Helium’s $HNT token is down 96%, and CEO Amir Haleem decided to quit yesterday. He spent over a decade talking about the reasons someone should be bullish about $HNT.
Checking the chart, they would have been better off never listening to him.
Helium issued three crypto tokens, MOBILE, IOT, and $HNT, to incentivize operators of its once-faddish networking devices. Over the past five years, those three tokens have declined 76%, 87%, and 96%, respectively.
Haleem announced his resignation by quote-tweeting a video by his replacement, Mario Di Dio. He’s stepping aside as chief executive of Nova Labs, the company behind Helium.
On X, some users framed his step-down to chairman as well-deserved break after a successful career. However, the price chart of his token tells an entirely different story.
Somehow, things got even worse as his reign ended, with $HNT falling another 15% on the day of his goodbye.
Get out, get out, get out
The timing of the CEO changeover certainly raises eyebrows.
Two days before quitting, Haleem’s company offloaded its consumer business on June 2, 2026. Helium Mobile, the budget cellphone service that gave the project a sliver of legitimacy, went to Noble Mobile.
$HNT failed to rally on the news, remaining down 30% over the past week and down 46% over the past month.
So, the sequence reads cleanly. After offloading the consumer business with no relief rally to speak of in $HNT, the CEO resigned two days later.
As he left, he made sure to assure everyone that he still holds $HNT.
He also left behind a project that spent years collecting controversies.
Helium raised nearly $365 million over its lifetime, with FTX as one of its backers. In 2022, the company was caught advertising Lime, Salesforce, and Nestlé as network users, even though none of them were. A Forbes investigation later found that insiders had mined close to half of all $HNT in its first months.
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