Key Highlights
- Despite shitdowns, online gambling managed to earn 414M USDT in 53 days, showing strong market resilience.
- Regulatory actions caused dips, but daily inflows often stayed above 8M USDT, reflecting ongoing interest.
- Crypto thefts surged to $6.5B in 2025, with USDT on Tron driving most high-risk stablecoin movements.
Regulatory “whack-a-mole” in Southeast Asia has failed to stop the flow of illicit capital. Despite the shutdown of major payment processors like Huionepay and TudouGuarantee, online gambling platforms generated a staggering 414 million USDT in revenue over the last 53 days.
Bitrace data confirms that while law enforcement successfully took down the “central nodes,” the industry has rapidly decentralized, using Telegram mini-apps and pooled “SaaS backend” wallets to maintain 24/7 operations.
Activity on platforms like Wbpay2.0 and HWZF changed a lot between December 1, 2025 and January 22, 2026. Early December was quiet, but on December 4, right after Huionepay shut down, activity jumped. After that, daily inflows kept rising, reaching nearly 10 million USDT around December 19 and December 26, 2025.
When January 2026 began, these platforms saw even more activity, with inflows topping 12 million USDT on January 1 and 2. However, regulatory actions caused noticeable dips. On January 7, after Chen Zhi’s arrest, daily inflows fell sharply. Another drop happened on January 16 following TudouGuarantee’s shutdown. Despite these setbacks, daily inflows often stayed above 8 million USDT, showing strong ongoing market interest.
Why the shutdowns failed
The “Shadow Banking” architecture of 2026 is no longer tied to a single website or office. Bitrace explained that online gambling platforms increasingly collaborate with Guarantee Platforms and crypto payment providers. Platforms integrate third-party Telegram mini apps to streamline fund settlements, deposits, and withdrawals.
Bitrace noted, “The collaboration between Guarantee Platforms, online gambling platforms, and crypto payment providers has become extremely common in the online gambling industry.”
Investigations reveal that Huione Telegram Wallet, Wangbo Wallet, and HWZF serve as primary fund settlement tools. Wangbo Wallet and Huionepay share the same SaaS backend, resulting in pooled and aggregated funds. This integration facilitates rapid fund movements, allowing gambling platforms to maintain operations even after service disruptions.
Bitrace also pointed out risks caused by user behavior. Even after repeated warnings, people still send large amounts of money directly to big exchanges like OKX, Binance, and HTX. In just 53 days, 9 million USDT flowed straight into these platforms. This shows that while regulations can slow down activity, they cannot completely stop risky or illegal transactions.
Recent security incidents
The recent spike in online gambling revenue comes amid growing crypto security problems. In October 2025, a U.S. investor lost 3.05 million XRP when their Ellipal hardware wallet got hacked. The stolen funds were then moved through a platform called Bridgers and then cleaned using over-the-counter (OTC) channels linked to Huione, a Southeast Asian service later sanctioned by U.S. authorities. Blockchain records showed the tokens briefly went through Binance before ending up in a Tron wallet.
In the whole of 2025, according to a Chainalysis report, thefts in cryptocurrency worldwide increased. Hackers stole about $6.5 billion in cryptocurrency, an increase of 51% compared to data from 2024. Most of these hacks were carried out by a group backed by North Korea. Hence, there were more hacks in traditional cryptocurrency compared to decentralized finance systems.
Bitrace had also reported in April a $649 billion in stablecoins moved through “high-risk” wallets in 2024, with most of it (over 70%) being USDT on the Tron blockchain.
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