Possible problems for cryptocurrency exchange Huobi became known the day before. In particular, the creator of Tron Justin Sun shared the information with Reuters, where he confirmed the decision to cut 20 percent of employees. Implementation of the latter has not yet begun, but the management plans to finish with the layoffs by the end of the first quarter of 2023.

According to sources, San also shared internal information directly with employees. According to his data, Huobi has gained 20,000 new users in the past three months, and with that in mind, Justin described the platform as a "firestorm during crypto-zima".

20 percent is a serious cut, but for cryptocurrency niche companies, such staffing operations are no longer surprising. For example, representatives of the Genesis trading platform reported that they were preparing for a 30 per cent staff reduction. The reason for this, among others, was the company’s financial problems, as it lost $175 million, which was stuck in the bankrupt FTX exchange.

To illustrate, here is the volume of layoffs at cryptocurrency companies for the year 2022.

Volume of staff cuts at cryptocurrency companies in 2022

As you can see, ByBit exchange has lost the most staff in percentage terms – we are talking about 51 percent of staff. Back in July 2022, Coinbase announced that it would cut 18 percent of its staff, or about 1,100 employees, in preparation for a “prolonged” crypto-zine. And in late November 2022, exchange Kraken followed Coinbase’s lead, cutting its staff by 30 percent.

Meanwhile, Binance has increased its headcount for 2022. As the platform’s head Changpen Zhao noted in the second half of November, the company employs 7,400 people, with plans to increase the figure to 8,000 by the end of the year.

According to Zhao of June 2022, it was “not easy for them to give up Super Bowl advertising, stadium naming rights and major sponsorship partnerships a few months ago, but they did it. Apparently, this was a stone to platforms that spent huge resources on advertising, but ended up having to lay people off due to lack of finances.

What’s going on with Huobi?

According to platform DeFiLlama, Huobi saw record inflows of $87.9 million and $46.04 million on December 15 and 28 respectively. Meanwhile, since then, total withdrawals have exceeded the $200 million mark by today.

Huobi inflows and outflows in dollar terms

Here is the relevant information for the last day and week.

Net outflows of crypto assets from Huobi over a day and a month

As noted by analysts, large withdrawals from the exchange are most often made in USDT, USDC and ETH. Users with large balances are responsible for them. Here is the ranking of the largest withdrawals per day.

Largest withdrawals from cryptocurrency exchange Huobi in 24 hours

Tron founder and Huobi spokesperson Justin Sun shared a comment in response to the rumours. According to him, now is the time to “build new projects” rather than spread panic. However, a massive capital outflow is unlikely to be blocked with a single tweet, besides we already have bad precedents of such a thing in the form of the collapse of Terra or FTX.

Justin Sun’s tweet

At the same time, experts at analyst firm Arkham Intelligence claim that Sun may have financial stability issues. According to the company, transaction history on the blockchain shows that Sun paid thousands of dollars in slips in the trading stack to exchange and transfer stabelcoins. And this was done instead of redeeming them directly on the Tron blockchain.

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According to Decrypt’s sources, in October 2022, San dismissed rumours of possible layoffs within Huobi, but now the news of staff cuts has come from him. There has also been news of alleged financial problems at the exchange in recent weeks.

In particular, already this year, cryptojournalist Colin Wu reported that the platform’s staff would now be paid in USDT- and USDC-type staplecoins instead of fiat, sparking widespread outrage within the Huobi team. Still, it could be a sign of instability in the giant’s financial flows.

Tron founder Justin Sun


We believe that it is too early to draw conclusions about the situation with Huobi. However, in late 2022 we already witnessed a campaign to discredit the Binance exchange, with prominent representatives of the blockchain industry calling for the withdrawal of crypto from the trading platform, because it is allegedly not solvent. As it turned out, these rumours were unsubstantiated and the exchange successfully addressed all of the findings. Although in case anything happens, withdrawing crypto from Huobi as a precaution wouldn't be out of place. Anyway, all the coins are owned by their own owners outside the exchange, so there is also nothing wrong with possibly sending assets to a non-custodial wallet.