cryptopotato.com
Cryptocurrency exchange $HTX, formerly Huobi, has recorded a net outflow of approximately $258 million since it suffered a hack that saw roughly $30 million in assets siphoned from its hot wallets last month.
According to a Bloomberg report citing data from decentralized finance total-value-locked aggregator DefiLlama, $HTX saw outflows between November 25 and December 10, indicating that investors are reacting to the exchange’s security hassles.
$HTX Records Major Outflows
On November 22, $HTX and Heco cross-chain bridge – a protocol connecting the exchange and the Ethereum network – suffered an attack that led to the loss of over $116 million in crypto assets. Following the incident, Tron founder and $HTX advisor Justin Sun announced that the exchange would fully compensate the affected users for any losses from the hack.
Before this incident, $HTX had experienced a hack in late September that saw assets worth $8 million stolen from the platform. However, the assets were returned after negotiations with the hacker, and Sun tagged the attack a white-hat incident.
Interestingly, Poloniex, another digital asset exchange linked to Sun, was hacked in mid-November, with stolen funds running into $125 million. While the exchange’s management could not recover the stolen assets, Sun informed affected users that they would receive reimbursement for their losses through an airdrop.
$HTX, Heco Bridge, and Poloniex have been hacked for almost $250 million within three months. The massive outflows are a sign that users have become uncertain about the safety of their assets on these platforms.
A Potential Cause for Alarm
Besides the frequent attacks on the Sun-linked platforms, $HTX’s reserves may be a potential cause for alarm. At the beginning of the year, well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin ($BTC), Tether ($USDT), and Wrapped Ether (WETH) made up the bulk of the reserves, but as the year runs out, data from DefiLlama shows that Sun-linked tokens now make up over 50% of the assets.
On January 1, Huobi Token (HT) and Tron ($TRX) made up 33.1% and 16.1% of the reserves, while $BTC, $USDT, and WETH were 20.7%, 20.7%, and 4.8%, accounting for 46.2% of the total assets. However, as of December 8, $TRX, HT, and staked $USDT (stUSDT) – another asset tied to Sun – comprised 31.8%, 14.4%, and 12.2% of the reserves, while $BTC and $USDT were 32.9% and 1.7%.
Currently, more than 58% of $HTX’s reserves are made up of $TRX, HT, and stUSDT, which are all tied to Sun.