HTX kept serving Russian clients and keeps rotating wallets, TRM Labs says

TRM Labs says HTX has continued to serve customers from Russia while rebuilding parts of its infrastructure to work around UK sanctions. For PSPs and crypto payment teams, the useful bit is not the headline accusation itself, but the operating pattern: address rotation, chain hopping across Tron, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Solana, and the resulting drag on transaction monitoring.

1. According to TRM Labs, the China-founded exchange, now registered in Seychelles, regularly changes hot wallets and deposit addresses across Tron, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Solana. The point is straightforward: if you rely on static wallet screening or allowlisting, this kind of address churn makes pre-known-address monitoring much less effective.
2. TRM Labs framed HTX’s behavior as part of a broader pattern among internationally sanctioned crypto players: they do not stop operating outright, but adjust their infrastructure and the way they interact with blockchain networks. For compliance teams, that means sanctions exposure is not just about whether a venue is still online, but how quickly it can reconfigure rails, addresses, and flows.
3. HTX dismissed TRM Labs’ account as “ordinary security procedures” consistent with standard crypto-industry practice, and said wallet address changes are not an attempt to evade sanctions checks. That response matters because it is the same line many exchanges use when operational security and sanctions screening start looking uncomfortably similar from the outside.
4. The UK sanctioned HTX’s legal entity, Huobi Global, alongside other crypto services it links to Russia, including A7, Garantex, Exmo, Rapira, and Bitpapa, plus other individuals and entities. The UK Foreign Office said HTX supported the Russian government by providing financial services and assisting A7 and Garantex, and British documents claim more than $1.5 billion was transferred to Russia via HTX in circumvention of sanctions.
5. Blockchaин researcher ZachXBT said the UK sanctions against HTX and Huobi Global could make it harder to track other suspicious digital-asset activity, because the restrictions reduced the transparency of some transaction-analysis processes. For investigators and PSP risk teams, that is the practical downside: when a major venue gets noisier or less traceable, the spillover hits everyone trying to build reliable exposure models.