Huobi now has a $100 million liquidity fund to protect against precipitous drops of the HT token, in response to what happened late Thursday U.S. time.
Justin Sun, the Tron CEO who also runs the crypto exchange, confirmed a transfer of $100 million in USDC to Huobi just after 04:25 UTC, or 11:27 a.m. Hong Kong time.
The rapid drop and then rebound was caused by "leveraged liquidation on the market caused by a few users," according to a tweet by Sun. This comes amid a broader crypto market correction as $307 million in positions across the market were liquidated as traders digest the impact of Silvergate Bank's exit from dealings with crypto companies.
“We will continue to improve the liquidity depth of main cryptocurrencies and HT token, strengthen leverage risk warnings and liquidity capabilities,” Sun tweeted.
Sun has previously disclosed that he's a major holder of HT.
HT dropped from a 24-hour high of $4.81 to a low of $0.31 at 21:00 UTC on Huobi’s exchange, according to data from TradingView.
In October, HT rallied nearly 75% as Sun said "revitalizing Huobi is to empower HT" and promised "there will be many big moves around HT, including brand upgrade, heavy empowerment, and business cooperation."
HT is currently trading at $3.90, according to CoinGecko.
Earlier, a tweet from Nansen.ai had flagged that Sun was moving $60 million in USDT, though the ultimate destination of that was Aave, and this was unrelated to the Huobi liquidity fund.
UPDATE (March 10, 04:47 UTC): Updates throughout that Sun has completed the transfer of $100 million in USDC to create a Huobi liquidity fund.