Jessy, Jinse Finance
According to the latest announcement from Huobi Exchange, the Heco chain will officially shut down on January 20, 2025. After January 20, deposits and withdrawals on the Heco chain will no longer be accepted.
Previously in November 2023, the Heco chain's cross-chain bridge was hacked, resulting in the loss of a total of $8,540 worth of cryptocurrencies. Since then, the Heco chain has been in a long-term shutdown state.
In 2024, Huobi gradually opened up the deposit and withdrawal of some mainstream tokens on the Heco chain, but there were certain time restrictions for the deposit and withdrawal of each token. Huobi Exchange would periodically stop the deposit and withdrawal of some tokens, and if users missed this time window, there would no longer be an official channel to process their assets.
Currently, only Huobi Exchange still supports the deposit and withdrawal service for the Heco chain, and even on Huobi, only the Heco chain assets of USDT and HT tokens can still be normally deposited.
With the change of ownership of Huobi, the Heco chain has long been abandoned, and it was not until the Heco cross-chain bridge was hacked that the death knell of the Heco chain was truly sounded.
And by January 20, 2025, the Heco chain will officially come to an end.
The Heco and HT long abandoned by Justin Sun
The Heco chain was born in 2020, at a time when DeFi was on the rise. Huobi decided to build its own public chain, and during the 2021 bull market, the Heco chain developed rapidly, relying on Huobi, the world's largest exchange. Huobi also launched related ecosystem funds to strongly support various excellent projects on the Heco chain, and popular projects in the ecosystem emerged one after another, making it one of the hottest public chains.
According to DeFiLlama data, the Heco chain's TVL reached a peak of $2.8 billion in 2021. As of now, the Heco chain's TVL is only $1.18 million.
In 2022, Li Lin sold Huobi to Justin Sun, and in 2023, the Heco chain also experienced a series of scandals and problems, such as the price crash of the oracle iHash Bridge Oracle (HBO) on it, the issuance scandal of the insurance project Book Finance (BOOK), the fake audit report of the TokenLink oracle project, and the runaway event of Gainswap. These events have seriously damaged the reputation and ecosystem of the HECO chain. By the end of 2023, the Heco chain's cross-chain bridge was hacked, and it then fell into a long-term shutdown. In 2024, the liquidity crisis of the tokens on the Heco chain became prominent, with insufficient trading depth and investors' assets difficult to realize.
Although in 2024, Huobi briefly provided deposit and withdrawal services for some mainstream tokens on the Heco chain, the time was short, and many users missed it. The current owner of Huobi, Justin Sun, has completely abandoned the Heco chain, and its original platform token HT has also been abandoned, with the new platform token HTX launched at the beginning of 2024, and HT users can choose to exchange HT for HTX.
Currently, the price of HT has dropped by more than 90% from the previous bull market price. For users, continuing to hold assets on the Heco chain is definitely not a wise choice.
Except for HT and USDT, other Heco chain assets are invalid
Currently, if there are still HT deposits on the Heco chain, they can be directly withdrawn to the Huobi Exchange. Although the exchange no longer provides HT trading pairs, users can exchange HT for HTX at a current conversion rate of 0.64.
Alternatively, after withdrawing HT to the Huobi Exchange, users can then transfer it to exchanges like Gate.io that still have HT trading pairs for trading. As of the time of writing, the price of HT on the Gate.io exchange is around $1.3.
The USDT on the Heco chain can also still be withdrawn to the Huobi Exchange, but for other deposited assets, there seems to be no solution.
Currently, in various communities, there are often members posting messages about "recycling Heco chain assets", and a Jinse Finance reporter randomly contacted one of the members who posted such a message.
He told the Jinse Finance reporter that he recycles HT at a price of $1 per token, and also recycles other assets on the Heco chain, but at a price far below the market price. For example, in the case of Mana, a token that Huobi no longer accepts on the Heco chain, he can only recycle it at around one-tenth of the market price.
Currently, the HT token has no fundamental value and no use, but it still has a market capitalization of $200 million.
When the reporter asked this community member who is engaged in the business of recycling on-chain assets why he would recycle these tokens, he replied that there are people who have faith in these coins.
But no profit, no effort. For a businessman, there is more likely to be profitability here. If he recycles HT at $1, even if he sells it on exchanges like Gate.io at the current price of around $1.3, he can make a profit of around 30%.
The reporter did not attempt to trade with him and cannot judge whether this is a scam. There is a possibility of fraud where the coins are sent to him but he does not send the money back, so readers are advised to exercise caution.
For users, the more reliable way to handle assets on the Heco chain is through the Huobi official website. If there are still USDT and HT deposits on the Heco chain, they can still be withdrawn to the exchange for further processing. As for other assets, there are currently no official channels for processing, and using third-party processing may carry a high risk of being scammed.
