Helium founder Amir Haleem has stepped down as CEO of Nova Labs and moved into the chairman role, with Mario Di Dio taking over as CEO. According to Haleem's announcement on X, this leadership change came as Helium faced significant challenges with its core token performance. The transition represents a major shift for the company that has been building wireless network concepts using crypto rewards for over a decade.
HNT has hit a fresh all-time low of approximately $0.43 during early trading, marking a significant decline from previous levels. The token has fallen 96% over five years and another 15% on the day of Haleem's exit, according to market data cited in the report. Despite the sale of Helium Mobile to Noble Mobile on June 2, 2026, the token did not recover. HNT remained down 30% over the week and 46% over the month, demonstrating the ongoing challenges facing the project's core token.
The market is showing unusual positioning dynamics as perpetual traders are betting against the falling price trend. At the time of writing, HNT's Funding Rate had climbed to 0.0100%, its highest level for the period, reflecting concentrated capital in HNT perpetuals and signaling a bullish bet as traders anticipate a rebound. The Long/Short Ratio stood at 1.12, meaning positioning leans long and points to upward expectations in the perpetual market. However, this positioning carries significant risk, as losses have skewed heavily against the longs - short traders lost nothing over the past day, while longs shed $38,000 across the same period.
Technical indicators point to mounting bearish pressure as the Accumulation/Distribution indicator showed heavy offloading of HNT into the market over the past couple of days. The indicator, which was already in negative territory, indicating that sellers dominate HNT's trading volume, has dropped even lower, highlighting how tightly sellers control the tape. The Aroon Down line (blue) hovered above the Aroon Up line (orange), printing 100.00% and 47.86% respectively, signaling bearish momentum and should the gap widen, HNT stands a strong chance of extending its drop down the chart.
Helium raised nearly ₹3,000 crore ($365 million) over its lifetime, with FTX listed among its backers, according to the report. In 2022, the company faced criticism after advertising Lime, Salesforce, and Nestlé as network users, although those companies were not using the network. A Forbes investigation later reported that insiders mined close to half of all HNT during the token's early months. The SEC sued Nova Labs in January 2025 under then-chair Gary Gensler, accusing the company of making materially false and misleading statements about users, including Lime, Nestlé, and Salesforce. After Paul Atkins took over the SEC under President Donald Trump, Nova Labs settled the case in April 2025, paying a ₹1.6 crore ($200,000) civil penalty tied to one misrepresentation charge while the SEC dismissed the remaining claims with prejudice.
