On Monday, November 2, Whale Alert recorded transfers of 100 million Tether (USDT) from Huobi to Bitfinex in ten equal tranches. At the same time, the exchange’s native token price fell sharply—from $3.90 to $3.62, about 7.5% (CoinGecko).
HT quotes recovered quickly as well; at the time of writing, Huobi Token was trading around $3.86.
Source: CoinGecko.
Later Whale Alert noted that exactly 100 million USDT was sent by the stablecoin issuer to Bitfinex.
Tether’s chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino replied to the platform’s message that this was a swap of stablecoins between the TRC-20 (Tron) and ERC-20 (Ethereum) protocols.
Chain Swap, TRC20 to ERC20
— Paolo Ardoino (@paoloardoino) November 2, 2020
Subsequently, Bitfinex returned 100 million USDT, and the transfers between exchanges occurred on the Tron blockchain.
🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 99,999,655 #USDT (99,952,520 USD) transferred from #Bitfinex to #Huobi
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) November 2, 2020
Colin Wu noted that Wu linked the HT slump to panic in the Chinese market, triggered by reports of an open investigation into Huobi’s chief operating officer.
HT suddenly fell sharply, 100 million USDT was transferred, COO was reported to be investigated but there was no response temporarily, triggering panic in the Chinese market. Huobi is the largest exchange in China. After the OK, Huobi was also panicked. pic.twitter.com/oQtQBQhh1N
— Colin Wu（WuBlockchain） (@WuBlockchain) November 2, 2020
Wu noted that Huobi co-founder Du Jun reassured users that their assets were safe and that withdrawals could proceed unhindered.
Another Huobi co-founder, Li Lin, said he did not fear any action from law enforcement, as he had done nothing illegal, the journalist added.
Huobi denied rumors of the arrest of a top executive and added that no investigations into the exchange’s leadership are underway.
All of Huobi’s management team members have been accounted for and have not been detained or arrested.
We understand that the spread of false information can lead to concerns about the safety of user assets, but please rest assured your assets are safe.
— Huobi (@HuobiGlobal) November 2, 2020
Earlier on 16 October, OKEx suspended withdrawals, citing a loss of contact with the private-key holder who cooperates with law enforcement. Media reports said the founder Star Xu was arrested, but an OKEx spokesperson denied this in an interview with ForkLog.
Shortly after withdrawals were halted, an unknown user transferred 1995 BTC ($22.6 million at the time) from Huobi to OKEx.
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