Justin Sun calls HTX address-poisoning reports ‘made up’

Justin Sun, the founder of TRON and owner of the HTX exchange, has dismissed a wave of reports that exchange wallets had been spraying small crypto transfers at unrelated addresses.

Sun said that the claims were fabricated, writing in Chinese on X on August 18, which, when translated to English, reads, “The investigation is clear: it’s all made up.”

However, he did not provide supporting details to the post. Sun linked to an unspecified follow-up but did not name the accusers, describe the transfers, or explain what his team had investigated.

Sun’s post comes after what is being seen as a noisy day for his exchange, HTX, formerly Huobi. Traders on the platform had been circulating for hours screenshots of unsolicited USDT landing in wallets that blockchain explorers tagged as belonging to the exchange. 

A trader known as 紫夜 (0xZiye) wrote that he had received 7.5 USDT to his Coinbase account, and he attributed it to Sun’s exchange. 

0xZiye wrote, “HTX is crazily transferring out small amounts, polluting other addresses.” The trader claimed that Coinbase informed him that his account would be closed unless he explained where the funds came from. 

What users actually received, and what happened next

The amounts that were transferred to the respective addresses were small, with some reportedly receiving as high as 12 USDT. The transferred funds are not near zero, as is usually seen in dust attacks.

Phyrex, a widely followed analyst on X, later confirmed that 0xZiye’s Coinbase account had returned to normal and that anyone in a similar position could ask Coinbase support to review the case. He said that he had contacted the Coinbase Singapore arm, adding that “They have escalated the feedback to relevant departments at Coinbase, including the legal team.” 

Phyrex also added that he is in communication with the HTX team.

Why is a few dollars of USDT setting off alarms?

The concern of the users who received these USDT deposits has not been theft but compliance.

HTX is being treated as a sanctioned counterparty in the United Kingdom and the European Union. So wallets that withdrew from HTX after May 26 are considered in breach of those sanctions. That was what led to some of the freezes that some users, like 0xZiye, experienced when the funds entered their Coinbase addresses. 

Binance has frozen transactions tied to HTX, Exmo, and more than a dozen other exchanges and some decentralized venues. Even Hyperliquid, a decentralized platform, has begun blacklisting HTX-linked addresses.

What is HTX saying, and are there new freezes on its ledger? 

In an official statement, the exchange said it had “not conducted any related transfers or testing activities” and would not speculate before finishing its review. 

Molly, HTX head of marketing, said that the platform “absolutely” did not behave this way and blamed either a misunderstanding or deliberate sabotage.

The exchange also pointed to attribution as a possible culprit. Explorers and analytics firms assign wallet labels using ownership disclosures and clustering, and a displayed tag is not proof that the named exchange authorized a payment. 

HTX said it was checking whether address tagging or on-chain source identification had produced a false link. 

Later in the day, the representative said HTX had reviewed tens of thousands of deposit and withdrawal orders across platforms and found no new frozen cases.

HTX has denied sending the transfers, and so far, a security researcher has publicly connected the disputed deposits to a specific operator.