Rumors say that Chinese authorities are investigating Huobi COO Robin Zhu Jiawei. This resulted in an unusual outflow of Bitcoin (BTC) from the exchange.
Huobi classes the report as fake news
On Monday, the rumors on the executive’s arrest began revolving around Chinese social media. However, there is no evidence proving it happened. The local Chain News media reported on these rumors.
Singapore exchange firm Huobi claimed Zhu was on a flight returning from a business trip and was present at a company meeting in Beijing on Tuesday morning. Therefore, Huobi disclosed in a tweet that none of their management team is detained or under arrest.
Huobi Global Is Operating Normally
We have become aware of rumors within our community about the arrest of a Huobi senior executive by local officials. We can share with confidence that these rumors are false.
— Huobi (@HuobiGlobal) November 2, 2020
Huobi suggested that false rumors can lead to concerns about the safety of users’ assets. Moreover, Huobi declared an official statement saying that it was operating normally. In addition, it confirms users’ assets are safe at this time.
Massive transfers on Huobi
As the rumors about the executives’ arrest circulated on social media, Whale Alert caught multiple huge deposits and withdrawals on Huobi. Accordingly, a large inflow of Tether (USDT) occurred recently from Bitfinex to Huobi. The transfer is worth $400 million in USDT.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin whales have moved the world’s most popular cryptocurrency out of Huobi. As a matter of fact, they have withdrawn $266 million in BTC from the exchange. In detail, each transfer carried 2,000 BTC.
Without a doubt, Huobi is one of the crypto exchanges that already developed its reputation. However, Huobi’s token plummeted to $3.60 on Monday night, then recovered about $0.20 during a short interval. Huobi (HT) suffered a massive price decline with all the rumors and it has been falling since then.
According to CoinGecko, HT price is at $3.37, with a decline rate of -1.7% in the last 24 hours. It is unclear whether the Huobi token’s movement is related to the rumors of the arrest. Nevertheless, Huobi must recover fast, or it might scare away potential investors of the exchange.
Similarly, OKEx, another Chinese exchange, announced in October that one of the company’s private key holders has been under investigation. This might be one of the possible reasons for rumors that the Huobi COO is mistaken for an OKEx executive.
