Huobi, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, is denying reports that several of its executives were arrested in China. Over the weekend, financial media in Hong Kong reported that several Huobi executives had been taken away by police.
A large number of senior executives of offshore cryptocurrency exchanges… have been detained and investigated by the Chinese police, said Colin Wu of Wu Blockchain, without adding specifics.
Data from Nansen.ai and DeFiLlama shows that Huobi’s stablecoin exchange balances have dipped by 33% in the last week, with traders withdrawing $49 million in stables. The exchange’s total balance is down from $3.1 billion at the start of the year to $2.5 billion. On-chain data also shows that some of the exchange’s largest holdings are from tokens connected to the Justin Sun universe of companies and protocols, with 26.5% of the exchange’s holdings in TRX, TRON’s token, and 20.32% in HT, its exchange token.
Huobi has roughly $1 billion in highly liquid assets, including $886.92 million in bitcoin, $48.27 million in USDT, and $5.41 million in USDC. It also has $119.4 million in stETH and $21.8 million in wETH. Late last year, analytics firm CryptoQuant had flagged concerns over the quality of Huobi’s reserves.
Despite the reports, Huobi’s HT token is trading flat at $2.66.