Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser(@wenser 2010 )
On December 1st last year, Huiwang Pay, often dubbed the "Southeast Asian Alipay," officially collapsed.
Since then, the tumultuous "era of free finance in Southeast Asia" has come to a definitive end. Unexpectedly, the "war over escrow platforms" did not conclude; instead, it ushered in a new round of territorial expansion. More escrow platforms have risen to the occasion, absorbing the users and market share left behind by Huiwang, setting the stage for another grand spectacle interwoven with elements of "finance and freedom, black industries and money laundering, trust and escrow."
To this day, platforms like XinBi, Jinbei, Dali, and FullyLight have gradually stepped into the spotlight, inheriting Huiwang's legacy: on one hand, facilitating black and gray industries and money laundering operations; on the other, continuing to play the commercial role of a "trusted intermediary."
In Southeast Asia, a land characterized by both openness and conservatism, another wave of turmoil involving money, dreams, and danger has already begun.
The Death of Huiwang: $15 Billion in BTC Confiscated by the US, 900,000 Users Left Empty-Handed
Four years ago, in 2021, Huiwang was just an obscure currency exchange platform in Cambodia, with peak early business volume around $2-3 billion; four years later, this exchange platform quietly transformed and ballooned into an underground financial empire centered on escrow services, handling hundreds of billions of dollars in funds—according to the "UNODC Report of May 2025," it had cumulatively received over $24 billion in cryptocurrency. Fueling this system were 900,000 registered users, 9,289 public Telegram groups, and the gray and black industry networks intertwined with fraud compounds, human trafficking, and "pig-butchering" scams behind these groups.
Behind this vast web of interests was the actual controller of the Prince Group—Chen Zhi. In October 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice and Treasury Department filed criminal charges against Chen Zhi and issued a global arrest warrant, confiscating 127,000 Bitcoins under his name (worth approximately $15 billion at the time), setting the highest record for a single cryptocurrency asset seizure in U.S. judicial history. The Prince Group thus became a thing of the past.(Recommended reading:"$15 Billion BTC Changes Hands: US DOJ Eradicates Cambodia's Prince Group, Becoming World's Largest BTC Whale".)
The collapse of the Prince Group almost immediately impacted Huiwang. With its largest financier and liquidity provider gone, Huiwang's capital chain snapped: on December 1, 2025, Huiwang issued a statement announcing delayed redemptions; 2 days later, the National Bank of Cambodia claimed that its license had been revoked as early as 2024 and the company had completed liquidation. The once-spectacular offline scenes of "releasing over a thousand account numbers daily, with queues for withdrawals" ultimately turned into mere numbers on the screen—amounts ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars that could no longer be withdrawn.
Some gray industry practitioners lamented that taking down Huiwang was like "shaking the foundation of Cambodia's gray industry." But beneath that foundation, new escrow platforms had long been growing like weeds in the shadows.
After Huiwang, Who Are the "Next Southeast Asian Alipays"?
As early as May 14, 2025, the security agency Elliptic pointed out in a report that Telegram had banned thousands of crypto crime groups and channels related to "XinBi Escrow," noting that by 2024, the platform had cumulatively processed over $8.4 billion in suspicious transactions, ranking alongside the Huiwang Group as the "largest crypto black market."
Following Huiwang's collapse, XinBi and other secondary escrow platforms have become even more cautious, hiding their escrow business behind various self-operated platforms.
XinBi: The Escrow Platform Most Likely to Become the "Second Huiwang," with Total Revenue Exceeding $1.6 Billion
In early July this year, a "$1.7 million cryptocurrency exchange user asset theft case" brought XinBi back into the public spotlight.
Through a series of on-chain investigations, security firm Bitrace discovered that after extracting the victim's funds, the attacker transferred the stolen money in multiple batches to the same Newpay platform user address. It is understood that this entity is a crypto payment tool launched by XinBi Escrow, whose predecessor was the KYC-free payment tool Xinbi Wallet based on Telegram Bot in 2025(Odaily Note: After XinBi developed its own application Xinbipay, this channel was shut down, users were migrated to mobile device apps, and it was later renamed Newpay to evade regulation).
According to Bitrace monitoring, the total revenue of the XinBi escrow platform, established in 2022, has exceeded 1.6 billion USDT. Its business growth has been particularly rapid since the collapse of the Huiwang Group.
Linghang/Tiger Escrow: The "Human Trafficking" Escrow Platform Masquerading as an "Overseas Labor" Service
Among the top escrow platforms in Southeast Asia, Linghang Escrow is the only one operating "overseas labor public group and private group businesses"(Odaily Note: Public groups refer to open groups providing long-term transaction escrow services; private groups refer to private groups providing temporary transaction escrow services, similar to large and small groups on WeChat), and this platform explicitly states it provides escrow services for "strong vehicle transaction" (Odaily Note: "Strong vehicle" is industry jargon referring to kidnapping).
