Trouble for the cryptocurrency exchange Huobi does not appear to fade away. Hours after the platform dismissed rumors that a senior executive was arrested by the Chinese authorities, Colin Wu, the crypto reporter who originally broke the news, further claimed to have confirmed from multiple sources that the platform’s COO Zhu Jiawei was, in fact, under police investigation.
His tweet read,
“He is the number two player in Huobi. Huobi is the exchange with most Chinese users and the largest Bitcoin stock in the world. Li Lin, the founder of Huobi, is unknown.”
Huobi and OKEx Incident Tied?
Wu went on to assert that Huobi was entangled in the same “Shanxi case” involved in the OKEx founder, Mingxing “Star” Xu. However, the crypto exchange has allegedly “conducted plans and drills after the Xu incident, so it may not stop withdrawing after being under pressure” like it happened with OKEx, tweeted Wu.
In yet another interesting turn of events, the crypto exchange had previously tweeted the statement below, however, the tweets have been deleted by the platform shortly thereafter. The only tweet that was still up was the notification stating that the platform was operating normally.
“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.”
The above-attached picture is a snapshot of the cryptocurrency exchange’s original clarification post which came hours after Wu’s claim. This news apparently triggered “panic” across the Chinese market. Furthermore, the reporter had also claimed that Huobi’s Founder and CEO, Jun Du allegedly noted that all user assets were safe and that everything was operating fine.
HT Token Takes a Plunge
Its native token HT has been hit the hardest. The coin took a substantial plunge as the news of the exchange’s exec being investigated broke. The steep decline in HT’s value following the episode took a brief respite, however, it failed to retain the level as it depreciated to levels not seen since April 2020.
The token was trading at $3.63 after sliding by nearly 19% over the last 48-hours.