Huione, a Telegram-based illicit marketplace offering personal data and money laundering services, has rolled out its own stablecoin, according to a report from blockchain security firm Elliptic.
Stablecoin (USDH) was created to “avoid the common freeze and transfer restrictions of traditional digital currencies.” The Huione website adds that “USDH is not constrained by traditional regulatory agencies.”
Before the launch of USDH, users on Huione almost exclusively used tether (USDT). Tether froze one of Huione Pay’s accounts in July 2024 after a wallet received funds related to a theft attributed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
The company also released its own chat service to make it less dependent on third-party apps like Telegram.
The report alleges that Huione has facilitated transactions worth $24 billion, including a large portion of the funds used in the infamous pig butcher scam. It is a Chinese-language market and has links to the Huione Group, a Cambodian conglomerate.
Elliptical research found that “thousands of vendors” offer “laundering services, stolen personal data, technology and other items needed to conduct online fraud on an industrial scale.” It also found electric shackles intended for use on victims of human trafficking.
One of the money laundering services claims to represent and operate from the Golden Fortune Science and Technology Park, a reported labor camp that forces Vietnamese, Malaysian and Chinese nationals to carry out cyber fraud.
