4 References Overview
Huobi was one of the three early Chinese exchanges that at one time together accounted for 90 percent or more of global bitcoin volume.As the legal conditions for trading bitcoin in China became less amenable, Huobi launched a new brand called “Huobi Pro” from its new headquarters in Singapore.[2] On May 21, 2018, Huobi Pro was rolled out to the European and Asian markets.[3]
In July 2018 Huobi announced that it would accept customers from the U.S.on its “strategic partner” platform owned by a subsidiary, HBUS.[4] Almost a year-and-a-half later, at the beginning of December 2019, Huobi US reported trivial trading volume, less than $1,000 worth of cryptocurrency in the 24-period before 10 a.m.CST.
[5] On December 8, 2019, Huobi announced that it was ceasing U.S.
operations as of the following Sunday, December 15.At the time of the announcement, it offered a handful of cryptocurrency pairs against U.S.dollar Tether .In a statement on its website, HBUS said it had “to cease operations so that it can return in a more integrated and impactful fashion as part of its ongoing strategic layout.” [6]
Huobi branded all of its trading platforms, except those in the U.S., Japan, and Korea, as “Huobi Global” and said that it offered services to customers in 130 countries by December 2018.
[7]
On September 5, 2019, a massive transaction moved 94,505 bitcoin into an unknown user’s wallet.Analysts said that many previous transactions came from users on Huobi’s exchange.[8] BitTrade
In the first transaction granting full ownership of a regulated cryptocurrency exchange to a non-Japanese person, Singaporean entrepreneur and investor Eric Cheng announced on May 30, 2018, that his Upper Joy Limited had purchased 100 percent of the shares of BitTrade Co., Ltd., one of 16 cryptocurrency exchanges licensed by the Japanese Financial Services Agency .The deal worth about $50 million included BitTrade’s affiliate, FX Trade Financial Co., Ltd.[9] On September 12, 2018, Huobi announced that its subsidiary, Huobi Japan Holding Ltd, had acquired 60% of BitTrade with an eye toward expansion into Japan.[10] [11] BitTrade told its customers in early December 2018 that it shortly would re-launch its trading under the Huobi name.
[12] Chinese Blockchain Development Alliance
On December 1, 2019 Huobi China was introduced as a founding member of the Blockchain Services Network Alliance at the First Blockchain Services Network Partner Conference in Hangzhou, China.The alliance is sponsored by the State Information Center, an affiliate of the National Development and Research Commission, a Chinese central planning agency.The network intends to offer blockchain infrastructure services to both domestically and internationally.[13] Huobi China mainly operates as a research firm.As a major international cryptocurrency trading platform, Houbi was thought to be trying to get close to the People’s Bank of China which is leading China’s cryptocurrency development and also attended the inaugural conference.[14] Binance and TRON’s “hostile takeover” of Steemit
In February 2020, Steemit entered into a “strategic partnership” with TRON , resulting in TRON gaining considerable influence over the Steem blockchain’s governance.
Witnesses (nodes/administrators) of the Steemit community, concerned that TRON’s executives and administrators (including Justin Sun ) might have gained too much power over the Steem network, implemented a soft fork (Soft Fork 0.22.2) on February 24, deactivating the voting power of a large number of tokens owned by TRON and Steemit.
On March 2, 2020, several prominent exchanges (including Huobi) used their collective voting power to undo the soft fork, nullifying the voting power of the Witnesses responsible for the soft fork in the process.The Steem Team, which apparently consisted of both Steemit and TRON employees, issued a statement on Steemit’s website that called Soft Fork 0.22.2 “criminal and illegal,” arguing that the soft fork reversal was necessary in order to keep the “maliciously structured” fork from freezing “a handful of very targeted accounts and taking away their rights and possession to their owned asset.” The post said the Witnesses threatened to cause a hard fork that would have nullified existing STEEM tokens, which was “very much against every aspect of the original purpose of decentralization and the core value of the Steem blockchain and community.” The post said that the soft fork reversal was necessary to “correct the hostile behavior led by a small group of people,” and that Steemit would use its voting rights to “resume the order of the community” for the next 4-6 weeks, after which it would return power to the community.
