Community sentiment soured around Huobi, which has Tron founder Sun as an adviser, after it said it will lay off hundreds of staff in coming weeks.

The price of Tron (TRX), the 18th-largest token by market capitalization, tumbled Friday amid tensions stemming from crypto exchange Huobi as the broader crypto market held steady.

Tron founder Justin Sun sits on Huobi’s advisory board. The exchange said Friday it will cut headcount by 20% and require employees to take their salaries in stablecoins. It also closed internal staff communication channels to quell a rebellion, according to reports on Twitter.

TRX fell nearly 8% in the past 24 hours, data shows. The price is above a support level of 5 cents, and if it drops below, the tokens could slip to as low as 3 cents, price charts show. Huobi’s native HT exchange tokens have lost as much as 11% in the past 24 hours.

The Tron-based stablecoin USDD fell 3 cents, effectively losing its intended peg to the U.S. dollar. Such price action caused the value locked on Tron-based decentralized applications to fall by 2%, DeFiLlama data shows.

As such, futures tracking TRX saw under $1 million in liquidations on exchanges, suggesting the selling was mostly spot driven. Spot refers to actual tokens, while futures are derivative financial instruments that allow traders to bet on the prices of the underlying tokens.

Meanwhile, security firm PeckShield noted on Twitter that crypto wallet addresses linked to Sun moved over $50 million to crypto exchange Binance.

The fund movements came amid speculation among Twitter users about the overall health of Huobi and the safety of customer funds. Data from blockchain analytics Nansen showed Huobi had seen some $60 million in fund outflows over the past 24 hours.

Sun, Tron, and Huobi did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s requests for comment.

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The deal could be one of the biggest ever in the crypto industry.

The founder of crypto exchange Huobi Global, Leon Li, is in talks to sell a majority stake in the company in a transaction that would value the firm at $3 billion or more, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Li is looking to sell almost 60% of the firm, and has held preliminary talks with Tron founder Justin Sun and FTX, the crypto exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
In a tweet, Sun denied any involvement.

Seychelles-based Huobi is one of the largest crypto exchanges, with a daily trade volume of over $1 billion, according to CoinGecko.

If concluded, the deal would be one of the biggest ever in the crypto industry. The downturn in the crypto market has forced many of the biggest firms to cut costs and jobs, however this could be the first instance of a majority stake sale by one of the bigger crypto firms.

Huobi’s existing investors, which includes ZhenFund and Sequoia China, were informed about Li’s decision during a shareholder meeting last month, the report added.

A deal could be completed as soon as the end of this month, the report noted. Li is seeking an overall valuation of $2 billion-$3 billion, which means that the stake sale could fetch upwards of $1 billion, the report said.

FTX has made a slew of offers to acquire crypto companies during the recent market downturn, snapping up Japanese exchange Liquid in April before agreeing to acquire Canadian trading platform Bitvo two months later. It also has a deal in place to purchase lending platform BlockFi for up to $240 million.

FTX has also been eyeing up purchases of Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, both of which filed for bankruptcy in July.

After the Bloomberg report was published, Huobi’s native token HT jumped nearly 25% to $5.43, hitting a high of $5.80 at one point.

Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun denied that acquisition talks had taken place.

Huobi Global, Tron and FTX did not immediately respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

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