HTX is a
Seychelles-based
cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
as Huobi (), the company now has offices in
Hong Kong,
South Korea,
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
and the
United States. In August 2018 it became a
publicly listed
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of share capital, stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in Over-the-counter (finance), over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) comp ...
Hong Kong company.
Following a 2017 ban on Bitcoin exchanges by the Chinese government, Huobi stopped Bitcoin withdrawals. Huobi China continues to operate as a blockchain consulting and research platform.
, Huobi processed around
US $1 billion in trades daily.
Huobi changed its name to HTX in September 2023.
History
Huobi was founded in 2013 by Leon Li (). An alumnus of
Tsinghua University, Li was a computer engineer at
Oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
before founding Huobi.
On May 15, 2013, the Huobi Group (火币集团) acquired the ''huobi.com''
domain
Domain may refer to:
Mathematics
*Domain of a function, the set of input values for which the (total) function is defined
**Domain of definition of a partial function
**Natural domain of a partial function
**Domain of holomorphy of a function
* Do ...
. On August 1, Huobi launched a simulation trading platform, and on September 1 the Bitcoin trading platform launched.
In November 2013, Huobi received
angel investments from Dai Zhikang and Zhen Fund.
In 2014, Huobi raised a $10 million
venture capital investment from
Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...
.
In August 2014, Huobi acquired Bitcoin
wallet provider Quick Wallet.
In December 2013, trading volume exceeded 30 billion yuan, making Huobi China's largest digital asset trading platform at the time. In June 2016, its total transaction volume reached 1 trillion RMB, and in November 2016 1.7 trillion yuan, accounting for more than 60% of the global bitcoin exchange market. On December 22, 2016, its daily transaction volume surpassed 200 billion
yuan.
In September 2014, Huobi announced through its official Weibo account that 920 bitcoin and 8,100 litecoin had been wrongly deposited into 27 different accounts. The firm returned the lost cryptocurrency.
In August 2017 Huobi and
OKCoin controversially invested 1 billion yuan ($150 million) of idle client funds into
wealth-management products
A wealth management product (WMP; ) is an uninsured financial product sold in China by banks and other financial institutions. Typically they offer a high rate of interest, and sometimes, purportedly guaranteed return. As of 2016, $2.8 trillion had ...
.
In September 2017, the Chinese government banned
initial coin offerings (ICOs) and trading on domestic cryptocurrency exchanges, rendering many people's holdings effectively worthless, including those of users on Huobi's exchange.
In response, Huobi adjusted its business and organizational structure to promote global expansion.
In October 2017, Huobi officially expanded into
Korea with a new headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, and opened trading in March 2018.
In November 2017, it launched operations in
Singapore with total volume in the first month exceeding 30 billion RMB. In December 2017, it launched an office in
Tokyo, Japan and announced that it would set up two crypto exchanges in Japan in early 2018, through a partnership with Japanese financial group
SBI Group. In March 2018, Huobi announced that it will be launching in the United States.
In August 2018, in a
reverse takeover, Huobi acquired a 74% stake in Hong Kong electronics manufacturer Pantronics Holdings, becoming listed on the
Hong Kong Stock Exchange
The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK, also known as Hong Kong Stock Exchange) is a stock exchange based in Hong Kong. As of the end of 2020, it has 2,538 listed companies with a combined market capitalization of HK$47 trillion. It is repor ...
.
In November 2020, Huobi launches Huobi Labuan to realize regulated crypto exchange in Malaysia.
In September 2021, Huobi announced that it would stop serving customers in
mainland China due to new regulations.
In September 2023, Huobi announced its rebranding as HTX.
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]
Research and partnerships
In April 2015, Huobi partnered with Tsinghua University in a "Digital Asset Research Initiative", and sponsored a "Digital Asset Research Project" at the Internet Finance Laboratory of Wudaokou Tsinghua School of Finance.
On July 1, 2016, the Huobi Network Blockchain Research Center published a report, "Blockchain: Defining a New Financial and Economic Future". On December 20, 2016, Huobi joined the Fintech Digital Asset Alliance (Shenzhen) along with the Fintech Research Institute of China under the guidance of the Shenzhen Municipal Government.
References
{{Cryptocurrencies, state=expanded
Bitcoin exchanges
Digital currency exchanges
Bitcoin companies
Financial services companies of China
Companies based in Beijing
2013 establishments in China