汇旺倒台7个月后，东南亚担保平台大洗牌

Original｜Odaily（@OdailyChina）

Author｜Wenser（@wenser 2010 ）

On December 1st last year, Hui One Pay, often referred to as the "Southeast Asian Alipay," officially collapsed.

Thus, the tumultuous "era of Southeast Asian free finance" came to a definitive end. Unexpectedly, the "war of escrow platforms" did not conclude but instead initiated a new round of turf wars. More escrow platforms seized the opportunity, absorbing the users and market share left behind by Hui One Pay, staging another grand drama intertwining elements like "finance and freedom, black markets and money laundering, trust and escrow."

Today, escrow platforms like XinBi, JinBei, DaLi, and FuLiLai have gradually come to the forefront, inheriting the legacy of Hui One Pay: on one hand, they facilitate black market and money laundering operations; on the other, they continue to play the commercial role of "trust intermediaries."

In Southeast Asia, a region with a dual nature of openness and conservatism, another storm involving money, dreams, and danger is brewing.

The Fall of Hui One Pay: $15 Billion in BTC Seized by the US, 900,000 Users Left Empty-Handed

Four years ago, in 2021, Hui One Pay was just an unremarkable currency exchange platform in Cambodia, with an early peak throughput of about $2-3 billion; four years later, it had quietly transformed into an underground financial empire centered around an escrow platform, handling hundreds of billions of dollars—according to the UNODC May 2025 report, it had cumulatively received over $24 billion in crypto funds. Supporting this system were 900,000 registered users, 9,289 public Telegram groups, and the gray-black industrial network behind these groups, composed of scam compounds, human trafficking, and romance scams.

Behind this vast web of interests was the de facto controller of the Prince Group—Chen Zhi. In October 2025, the US Department of Justice and Treasury filed criminal charges against Chen Zhi and issued a global wanted notice, seizing 127,000 Bitcoin under his name (worth approximately $15 billion at the time), setting a record for the single largest seizure of crypto assets in US judicial history. The Prince Group thus became history. (Recommended reading: "$15 Billion BTC Changes Hands: US Justice Department Wipes Out Cambodia's Prince Group, Turning It into the World's Largest BTC Whale.")

The collapse of the Prince Group almost immediately impacted Hui One Pay. With its largest financial backer and liquidity provider gone, Hui One Pay's funding chain broke: On December 1, 2025, Hui One Pay issued a statement delaying redemption; two days later, the National Bank of Cambodia claimed its license had been revoked as early as 2024 and the company had been liquidated. The once-common offline scene of "thousands of daily queue numbers for withdrawals" ultimately became a string of figures on the books—ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars—that could never be withdrawn.

A gray market practitioner lamented that taking down Hui One Pay was like "shaking the foundation of Cambodia's gray industry." But beneath that foundation, new escrow platforms were already growing like weeds in the dark.

After Hui One Pay, Who Are the "Next Southeast Asian Alipay"?

As early as May 14, 2025, security firm Elliptic reported that the Telegram platform had banned thousands of groups and channels related to "XinBi escrow" crypto crimes, noting that the platform had processed over $8.4 billion in suspicious transactions by 2024, ranking alongside the Hui One Pay group as the "largest crypto black market."

After Hui One Pay's downfall, XinBi and other second-tier escrow platforms became more cautious, hiding their escrow operations behind various proprietary platforms.

XinBi: The Most Promising Candidate for "Second Hui One Pay," with Total Revenue Exceeding $1.6 Billion

In early July this year, a "theft of $1.7 million in user assets from a crypto exchange" brought XinBi back into the public spotlight.

Security firm Bitrace, through a series of on-chain investigations, found that the attacker transferred the victim's funds in multiple transactions into the same Newpay platform user address. It is understood that this entity is a crypto payment tool launched by XinBi escrow, previously known as the no-KYC payment tool Xinbi Wallet (based on a Telegram Bot in 2025). (Odaily note: XinBi's self-developed application Xinbipay later closed this channel; users were migrated to a mobile app, which was eventually renamed Newpay to avoid regulation.)

According to Bitrace monitoring, the XinBi escrow platform, founded in 2022, has generated total revenue exceeding 1.6 billion USDT. Since the collapse of the Hui One Pay group, its business growth has been particularly rapid.

