Electra Protocol – Explaining Hotbit’s behavior

Introduction

This article aims to show that Hotbit is committing illegal activities (mainly dumping team and users unclaimed coins on MEXC exchange), and that MEXC should take immediate and urgent action to stop Hotbit’s fraudulent moves. The Electra Protocol team requested that these coins should most certainly be burned, as they are not the property of Hotbit, nor is there the ability for anyone else to claim them at this point.

Preliminary facts

Electra Protocol’s XEP native coin was listed on Hotbit on the 26th of May 2021. Fees for this listing were applied with USDT/XEP (several thousand dollars, and xxx XEP for Market Maker (MM) purposes.

https://help.hotbit.io/hc/en-us/articles/1500012018462-Hotbit-will-launch-XEP-Electra-Protocol-on-May-26th-2021

From May 26th 2021, until May 22nd 2023, XEP could be deposited, traded and withdrawn on the Hotbit platform.

However, Hotbit exchange suddenly tweeted an official closure announcement, and provided a 1 month deadline for users to withdraw their funds.

https://twitter.com/Hotbit_news/status/1660496999458963458

Hotbit official announcement

Electra Protocol team follow-up since then

Following the closure, the Electra Protocol team commenced discussions with the Hotbit team for several purposes: retrieving funds, ensuring XEP holders would not be affected, and ensuring Electra Protocol would not be affected.

Recently, the Electra Protocol team contacted Hotbit again when Hotbit started dumping other coins/tokens on some exchanges, but Hotbit failed to provide any answer!

Several other projects tweeted about this behavior, commonly known as a “rug pull”. Several tweets are listed below of this article (link), and also a dedicated article :

https://www.wikifx.com/en/newsdetail/202307062944417203.html?source=emily

Therefore, the Electra Protocol team decided to closely monitor the XEP hot wallets from Hotbit.

Identification of XEP hot wallets from other wallets can be done by analyzing withdrawals from Hotbit. The dedicated annex “Proof of the Hotbit hot wallet address” puts in evidence that Hotbit’s main hot wallet address is ep1qggre0dr03zqcl925km9jy0ml70fy8qknu3dpve.

XEP transfers since the last official deadline of withdrawals (June 30th 2023), from the Hotbit main hot wallet address listed below:

All the below transfers were sent in a 22 minute time frame on August 3rd, 2023 from ep1qggre0dr03zqcl925km9jy0ml70fy8qknu3dpve to ep1qac4e024cu0uau3elwqyvd59stj70hqh5udvduv, which appears to be a MEXC deposit address. Therefore, the Electra Protocol team considers it as blatantly obvious that Hotbit is preparing a massive sale on the MEXC exchange, with funds coming from users who didn’t withdraw their funds in time.

	TXID (click for details)	XEP Transferred	Dates
1	c4ace579d898f6478f659ed9d7759296e5a9cf69ef491e76ee0fa7d4174b4ec4	1 998 206	8/3/23 16:17
2	4fa30b54322f6fb2c2108dd62818aa64c4cba77ab73872da890c5aae304e39f7	500 000
3	71f1d430a918650ad60e5d4c4d51fff019592d2376a816799e593df95c509eb0	10 000 000
4	d6a39527d64451179f4e57d7bf8c85c5f9d0d0cf2bc80ad101ab2554339f4708	10 000 000
5	2df1733294a6f9c482ce8b5054974994bd498e0c3ed15d2c0e76bde7daf702d6	10 000 000
6	77fe4b75767a29361934247b5760132b7e4c52957c7a83333d60e6d06c2b4164	10 000 000
7	081a872ac66013fd266b156d52448eddfb24f4170bdb46fc0e39ad69ce776762	10 000 000
8	e3faba33fc8adeb4d331f26d25b02dcb5aae7aa8d9fbe24abd9466cae61114da	10 000 000
9	5d39c98c69ce248c4f0dcd399f198618de01ca1477887362896d609d68a4092b	10 000 000
10	04fc1325228faf62eeacd707900d162a492ecd759546931250a1b41e92bf267a	5 000 000
11	2f15f33c34276626d21604a86b7616ba2b87541340a5e8ad9910c180a81ee578	5 000 000
12	0c0823eceb8fc272b3b108c4b935eb9962f705a0a95b98ad43e4b40ddee96279	3 000 000
13	71e5506f6df456d49e58ec0e93f5517b7bddf4a4009e36061e4bf22d5fee6db6	3 000 000
14	f8ce4e771233b4040a32dd733b7390d5799dfc4f8fcb95a35e0e97aea42d644a	3 000 000
15	0a2f85585ae11373a454e0303eddc086e9fda24df9e90b840c94bb1b84d12168	11 500 000	8/3/23 16:39
	TOTAL transferred	102 998 206

In addition, we can take note that after regular users stopped withdrawing 2 months ago, on August 3rd, Hotbit also started transferring to other markets. For XEP, the transfers are listed above, with a clear purpose: to dump the MM and unclaimed user coins. Which is totally illegal behavior!

Moreover, they even started to dump some XEP on the MEXC platform :

4m XEP dump : Aug 3, 2023 at 17:00.
3m XEP dump: Aug 3, 2023 at 19:38.

And a 95m sell order was put (screenshot below was taken on Aug 3rd) :

On Friday, August 4, 2023, After discussions between Electra Protocol and MEXC. MEXC agreed to a temporary freeze of Hotbit’s MEXC deposit address. (ep1qac4e024cu0uau3elwqyvd59stj70hqh5udvduv) and remove their sell orders, while waiting for some additional evidence that Hotbit is certainly engaging in “rug pull” activities.

What to think about this antecedent?

On August 10th, 2022, Hotbit suddenly halted deposits and withdrawals, following a criminal investigation.

Official announcement:

https://help.hotbit.io/hc/en-us/articles/8074249353495-Announcement-on-the-Suspension-of-Hotbit-Website-Service

Tweets relaying this announcement :

https://twitter.com/TheBlock__/status/1557389238454337538?s=20

https://twitter.com/swankyfinance/status/1557726042395054080?s=20

https://twitter.com/Cryptadamist/status/1660538600864325633?s=20

https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1557370639442481158?s=20

https://twitter.com/Cointelegraph/status/1557496261628071939?s=20

Conclusion

Regarding all the elements stated above along with the evidence presented, it appears obvious that Hotbit is finalizing their shutdown by dumping all the remaining users’ unclaimed coins, which appears to be totally illegal and unlawful.

The Electra Protocol team are requesting that the MEXC platform keep all Hotbit funds frozen which were transferred onto MEXC, and that a plan is put in place in order to burn all these coins, which can be done through the Electra Protocol foundation or by MEXC themselves with proof of burn. Whilst this is a most unfortunate set of circumstances it also serves to highlight the immutable transparency of blockchain technology.