This caused an uproar in the crypto world, with many accusing Sun of “buying” control of the network for the sake of his own interests.Vitalik Buterin tweeted that it seemed like “the first big instance of a ‘de facto bribe attack’ on coin voting (the bribe being exchs giving holders convenience and taking their votes).” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that Binance would likely withdraw its voting stake given the community’s response to the event.
Multiple app developers announced that they were removing their apps from the Steem blockchain in response to the event.[15] [16] [17]
Later that month, STEEM announced a new hard fork that would result in the creation of a new network – “Hive.” Huobi joined Binance in announcing its support for the fork.
A day before the fork was planned to take place, Huobi announced that it was suspending Steem deposits and withdrawals until after the fork was completed.[18] [19] [20] Products and services
Huobi offers a number of different markets, including an OTC market priced in Chinese yuan, cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency trading and margin trading.
Huobi’s most actively traded pairs on its spot markets are bitcoin or another cryptocurrency against U.S.dollar Tether , according to CoinMarketCap, an online data reporting service.[21] Huobi Cloud
In July 2018, Huobi announced the official launch of Huobi Cloud, a new arm of its business focused on creating a “one-stop solution” for digital asset exchange.
[22]
Huobi Cloud will rely on Huobi’s existing digital asset exchange platforms to provide its partners tools for setting up their own OTC and currency exchange platforms.
[23] Huobi DM
Huobi announced the launch of its derivatives market, Huobi DM, at a developers conference in New York on November 28, 2018.The contracts were to have weekly, monthly and quarterly settlements and will offer varying degrees of leverage.[24]
In March 2020, Huobi launched a “partial liquidation” function for Huobi DM.The function, when triggered, gradually reduces the user’s position instead of liquidating it in one fell swoop.
The function also includes a circuit breaker, which stops liquidation when large or unusual market movements are detected by the Huobi platform.[25] Huobi Australia
Listing ten cryptocurrencies pairs, Huobi Australia launched trading on July 5, 2018.[26] On February 24, 2019, the company announced via Twitter that it had suspended operations in Australia and was consolidating its Australian business within Huobi Global.[27] In its Facebook post Huobi Australia cited poor market conditions as the reason.[28] HUSD
On November 2, 2018, Huobi introduced “HUSD,” which was a portmanteau for four stablecoins supported by Huobi: Paxos (PAX) , TrueUSD (TUSD), USDCoin (USDC), and Gemini Dollars (GUSD).The HUSD was to be tradable against Tether (USDT) on Huobi Global.Deposits of any of the four stablecoins were reported as HUSD.[29]
In July 2019, Huobi announced that it was changing the HUSD by replacing it with an ERC-20 token.
The new token will be called HUSD but will be issued by Stable Universal Limited, a partially owned subsidiary of Huobi.The new token will be deposited with Paxos Trust Company, which is licensed by the New York Department of Financial Services.
[30] Rumors of blockchain smartphones
In September 2019, The Block , Finance Magnates , and other news outlets published stories about a white paper published by China’s state-owned telecommunications company China Telecom about blockchain smartphones, which said that China Telecom was looking to turn 5G smartphones into individual digital asset management platforms that can be integrated with the Ethereum blockchain.The stories also said that Huobi issued a statement saying that its venture capital arm, Huobi Capital, would be partially funding a blockchain project called Whole Network in which blockchain smartphones would be manufactured.According to the news articles, these smartphones will be purchasable using the Huobi Token, HUSD, which can be awarded to users by watching ads, downloading certain apps, inviting new users, and sharing and distributing content.These smartphones will reportedly have their own app store full of dApps , all of which will be purchasable using HUSD.Huobi’s CEO Livio Weng told The Block that this push for blockchain smartphones may be tied to the increased use of mobile devices for cryptocurrency trading.The Block also wrote that these smartphones would become available for purchase in China on September 11, 2019.
[31] [32] Shortly after news broke of this, Huobi Global made an incredulous post on Twitter, saying, “um…so apparently we launched a smartphone?” with screenshots of several of the articles that circulated the story, implying that the stories were not true.[33] Key People.