US Treasury Sanctions Huione Group for Laundering Crypto ⋆ ZyCrypto

By: bitcoin ethereum news|2025/05/02 23:30:02

The US Treasury Department has sanctioned Huione Group, a Cambodian-based crypto operation, for enabling money laundering and scamming activities. The Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced the sanction, arguing that Huione allowed North Korean hackers to secure their funds and further facilitated romance scams, called ‘pig butchering ‘, often involving extorting cryptocurrency from victims. FinCEN has had enough of the scams and has decided to cut Huione off from the American financial system. Huione, meanwhile, has released its very own stablecoin so that scammers can make transactions without government interference. FinCEN announced they were targeting Huione Group, primarily as a money laundering group, and would restrict the crypto group’s access to the American market. FinCEN further mentioned particular scams such as ‘pig butchering’, which involves extorting people for crypto through romance scams, and North Korean hackers laundering money using Huione networks. FinCEN estimates Huione laundered around $4 billion between August 2021 and January 2025. Convertible Virtual Currency (CVC) scams, such as romance scams, have also resulted in much personal suffering. FinCEN, therefore, is banning American companies from interacting with Huione Group. They have given 30 days for the public to comment on the ban. At 53 years old, Beth Hyland was scammed out of $26,000 of Bitcoin through a romance scam on Tinder. The Nigerian-based scammer told her that he was a freelance manager temporarily locked out of his bank account and needed Hyland to give him some money. However, Hyland started to suspect that something was wrong when he kept asking for money. Hyland said she ignored all of the telltale signs because she was in love and gave him the benefit of the doubt. Hyland says she will write a book about her experiences and publish all of the love messages by the scammer so that other people can learn how clever the scammers are with their ‘love bombing’ tactics. FinCEN would classify such a case as a CVC because the scammer was converting a romance scam into cryptocurrency. Huione, meanwhile, has released its stablecoin, USDH, because they were frustrated by governments freezing its assets and blocking its transactions. Huione promoted their new stablecoin by announcing that USDH was not regulated like other stablecoins on the market. The Huione network needs its infrastructure because other network could easily blacklist their wallet addresses. Huione was using USDT Tether before it ran into problems with the network. Tether froze Huione’s accounts in June 2024 after they realised that Huione had funds linked to the North Korean hacking group Lazarus Group. Huione Group also had to develop its chat service because Telegram also censored them. Just last week, the United Nations published a report about scammers and illegal exchanges, mentioning the operations of Huione Group. The UN noted that the group has enabled scammers and processed billions of transactions since 2021. Huione Group, meanwhile, has changed its name to Haowang, possibly to dissociate itself from the bad reputation that Huione Group has amassed. Source: https://zycrypto.com/us-treasury-sanctions-huione-group-for-laundering-crypto/

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Mixin has launched USTD-margined perpetual contracts, bringing derivative trading into the chat scene.

The privacy-focused crypto wallet Mixin announced today the launch of its U-based perpetual contract (a derivative priced in USDT). Unlike traditional exchanges, Mixin has taken a new approach by "liberating" derivative trading from isolated matching engines and embedding it into the instant messaging environment.

Users can directly open positions within the app with leverage of up to 200x, while sharing positions, discussing strategies, and copy trading within private communities. Trading, social interaction, and asset management are integrated into the same interface.

Simplified Trading Experience: No KYC Required, Opening a Position in Five Steps

Based on its non-custodial architecture, Mixin has eliminated friction from the traditional onboarding process, allowing users to participate in perpetual contract trading without identity verification.

The trading process has been streamlined into five steps:

· Choose the trading asset

· Select long or short

· Input position size and leverage

· Confirm order details

· Confirm and open the position

The interface provides real-time visualization of price, position, and profit and loss (PnL), allowing users to complete trades without switching between multiple modules.

Social-Native Trading: Strategy and Execution Completed in the Same Context

Mixin has directly integrated social features into the derivative trading environment. Users can create private trading communities and interact around real-time positions:

· End-to-end encrypted private groups supporting up to 1024 members

· End-to-end encrypted voice communication

· One-click position sharing

· One-click trade copying

On the execution side, Mixin aggregates liquidity from multiple sources and accesses decentralized protocol and external market liquidity through a unified trading interface.

By combining social interaction with trade execution, Mixin enables users to collaborate, share, and execute trading strategies instantly within the same environment.

Referral Mechanism: Non-institutional users can receive up to 60% fee split

Mixin has also introduced a referral incentive system based on trading behavior:

· Users can join with an invite code

· Up to 60% of trading fees as referral rewards

· Incentive mechanism designed for long-term, sustainable earnings

This model aims to drive user-driven network expansion and organic growth.

Self-Custody Architecture and Built-in Privacy Mechanism

Mixin's derivative transactions are built on top of its existing self-custody wallet infrastructure, with core features including:

· Separation of transaction account and asset storage

· User full control over assets

· Platform does not custody user funds

· Built-in privacy mechanisms to reduce data exposure

The system aims to strike a balance between transaction efficiency, asset security, and privacy protection.

A New Path for On-Chain Derivatives

Against the background of perpetual contracts becoming a mainstream trading tool, Mixin is exploring a different development direction by lowering barriers, enhancing social and privacy attributes.

The platform does not only view transactions as execution actions but positions them as a networked activity: transactions have social attributes, strategies can be shared, and relationships between individuals also become part of the financial system.

Regulatory Background

Mixin's design is based on a user-initiated, user-controlled model. The platform neither custodies assets nor executes transactions on behalf of users.

This model aligns with a statement issued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 13, 2026, titled "Staff Statement on Whether Partial User Interface Used in Preparing Cryptocurrency Securities Transactions May Require Broker-Dealer Registration."

The statement indicates that, under the premise where transactions are entirely initiated and controlled by users, non-custodial service providers that offer neutral interfaces may not need to register as broker-dealers or exchanges.

About Mixin

Mixin is a decentralized, self-custodial privacy wallet designed to provide secure and efficient digital asset management services.

Its core capabilities include:

· Aggregation: integrating multi-chain assets and routing between different transaction paths to simplify user operations

· High liquidity access: connecting to various liquidity sources, including decentralized protocols and external markets

· Decentralization: achieving full user control over assets without relying on custodial intermediaries

· Privacy protection: safeguarding assets and data through MPC, CryptoNote, and end-to-end encrypted communication

Mixin has been in operation for over 8 years, supporting over 40 blockchains and more than 10,000 assets, with a global user base exceeding 10 million and an on-chain self-custodied asset scale of over $1 billion.

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