Brother of Huobi Founder Allegedly Hoarded Millions of HT

A renowned crypto industry figure comes forward with allegations that the brother of Huobi’s founder has been aggressively picking up the exchange’s native token for free. And then dumping the hoardings at a profit.

Justin Sun, the founder of Tron (TRX) and a stakeholder in Huobi, the cryptocurrency exchange, claims that the brother of Huobi’s founder, Li Lin, acquired free quantities of Huboi’s native token (HT). Sun’s comments on the subject occupied a long Twitter thread on Tuesday.

Huobi Exploited?

LI Wei—the brother of Li Lin—is alleged to have acquired millions of Huobi Tokens “abnormally.” In the Twitter thread, Sun suggested that Li Wei had not made any real contributions to the Huobi community. And yet, Li Wei was able to acquire no small amount of wealth by repeatedly selling the tokens.

Some of Sun’s comments in the Twitter thread are very pointed. “Li Wei has not made any substantial contributions to our community. We believe in fairness and the importance of rewarding those who genuinely contributed to the growth and development of the HT DAO community,” he wrote on Tuesday.

“Li Wei has been consistently selling off these tokens and cashing out,” read another tweet.

For its part, the Huoibi Global Advisory Committee and the HT DAO community have decided to retrieve and destroy the tokens in question.

Huobi is currently the 16th largest crypto exchange by total volume, according to CoinMarketCap. Founded in China in 2013, it was one of the early players in the space. Although, it has since been overtaken by the likes of Binance, Kucoin, and ByBit.

Huobi Token (HT) on the Decline

HT has been on a long-term downward trajectory since it spiked in May 2021 at $39.81. However, its value currently stands at around $2.90. This represents a significant decrease, of roughly 92.73% from its previous peak.

The last seven days have been especially volatile for HT. Although, the token pumped dramatically following Sun’s statement before settling at around $2.90.

Last week, Huobi absorbed an 8% increase in spot trading volume, while Binance lost 18% of its spot trading market share to Asian competitors. A setback that followed Binance’s discontinuing of zero-fee trading.

It is an intensively competitive market. Huobi’s rise, along with South Korean exchanges, has contributed to Binance’s loss.

BeInCrypto has reached out to Huobi for comment on this story. However, a response was not forthcoming at the time of publication.