‘Someone’ is sending tainted dust from sanctioned HTX
An address associated with Justin Sun-owned exchange HTX is causing controversy on X after it sent out a variety of so-called “dust” transactions.
Purported users are claiming that transactions sent from 0xa03400E098F4421b34a3a44A1B4e571419517687 were sent to their deposit addresses on other exchanges, provoking review of their accounts.
These other exchanges are apparently reviewing these accounts because these transactions suggest links to the sanctioned HTX.
Read more: European Union sanctions Justin Sun’s HTX
The sanctions on HTX from both the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and the European Union have led exchanges including Bybit, OKX, and Binance to announce that they will either no longer process transactions with HTX or will review accounts that do transact with HTX.
More recently, 0xa03400E098F4421b34a3a44A1B4e571419517687, which is labeled as “HTX 48” on Etherscan and is also included in the HTX proof of reserves, has been “dusting” various addresses.
The fact that it is included in HTX’s own proof of reserves means we can be absolutely confident that this is an HTX address.
Many of these small transactions are using USDT.
This has led users to claim that they’ve received additional scrutiny because of these transactions, something Sun denies.
Despite the fact that this address is included in HTX’s own proof of reserves according to a machine translation, X user “HTX_Molly,” who is verified as part of the HTX organization, has claimed:
“HTX’s official channels have not initiated any related transfers or testing activities. As for the specific sources and reasons behind these transfers, we’re conducting further verification and don’t rule out various possibilities such as address tagging, on-chain transfer source identification, and more. We will refrain from speculation until the facts are confirmed.”
It’s not clear what this explanation could possibly mean when HTX includes this address in its own disclosures.
Protos reached out to HTX for clarification, but it didn’t immediately respond.
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