Justin Sun’s HTX Sparks Bank Run Worries As $200 Million Exits The Exchange

There is evidence to suggest that users may be losing faith in the crypto exchange HTX (formerly Houbi). This comes on the back of significant security breaches that the exchange has experienced in recent times. 

HTX Sees More Outflows Than Inflows

Data from DefiLlama shows that HTX has seen over $200 million leave the exchange from a period dating from November 22 up until December 10. This is noteworthy because November 22 happens to be the time when the crypto exchange and blockchain protocol Heco Chain were hacked. This led to a loss of over $100 million in several assets.

HTX had to halt its operations following the hack. Before it resumed operations back on November 26, the exchange had released a statement in which it 100% guaranteed that users’ funds were safe. However, that did little to alleviate the fears and concerns of users, as many have continued to withdraw their funds since then. 

The fears of these users are undoubtedly valid, considering that this most recent hack came just about 2 months after the crypto exchange suffered an exploit, which initially led to a loss of about $8 million. The exchange’s security infrastructure was called into question then, even as Binance’s security team stepped in to help investigate and recover the funds.

Meanwhile, the fact that the crypto exchange had halted its operations after the hack would have brought back memories of how things went downhill with crypto exchanges like FTX. As such, many may simply be looking to avoid losing their funds in a similar fashion. One could also allude to the Justin Sun factor in all of this. 

Sun happens to be an advisor to HTX. Interestingly, Poloniex, a crypto exchange owned by the Tron Founder also happened to suffer an exploit in November. It lost over $100 million in the process. One could begin to imagine if these hacks are somehow related and happen to be a direct attack on Justin Sun.

Tron Still Standing Strong

Despite the drawbacks Sun and the crypto exchanges he is associated with have faced, this has in no way affected Tron’s adoption. The network continues to see an impressive amount of users. Recently, it was announced that over 200 million accounts have been created on the Tron network.  

Data from blockchain analytics platform Coin98 analytics also showed that Tron continues to maintain a leading position in the number of daily active users on the network. The majority of the transactions on the network are reported to be USDT transfers, with many preferring the network because of its relatively cheap gas fees. 

Acknowledging Tether’s role in this milestone, Sun gave a special shout-out to the stablecoin issuer and its developers. He stated that 34,500,061 users on Tron, which represents 17.2% of all our users, now hold USDT.