Justin Sun-owned exchanges Poloniex and HTX appear to have withdrawn hundreds of millions of dollars in funds from the AAVE lending platform.
The address 0x176F3DAb24a159341c0509bB36B833E7fdd0a132, labeled as “Poloniex 9” on Etherscan, is the address where Sun previously solicited the return of funds hacked from Poloniex.
This address withdrew 45,000 ether (ETH) from AAVE on November 5 before almost immediately moving the funds to Lido.
Read more: Justin Sun reveals Poloniex issues prevent proof of reserves
He had also previously promised that Poloniex would be receiving a proof-of-reserves with third-party verification, a process that it itself described as an “audit” that would presumably reduce questions about this strange reserve management.
However, eventually Sun explained that issues at Poloniex mean that it’s “unable to meet the requirements” of a proof-of-reserves process.
Sun and Poloniex have been unwilling to describe exactly what those issues are.
Read more: Justin Sun-advised HTX plays games with its reserves
These Poloniex actions mimic a series of similar AAVE lending transactions from Sun-owned HTX.
This pattern of HTX interacting with AAVE has continued with a new batch of several transactions that occurred contemporaneously with the Poloniex transactions.
Specifically, these were from the 0x18709E89BD403F470088aBDAcEbE86CC60dda12e address that is labeled as “Huobi: Recovery” on Etherscan.
Yesterday, HTX withdrew $500 million and then $300 million in tether from AAVE.
It then withdrew 30,000 ETH from AAVE before depositing those funds into Lido to stake them.
Broadly, it’s not clear why Poloniex or HTX have such a large portion of their reserves lent on AAVE, nor is it explained why they so frequently move those funds around, often seeming to mimic activities that resemble a cryptocurrency trader more than they resemble how exchanges generally manage reserves.
Protos reached out to Poloniex and HTX for clarification on why they engaged in these recent transactions, but they didn’t immediately respond.