Linghang/Tiger Escrow: An "Human Trafficking" Escrow Platform Masquerading as "Overseas Labor Dispatch"

Among the top Southeast Asian escrow platforms, Linghang Escrow is the only one operating "public and private groups for overseas labor dispatch" (Odaily note: "public groups" refer to open groups providing long-term escrow services; "private groups" refer to private groups for temporary escrow). Furthermore, this platform explicitly offers escrow services for "forced car transactions" (Odaily note: "forced car" is industry jargon for kidnapping).

According to Bitrace monitoring, a private group deposit address for Linghang Escrow was activated on February 23, 2025. In less than five months since then, over $100 million in USDT has flowed in. This is merely the deposit submitted to the private group address by merchants operating the "forced car escrow" business under Linghang Escrow. Within this deposit limit, merchants can repeatedly execute transactions. The actual business volume and funds related to Southeast Asian transnational human trafficking are likely far greater than this figure.

JinBei/JinBo: An Escrow Platform Focused on Online Gambling

This platform was initially co-founded by Prince Group founder Chen Zhi and children of Cambodian government officials, under the full name JinBei Cambodia Investment Co., Ltd. To avoid suspicion, the company is reportedly closely linked to Chen Zhi's casino operations in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, thus focusing primarily on gambling-related escrow services.

Due to events like the collapse of the Prince Group, JinBei was previously sanctioned by the US government. Last year, the Cambodian Gaming Commission and police once cracked down and shut down some casinos under JinBei. However, according to sources later revealed: "Only JinBei 1 and JinBei 3 casinos were closed; the six associated industrial parks under JinBei continue normal operations." Currently, JinBei has been renamed to JinBo Escrow Platform.

DaLi/Tiancheng Escrow: Inherited Hui One Pay's Tueduo Escrow

According to Bitrace monitoring, after Tueduo Escrow and Hui One Pay ceased payments, the user bases of XinBi Escrow, DaLi Escrow, FuLiLai Escrow, and their payment tools all increased significantly. Among them, DaLi Escrow's OkPay inherited a large number of Tueduo Escrow's public groups, experiencing the largest growth.

Statistics show that between May 2025 and April 2026, the three payment tools NewPay, OkPay, and FullyLight Wallet collectively received over 4.8 billion USDT. Currently, DaLi Escrow primarily operates under the name Tiancheng Escrow.

FuLiLai Escrow: An Industrial Park Chain Under One of the "Four Major Families of Northern Myanmar"

In 1996, after completing primitive capital accumulation through early drug trafficking, Liu Zhengxiang (formerly known as Liu Abao) founded the FuLiLai Group in the Kokang Self-Administered Zone, Myanmar. Later, the group's business expanded into cultural tourism, hotels, real estate, and entertainment, becoming the core enterprise of the Liu Abao family and gradually establishing it as one of the "Four Major Families of Northern Myanmar."

In 2025, the Ministry of Public Security cracked down on the Liu family criminal syndicate. The investigation found that the family was involved in fraud funds exceeding 2.6 billion yuan, gambling funds exceeding 8 billion yuan, extortion amounts over 17 million yuan, and illicit gains from organized prostitution totaling over 16 million yuan.

Notably, FuLiLai Escrow primarily serves the local major scam compounds, established to meet their "labor demand." Currently, with the dismantling of the Liu family criminal syndicate...

When Escrow Platforms Become Black Market Intermediaries, the "Southeast Asian Alipay" is Just a Facade

In June this year, during "Operation Riptide" conducted by Elliptic in cooperation with the FBI, updated data on the Hui One Pay platform was released. Among it, the Hui One Pay escrow market had cumulatively received over $31 billion; Hui One Pay processed over $103 billion in cryptocurrency payments. The Hui One Pay escrow platform became the largest online illegal market ever operated, far surpassing previous dark web markets like Silk Road ($216 million), AlphaBay ($1 billion+), and Hydra ($5 billion+).

Looking back at the five escrow platforms mentioned above, they represent just a lesser-known dark corner of Southeast Asia's "distorted financial ecosystem." In this rapidly developing land, still lacking adequate infrastructure and institutional preparation, financial services have become a breeding ground for crimes like human trafficking, compound scams, pig-butchering scams, and online gambling.

The so-called "Southeast Asian Alipay" is merely a nickname from the outside world, not an achievement in commerce.

Right now, they may be enjoying the glory of earning millions daily, but justice will prevail.

References:

$15 Billion Behind: The Rise and Fall of an Online Scam Empire

2026 Illegal Cryptocurrency Transaction Escrow Platform Investigation Report By Bitrace

Behind Myawaddy: The Singularity of Asia's Black Market and the Rise of the Global Underground Society in the East

US Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: Advisory on Hui One Pay Group Money Laundering Activities