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Story: HTX Moves $1.3 Billion to Unknown Custodian Amid EU and UK Sanctions

By Pankaj K

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Wallet Rotations and TRM Labs Findings. It gets murkier. A report by TRM Labs found that HTX has been rapidly rotating wallets — a pattern…

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The Poloniex Connection. Protos tracked substantial portions of HTX's assets moving through addresses labeled as Poloniex.

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Mislabeled Assets and Reporting Errors. There's another layer to this. HTX's May proof of reserves report claimed holdings of STEAK-USDC.

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HTX shifted $1.3 billion from its reserves to an unnamed third party. The move came as the European Union Council and the UK Foreign, Commonwealth, & Development Office both…

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The transfer first showed up in HTX's June proof of reserves report, which was the first time the exchange publicly acknowledged moving such a massive chunk of assets to a…

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It gets murkier. A report by TRM Labs found that HTX has been rapidly rotating wallets — a pattern consistent with efforts to stay ahead of traditional blockchain screening tools.

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And it's not just a technical footnote. HTX is operating under active sanctions from two major Western jurisdictions.

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That's a systematic path, not a one-off transaction.

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Roughly $200 million worth of Sky Savings USDS — sUSDS — moved to a specific address before being split into multiple parts and funneled through Poloniex's network, eventually…

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More context: Bitcoin Stuck Below $68,700 as 1.79 Million BTC Traps Short-Term Buyers

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Both exchanges are linked to Justin Sun. The obvious question is whether Sun is mixing HTX's reserves with Poloniex's holdings. No one has confirmed that.

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The transactions between the two platforms involve several hundred million dollars. That's not small-scale treasury shuffling.

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And it's not isolated. HTX's previous transparency tools, which once let users trace reserve addresses with some reliability, have become harder to use since the exchange started…

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Read also: UKs T+1 Shift Puts Buy-Side Firms Under FCA Pressure as 2027 Deadline Looms

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Past reports did allow some tracing of HTX's Ethereum-based DeFi positions. That window seems to be closing.

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