Helium Employees Mined Over A Quarter of Total Supply in First Six Months
Forbes reported that they identified 30 digital wallets appearing to be connected to Helium employees and their friends and family. These wallets amassed over 25% of HNT’s circulating supply in the first six months of the network’s launch. In the first three months, half of all HNT mined were from these 30 wallets.
According to Forbes, the total value from these wallets peaked at $250 million when the price of Helium hit a high of $52.71 in November 2021. This would equate to roughly 4.74 million HNT, worth a little over $22 million today. The amount of HNT mined by insiders in the first few months of the project totals over 26% of the current circulating supply and current market cap. The current market cap for HNT is just under $590 million while the circulating supply is 126.9 HNT.
Forbes started investigating with hundreds of leaked internal documents and interviews with former Helium employees that indicated that the majority of the wealth was being hoarded by early employees and their friends.
Many cryptocurrencies offer early investors compensation of tokens and other possible awards that are usually disclosed in white papers or blog posts. Helium is being scrutinized for failure to disclose these significant distributions to the community.
Helium hotspots famously take over 6 months to ship to customers. Many investors that purchased miners back in March and April are now receiving their miners, already at a loss. In the last 3 weeks, shipping has been ramping up.
At the start of April 2022, the price of HNT was still above $25 and has since dropped to around $4.65 at the time of writing. Hotspots are now expected to earn around 2 HNT per month compared to 33,000 HNT in August 2019.
Helium CEO and co-founder, Amir Haleem, revealed in an interview with Forbes that approximately half of the initial hotspots were distributed to employees, and their families and friends. Haleem backed this decision by stating that these original investors “took an enormous risk and a huge chance on paying money to build something… None of those numbers feel unreasonable to me.”
Helium hotspots are intended to supply network connectivity to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. IoT involves extending internet connectivity beyond standard devices to any traditionally non-internet enabled physical devices. Smart home devices (home automation) is one of the main examples of IoT. Specific examples of IoT devices include smart sensors, lights, and cameras.
