DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice, and it is not intended to defame Binance US. I am sharing public payment data from the Helium blockchain. Please do your own research and interpretation–I take no responsibility for what you do with these findings.

Between 8/23 and 9/15/2022, four wallets slowly and methodically deposited 4,829,043 MOBILE tokens into their Binance US deposit addresses. Due to a bug in the exchange’s systems, they were credited 1 HNT per deposited MOBILE token. 1 MOBILE was only worth <0.001 HNT.

This implies a significant bug in Binance US’ internal accounting, and as CoinDesk reported, appears to have allowed the attackers to be credited with every last $HNT that existed in Binance US’ wallet. AKA other customers’ deposits.

The attackers, flush with HNT that wasn’t theirs, dumped it on the market in an aggressive but controlled manner, creating massive downwards price pressure. This coincidentally happened right around the time HIP 70 was announced (8/30), causing a stir in the Helium community.

How could this go on for over 3 weeks without anyone at Binance US noticing? I'd guess pure negligence. They likely weren’t paying attention when MOBILE token was launched (announced months prior) and didn’t update their code to check which token was being deposited. Also...

When customers send $HNT to their individual deposit addresses, exchanges “sweep” all the funds to one main wallet to consolidate them. Standard practice. Binance US did this on a daily basis for a while, until they didn’t…

On 11/15/2021, they just…stopped. Nearly a year later on 8/31/2022, their main wallet balance fell <6000 HNT--effectively zero. Empty wallet = no liquidity for user withdrawals. The next day, they swept 16,825 of users’ deposit addresses to recover the main wallet’s balance.

The same day, the bleeding began. Over the next 2 weeks, ~4.5 MILLION HNT were withdrawn. Some was sent to other exchanges, including http://Binance.com, and likely sold. Somehow, no alarm bells went off, despite a raging 10-alarm fire. Withdrawals were not paused.

The bleeding didn’t stop until only 310k HNT were left in the Binance US main wallet. It’s hard to say whether the drain was from attackers or arbitrageurs, but it’s likely that it was a combination of both.

In summary, there appears to have been gross negligence with the handling of customer funds by Binance US: - Not sweeping since Nov 2021 - Letting main wallet run to (almost) zero - Adopting chain updates passively, leading to devastating bug (citation at end)

(cont'd) - Three weeks of allocating HNT that didn’t exist to malicious customers - Two weeks of massive, unprecedented, unnoticed wallet drain

And that’s only what’s visible on-chain. So where do we stand? - Zero communication about this from Binance US to its customers since the CoinDesk story broke yesterday - Disabling of HNT deposits/withdrawals indefinitely - Apparently near zero funds to back customers’ deposits

It appears that Binance US must buy ~4.8m HNT on the open market to plug the hole. It won’t be easy to obtain this much HNT, as liquidity is limited. It's like they have an open naked short on $HNT and thus have unlimited potential losses.

I've interpreted to the best of my ability, and could be wrong. It's in Binance US' hands to address what's truly happening. I want to be wrong about this.

If I'm right, and there’s big news at Helium House NYC on 9/20 (which has been hinted at), and Binance US hasn’t covered, this could be bad for them.

Although I’ve found no evidence that Binance US has recovered any HNT, it’s technically possible that they have already begun the process, depositing funds into a wallet that is unknown to me. Regardless, I think the public is owed an immediate explanation.

I hope for the best outcome for all parties. Not only for the sake of HNT holders (top priority), but also for Binance US. This is surely a tough moment for them. I call on @BinanceUS to provide transparency, enact a recovery plan and open user withdrawals ASAP.

Note: I’ve chosen not to disclose wallet addresses for safety reasons. If any relevant party needs them for research/recovery purposes, please reach out to me directly. Helium blockchain node MOBILE update that Binance US did not implement correctly: https://github.com/helium/bloc...

I'm committed to providing the most accurate information that I can, so if any new facts come to light, I will share them with the community.

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Thank you for writing up this detailed analysis 🙏 The chart especially makes it pretty obvious this is what caused the recent plummet. What a crazy situation, seems like they’ll most likely have to place market orders for a lot of HNT.

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Great work uncovering this

@rawrmaan @getmntd_ @BinanceUS Idk what’s more shocking, the fact this happened for so long going unnoticed, or the fact of @binance ‘s pure negligence … this is CRAZY! #HNT #Binance

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Really excellent work on this. Can you DM me? I’d like to compare our analysis with yours.

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS @cz_binance please look into this

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS You are correct! I was unable to withdraw my HNT from Binance US.. So, whats the next move?

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS So I should long hnt then?

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Very Serious .. I hope Binance will come up and clear this

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Thanks Arman for being a good shepherd.

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS They must market buy 4.5m HNT🙏

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS You trusted a tether fraud exchange?

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Sucks if true. But $HNT founders still conned their bagholders with fake partnerships :(

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Good thread, Arman. In a world filled with sensationalism, I appreciated your tempered approach in presenting the (very damning) factual information.

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS If you think binance us will just market buy all the missing HNT that's just peak copium. They will source it through OTC or maybe even from http://binance.com somehow.

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Becouse of binance the price went -95% down in 11moths?or the hip70 will solve it?Did binance made the rewards to go down -90% in 3 months?

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS After our discussion on HNT yesterday @sandergansen

@rawrmaan @BinanceUS Thank you for this detailed breakdown on this.