Helium Plunges 23% After Binance Delisting, Solana Delay

Crypto wireless network Helium’s native HNT token dropped by more than 23% on news Friday that Binance plans to delist it from its exchange. The world’s biggest crypto exchange Binance said in an announcement that effective March 23, users would not be able to trade the token. 

HNT was trading as low as $1.52 at one point Friday, according to CoinGecko. It has since risen to $1.60—still a 17% drop in value over the past 24 hours. 

Earlier this week, Binance.US—a sister company that is run independently from Binance and caters to American customers—also said it would delist HNT. 

“The Binance delisting of HNT is unfortunate,” the governing body behind the network said via Twitter, adding that holders of the token should consider moving to the self-custodial Helium Wallet app or an “exchange that has confirmed migration support.”

The delisting of HNT comes just one month before the Helium blockchain was scheduled to merge with Solana. 

Yesterday, an announcement revealed that Helium Network stakeholders had decided to delay the blockchain’s long-anticipated Solana merge until April 18. 

Helium is due to merge with Solana—the blockchain behind SOL, the 12th biggest digital asset by market cap—next month in order to help data transfer for devices become “faster, more reliable, and more scalable,” according to the non-profit behind the network, Helium Foundation. 

Helium is a decentralized wireless network that was originally built for Internet of Things (IoT) devices like sensors and trackers. 

The idea is that users can share connectivity with others using their smartphones with greater privacy than a traditional WiFi network—and earn HNT in the process. 

The blockchain received a lot of interest and investment from big names such as Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)—and back then, its native token was trading for as high as $22.99. It reached its $54.88 all-time high just months later in November 2021. 

But it has faced troubles lately: scooter rideshare startup Lime and cloud software giant Salesforce both denied last year that they had an active partnership with Helium—despite their logos appearing on its website at the time.