Scott Sigel, the Helium Foundation’s chief operating officer, has stated that the cryptocurrency exchange Binance’s decision to delist several trading pairs of the Helium Network Token (HNT) has “no basis.”
Sigel’s remarks follow a notice that Binance issued on Oct. 6 stating that the exchange would be discontinuing cross, isolated margin, and spot trading pairs for HNT and Binance USD (BUSD), Tether (USDT tickers down $1.00), and Bitcoin (BTC tickers down $19,402).
Users of Binance were “strongly advised” to close any positions in its listed pairs on Oct. 12, when only spot trading for the HNT/BUSD pair would remain and user positions would be forcibly closed. Any pending orders would also be cancelled.
A spokesperson for Binance, Jessica Jung, told Forbes in a statement that the exchange checks its listed cryptocurrencies on a regular basis to make sure they continue to “meet a high level of standard.”
She explained that an asset will be removed from the list “in order to protect our users” if it does not meet the standard or “there are changes in the industry.”
“There is no basis for Binance to delist several HNT pairs,” stated Sigel in response.The integrity of HNT has not changed, and it continues to comply with all exchange standards.
“There are other additional exchanges that still support HNT. We hope Binance changes its mind and quickly re-lists the other HNT trading pairs.
Helium was established in 2013 as a blockchain focused on the Internet of Things (IoT). It is currently developing a decentralized peer-to-peer wireless telecommunications network. On September 22, it announced that it would migrate its blockchain to Solana (SOL tickers down $33) for, among other reasons, greater ecosystem support.
Traders have speculated on the reason for Binance’s partial delisting of HNT, with some claiming that it was in response to the exchange’s misinterpretation of Helium ecosystem tokens in September, when an accounting flaw allegedly caused the exchange to lose approximately $19 million in crypto.
According to reports, Binance paid out approximately 4.8 million HNT, mistaking it for a much cheaper token used by Helium to pay hosts of its 5G hotspot network called MOBILE. This led to a massive sell-off of the token and a temporary drop in price.
In addition, Helium has been criticized for its revenue figures despite significant funding rounds.Despite the company raising hundreds of millions from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), FTX Ventures, and Tiger Global, data revealed in July suggested that the project only makes $6,500 per month from its revenue from data usage.
Helium was caught in August listing partners on its website, specifically software company SalesForce and e-bike manufacturer Lime, both of which denied working with the company or having an active partnership.Soon after, Helium removed the references to both organizations from its website.
