Justin Sun, the founder of TRON and a Huobi adviser, finally acknowledged Huobi layoffs in a text message to Reuters. Its native token, TRX slid down by over 10% in a span of just 2 days and is currently trading at $0.05.
Twitter was rife with speculation on the crypto exchange Huobi after reportedly shutting down internal communications.
This led to community members urging users to withdraw funds with the reasoning that angry staff might resort to “directly rug away user assets or programmers add backdoor Trojan horses” claiming the practice was “not protected by domestic laws.”
All these prompted Huobi consultant Sun to initially dismiss rumors about unsatisfied employees and state that Huobi will “completely respect the legal demands of local employees.”
Additionally, he refuted the reports of alleged insolvency, saying that the exchange’s business growth was “good” and the “security of users’ assets will always be fully protected.”
It all began when Wu blockchain in Dec. 2022 reported that Huobi canceled year-end bonuses and was preparing to cut up to half of its 1,200 staff citing insiders.
Wu, further claimed that several employees objected to the decision to switch from currency to stablecoins for the payment of salaries.
With regards to Sun, the TRON founder recently cashed out $198 million in crypto via a stablecoin issuer, Circle. On-chain data tracker Lookonchain, highlighted the transaction, noting that Sun moved the funds across multiple chains and outlets.
Community members were startled and believed Sun was likely aware of a forthcoming market event.
Even Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao had to chime in by stating that Sun’s recent inflows were perhaps part of deploying BUSD on the Tron network [TRX] or cross-chain swaps.
The TRON founder later clarified in a Chinese tweet that the cash distribution between exchanges was purely routine business collaboration.
Mystery Surrounding TRON Founder’s Valkyrie Investment
Additionally, a number of sources have revealed that the TRON founder, who is a significant client of Valkyrie Digital Assets, has stashed tokens in its vault.
To be more precise, it appears that the funds are in one of Valkyrie’s separately managed account [SMA] offerings, which are intended to introduce cryptocurrency to investors who are more accustomed to TradFi investing vehicles.
This raises the question of whether Sun’s excessive holdings, which are registered in Valkyrie, are an attempt to hide what the market believes to be institutional demand for cryptocurrencies.