, whose name translates to “Potato,” has processed more than $12 billion in transactions, making it the third-largest illicit online marketplace on record.
Meanwhile, polished front Huione dubbed itself a legal financial institution based in Cambodia with offices in parts of Southeast Asia. That appearance masked a covert network of laundering hubs, online markets, and settlement platforms to clean illicit proceeds.
Among Huione’s most profitable laundering tools was a marketplace that had handled more than $26 billion in crypto transactions since 2021.
Bitrace researchers cited several intelligence sources showing Huione Telegram Wallet, Wangbo Wallet, and HWZF as the most used settlement platforms supporting the gambling operations tied to Huione, Haowang, and Tudou.
They also found that Wangbo Wallet and Huionepay used the same software-as-a-service backend. As a result, funds moving through the two systems were effectively pooled and aggregated, complicating efforts to isolate specific transaction flows.
During the closure of Huione Guarantee last May, Elliptic found that it had processed more than $27 billion in transactions. Huione Guarantee directed its merchants to migrate to Tudou, and within weeks, Tudou’s user base more than doubled, while transaction volumes climbed close to Huione’s peak levels.
Many of the same merchants reappeared on Tudou, continuing to sell stolen personal data, money-laundering services, and providing scam infrastructure to an existing customer base.
Despite several warnings from payment platforms and crypto exchanges urging users not to send funds directly to centralized exchanges, Bitrace said user inflows continued.
Over the 53 days, about 9 million USDT flowed from the gambling-linked ecosystem into centralized exchanges, according to Bitrace’s review of transaction data. OKX received 3.6 million USDT over 2,493 transactions. Binance followed with about 2.7 million USDT across 1,764 transactions, while HTX recorded around 2.5 million USDT in 1,563 transactions.
Gate.io saw inflows of about 153,000 USDT, while Cobo, WEEX, Bybit, Bitget, and MEXC received progressively smaller sums, ranging from tens of thousands of dollars to double-digit amounts.
Financial sanctions and arrests caused slump in guarantee platforms
In October, the United States Treasury and the UK Foreign Office imposed sanctions on Prince Group and its chairman, Chen Zhi. The designation slapped the organization with a transnational criminal tag and barred any companies from transacting with it. Zhi was linked to at least ten compounds in Cambodia using human forced labor to run crypto-affiliated scams.
The Cambodian government launched an anti-money laundering campaign in the second half of 2025, culminating in the joint arrest and extradition of Chen Zhi by local law enforcement and Chinese authorities, Cryptopolitan reported.
“The public security organs will soon issue arrest warrants for the first batch of key members of Chen Zhi’s criminal syndicate, resolutely bringing fugitives to justice,” Chinese government officials stated in a broadcast on CCTV.
According to Elliptic’s real-time monitoring of Tudou’s central administrative wallets, there was a sudden drop in activity in the days after the arrest. The security firm believes this shows a direct link to Zhi’s arrest, although they warn that the activity could resurface on newly launched platforms.
In a statement issued Wednesday, the National Bank of Cambodia said no banking or financial institutions in the country are authorized to conduct crypto transactions.
“The National Bank of Cambodia would like to remind the public as well as all banking and financial institutions to exercise extreme caution when conducting transactions involving crypto assets,” the bank said, posting the notice in Khmer.
