Tron's Justin Sun Says 'Ignore FUD and Keep Building' As Houbi Hemorrhages Investors, Staff, Reserves

Nansen reported this week that cryptocurrency exchange Houbi HT/USD had seen a “significant increase in net outflows” of $94.2 million in the past week and $60.9 million within 24 hours.

Houbi’s stablecoin reserves decreased by 9.5% in just one week, down to $681 million. Houbi’s Bitcoin BTC/USD reserves are down 90% over the past year according to CryptoQuant.

In the past 24 hours, Huobi has seen a significant increase in net outflows

$60.9M* of the $94.2M* net outflow in the past week occurred in the past day alone

*Contains Ethereum, Avalanche, BNB Chain, Fantom, & Polygon flows pic.twitter.com/JV1Tg13QMY

— Nansen (@nansen_ai) January 6, 2023

Nansen tweeted withdrawals were made from “high-balance wallets” primarily in Tether USDT/USD, USD Coin USDC/USD and Ethereum ETH/USD.

CryptoQuant also reported Huobi’s user activity dropped by a factor of 44x lower from its peak in May 2019. Houbi confirmed its intent to cut 20% of its staff.

Tron founder Justin Sun is on Houbi’s advisory council, but remained vaguely supportive in his tweets: “At @HoubiGlobal, we believe that the key to success in the world of cryptocurrency is to ‘Ignore FUD and Keep Building.’"

People have speculated Sun was the driving force behind Houbi, but the association with Houbi and Tron may be costing him, because TRX tokens fell last week.

TRX tokens lost nearly 8% of their value in 24 hours, while HT tokens lost 11% and Tron-based stablecoin USDD fell 3 cents, losing its 1/1 peg to USD.

Security firm PeckShield noted on Twitter that crypto wallet addresses linked to Sun moved more than $50 million to crypto exchange Binance.

The sentiment among customers on social media is skeptical toward the future of Conor Grogan, Head of Product Business Operations at Coinbase, who tweeted Sun had “cashed out $1.5B+ in fiat since October, according to his tagged wallets.”

Interesting report from Colin Wu says that Huobi was attempting to convert payroll from fiat to USDT/USDC.

Meanwhile, Justin Sun (an "advisor" to the exchange, seen by many as the man in charge) has cashed out $1.5B+ in fiat since October, according to his tagged wallets pic.twitter.com/xFmkki6nBo

— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 4, 2023

According to Etherescan, Sun also moved $100 million in USDT and USDC from Binance BNB/USD to Houbi.

Twitter users are questioning Houbi’s future and Sun’s role in a way that may continue to hurt not only Houbi but also Tron’s reputation.

Cover image: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay; Justin Sun photo from Tron.Network.