According to Bitrace monitoring, a dedicated group deposit address for Linghang Escrow was activated on February 23, 2025, and in the less than 5 months since then, it has received over 100 million USDT in inflows, and this is merely the deposit submitted by merchants operating "strong vehicle escrow business" under Linghang Escrow to the dedicated group address. Within the deposit limit, merchants can repeatedly execute business, meaning the actual transaction volume of business and the funds related to Southeast Asian cross-border human trafficking far exceed this figure.
Jinbei/Jinbo: Escrow Platforms Focused on Online Gambling
This platform was initially co-founded by Prince Group founder Chen Zhi and children of Cambodian government dignitaries, under the full name Jinbei Cambodia Investment Co., Ltd. To conceal its activities, the company was reportedly also closely linked to Chen Zhi's casino business in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, hence its primary focus has always been on online gambling-related escrow services.
Affected by events like the fall of the Prince Group, Jinbei also faced sanctions from the U.S. government. Last year, the Cambodian Gambling Committee and Cambodian police once cracked down hard and shut down some casinos under Jinbei. However, informed sources later revealed: "Only Jinbei 1 and Jinbei 3 casinos were closed, while 6 affiliated compounds under Jinbei continue to operate normally." Currently, Jinbei has been renamed Jinbo Escrow Platform.
Dali/Tiancheng Escrow: Inheriting the Tudou Escrow Under Huiwang
According to Bitrace monitoring, after Tudou Escrow and Huiwang (Haowang) Pay stopped processing redemptions, user bases for XinBi Escrow, Dali Escrow, FullyLight Escrow, and their payment tools all saw significant increases. Among them, OkPay under Dali Escrow inherited a large number of Tudou Escrow's public groups, showing the greatest growth.
Statistics show that from May 2025 to April 2026, the three payment tools NewPay, OkPay, and FullyLight Wallet collectively received funds exceeding 4.8 billion USDT. Currently, Dali Escrow is primarily active under the name Tiancheng Escrow.
FullyLight Escrow: The Industry Chain of the Fraud Compounds of One of the "Four Northern Myanmar Families"
In 1996, after completing initial capital accumulation through drug trafficking in earlier years, Liu Zhengxiang (original name Liu Abao) established the FullyLight Group in Myanmar's Kokang Self-Administered Zone. Later, the group's business expanded to encompass tourism, hotels, real estate, entertainment, and more, gradually becoming the core enterprise of the Liu Abao family and propelling its growth into one of the later "Four Northern Myanmar Families."
In 2025, the Ministry of Public Security cracked the Liu family crime syndicate case, ultimately verifying that the family was involved in fraud funds exceeding 2.6 billion yuan, gambling funds over 8 billion yuan, extortion amounting to over 17 million yuan, and illegal gains from organized prostitution exceeding 16 million yuan.
It is worth noting that FullyLight Escrow primarily serves local large-scale fraud compounds, established to meet the latter's "labor demands." Currently, with the dismantling of the Liu family crime gang...
When Escrow Platforms Become Black Industry Intermediaries, "Southeast Asian Alipay" is Just a Façade
In June this year, Elliptic updated data related to the Huiwang platform during "Operation Riptide" carried out in cooperation with the FBI. Among it, the Huiwang escrow market cumulatively received funds exceeding $31 billion; Huiwang Pay processed over $103 billion in cryptocurrency payments. The Huiwang Escrow Market became the largest online illegal marketplace ever operated, far surpassing previous dark web markets like Silk Road ($216 million), AlphaBay (over $1 billion), and Hydra (over $5 billion).
Looking back at the five escrow platforms mentioned above, they are but a hidden corner of Southeast Asia's "distorted financial ecosystem" unknown to the average person. On this land of rapid development yet insufficient infrastructure and institutional preparation, financial services have become a breeding ground for crimes such as human trafficking, compound fraud, pig-butchering scams, and online gambling.
The so-called "Southeast Asian Alipay" is merely an external nickname, certainly not a commercial achievement.
Right now, they may be enjoying the glory of millions in daily income, but justice will not be absent.
Reference Information:
The Rise and Fall of a Telecom Fraud Empire Behind $15 Billion
2026 Report on Illegal Cryptocurrency Transaction Escrow Platforms By Bitrace
Behind Myawaddy: The Singularity Moment of Asia's Black Industries and the East's Rise, West's Decline in the Global Underground Society
U.S. Treasury Department Financial Crimes Enforcement Network: Notes on the Money Laundering Business of the Huiwang Group
