- $2 million HT tokens were sold on Huobi prior to the crash.
- HT price momentarily dropped from $4.6 to $0.31.
- Tron’s founder Justin Sun is the largest holder of HT tokens.
HT, the native token of Huobi Exchange, crashed by over 90% on Thursday dropping to $0.31 from $4.6 in just 10 minutes.
Although the price has since recovered, the token was trading at $3.81, 21% down in the past 24 hours at press time.
What caused the brief HT price drop?
According to transaction data from Kaiko’s research analyst, Riyad Carey, more than $2 million HT tokens were sold on Huobi in the minutes leading to the HT crash. Justin Sun was also reported to have moved $60 million in USDT from Huobi to Aave.
Interestingly, Tron’s founder Justin Sun is the largest holder of HT tokens and serves as an advisor to the Huobi crypto exchange.
In the same period when HT price dropped by 90%, Tron’s token, TRX price dropped by 12% from $0.057 to $0.066.
Commenting on the spontaneous price plunge Justin Sun said:
“Few users triggering a cascade of forced liquidations in the spot and HT contract markets… We will continue to improve the liquidity depth of main cryptocurrencies and HT token, strengthen leverage risk warnings and liquidity capabilities.”
Sun also dismissed the price drop as a normal market occurrence and assured the Huobi community that Huobi operations are safe. He also said that he will create a $100 million liquidity fund for those impacted by the leveraged liquidation. He actually confirmed via Twitter that he has transferred $100 million in USDC stablecoin to Huobi.
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On Thursday, November 12, the price of Huobi Token (HT) had a sharp and unexpected drop of over 90%, reaching record lows of $2.22 USD per coin. Huobi Token, or HT, is the native token of the popular cryptocurrency exchange Huobi and was previously trading above $20.00 USD per coin.
Cryptocurrency investors have been left puzzled as to why the price of HT suddenly suffered such dramatic losses, with many speculating on the cause of this sharp decline. Due to its decentralized nature and lack of a centralized governing body, concrete information has been hard to come by.
However, the most likely explanation for this sudden crash is the introduction of “Hecate” – a new blockchain network developed by Huobi’s research and development team. Hecate has been seen as a direct competitor to Ethereum, and its launch is likely to have impacted the demand for HT tokens as traders move their investments away from the coin.
Furthermore, Huobi has also recently announced that it will be launching a similar token, called “HBTC”, which will be used to settle payments in the Hecate network. This introduction is also believed to have contributed to the decline in HT demand and price.
Although HT has recovered some of its value since Thursday, it is still trading at a much lower price than before. It is no surprise, then, that traders and investors are trying to make sense of the recent price crash.
Whether it is the introduction of Huobi’s new blockchain network or the launch of its new token, HBTC, that has caused the decline remains uncertain. What is certain, however, is that the sharp and unexpected decline in the price of HT is likely to have a wide-reaching impact on the cryptocurrency market as a whole.
