Source: Foresight News
Ten years is a significant time scale for the cryptocurrency industry, which often jokes about “one day in the industry, one year in the world”.
However, for Huobi, it marks the end of the first “ten-year commitment”: from its inception in 2013, to becoming the largest exchange in the Chinese market in 2017, and to its complete withdrawal from the domestic market in 2021, Huobi has witnessed the rise and fall of the global, especially Chinese, cryptocurrency industry over the past ten years, and has experienced its own glory and decline.
Now, at the beginning of another decade, how will Huobi embark on its next “ten-year commitment”?
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<s<s “<sHuobi” + “<sX” = “HTX” <s
In the field of mathematics, X is usually used as an unknown variable in algebraic expressions and has infinite possibilities.
Similar to Musk’s preference for X, which added X elements to many of his companies such as xAI and SLianGuaiceX, and even Twitter changed its name to “X” directly.
After nearly a year of change in ownership, Huobi has also announced a new brand strategy and officially upgraded to “Huobi HTX” by adding the “X” element during its tenth anniversary. Its slogan is “Just Trade It” (HTX, Just Trade It).
On one hand, from the breakdown of individual letters, H continues the ten-year legacy of the old Huobi, T signifies the determination to go all-in on the TRON ecosystem, and X represents the core exchange business;
On the other hand, from the combination of letters, HT is the name of Huobi HTX platform token, and with X, it can be understood as the exchange for trading HT – HT·X;
For a well-known veteran exchange in the industry, the brand is undoubtedly a precious asset tested over time. So, what considerations led to this brand upgrade for Huobi HTX?
We all know that Huobi HTX has always been the “leader” in the Chinese market among cryptocurrency exchanges. However, with the changing environment and the withdrawal from the domestic market, its market share and competitiveness have significantly declined, and external competition has increased sharply. This has led to a loss of focus for Huobi HTX in the new competitive stage and a fall from the “Top Three”.
At the same time, in the cryptocurrency industry, different tracks and types of projects and companies are evolving rapidly, constantly innovating and iterating. DeFi, Layer2, and other tracks are gradually emerging, and the market is becoming more globalized and decentralized. In order to keep up with market developments, the transformation of Huobi HTX is imminent.
Therefore, combining the broader context and the intersection of two timelines, we may find the answer:
In September 2013, Huobi HTX was officially established. Over the past ten years, Huobi HTX has experienced significant changes, from occupying a significant share of the global Bitcoin trading market to its relocation overseas.
In October 2022, Huobi HTX officially changed ownership. Within a year, Huobi HTX went through a series of major changes, including the addition of Justin Sun, restructuring of architecture and personnel, and the application for a Hong Kong VASP license.
From this perspective, when the “ten-year agreement” collides with the “one-year adjustment”, after months of cost-cutting and efficiency improvement, Huobi HTX, which has already overcome survival issues, naturally came up with the idea of this brand upgrade strategy:
Based on the completion of internal adjustments, it seizes the opportunity to restart long-term decision-making and find new driving forces for the next decade of Huobi HTX.
HTX – A New “Globalization” Journey
Huobi HTX has always had a dream of “globalization”.
Now, with the launch of the brand upgrade strategy, Huobi HTX also takes “HTX” as the international brand name to once again embark on a “globalization” layout.
This “globalization” layout can be divided into two parallel battlefields: regional layout and product layout, in order to achieve synchronous global reshaping.
From Point to Surface, Layout of Global Compliance Map
“Dominic” is just the beginning of Huobi HTX’s global regional layout, and its essence is to achieve its own “decentralization”. The core idea is to focus on key regions and layout potential areas, thereby achieving balanced growth in multiple countries and establishing a global business map.
This means that Huobi HTX will no longer rely on a single country or region’s cryptocurrency market, but will continuously explore new “Dominics” to expand business to more countries and regions with cryptocurrency potential, while establishing localized user groups and partner networks to provide global digital asset trading services.
This requires both sensitive perception and quick response. For example, Hong Kong is one of the “seed players”. Just as the West cannot afford to lose Jerusalem, today’s cryptocurrency market and project parties cannot ignore the potential weight of Hong Kong.
In April of this year, Justin Sun appeared in Hong Kong and gave a speech at the Huobi Hong Kong Night event. At the end of May, the first rating agency in Hong Kong, HKVAC, was established, and Huobi HTX became its first member. On June 1, the new licensing system in Hong Kong took effect, and Huobi HTX actively applied for the Hong Kong VASP license and launched HTX HK, which is open for registration to users in Hong Kong, demonstrating a compliance layout focusing on Hong Kong.
In addition to Hong Kong, Huobi HTX is currently advancing compliance work in other regions, including Gibraltar, Lithuania, Dubai, BVI, Australia, and other countries’ license applications and compliance station construction. In addition, the Huobi HTX Mars program launched in June even set its sights on the vastness of space, intending to challenge the boundaries of cryptocurrency use.
“The story that blockchain technology has always been telling is to provide banking services for people in unbanked areas and those who lack financial infrastructure.” Huobi HTX’s layout covers Asia, Europe, Africa, and even Oceania, which not only meets the strong demand for cryptocurrencies in emerging markets, but also serves as an important means for Huobi HTX to compete for incremental markets and expand its cryptocurrency financial services.
In the current expanding cryptocurrency market, if the entire industry and exchange track want to develop in leaps and bounds, embracing regulation and continuous compliance is destined to be a vital lifeline. This is also the essence of Huobi HTX’s commitment to balanced growth and global business layout.
Comprehensive and diverse, creating a “super application” for the cryptocurrency industry
The competition among exchanges has always been fierce, especially in the current saturated state. To truly attract and retain users, it is necessary to find richer use cases beyond the central point of “trading” alone.
Therefore, Huobi HTX is also reshaping its product lineup. In addition to the “globalization” of regional layout, Huobi HTX also aims to closely follow the market and achieve “diversification” of products and services.
Just as Musk sees “X” as “a super application”, “HTX” is also carrying the ambition of the new Huobi to create a “super application” for the cryptocurrency industry.
This “super application” for the cryptocurrency industry is to maximize the introduction of high-quality assets in the field of cryptocurrencies, create a one-stop cryptocurrency asset trading service platform that includes spot, derivatives, wealth management, and asset management, and help users trade, discover, and invest in high-quality cryptocurrency assets, providing more professional services and richer products for global users.
The core narrative style and competitive advantage of Huobi HTX can resonate with the Tron, which carries billions of stablecoin USDT and a massive number of real users, combining the three pillars of exchange, public chain, and stablecoin to achieve a “1+1>2” effect.
This is the core business logic that other exchanges (such as Binance) are focusing on developing but still need to build, especially in connecting with real-world assets with real use cases, further connecting global high-quality assets with exchange users to achieve dual-line connectivity.
For example, Huobi HTX strongly supports the Tron ecology’s RWA token stUSDT and cooperates with Justlend DAO to provide stUSDT collateralization services, which introduces real-world assets into the DeFi system and provides ordinary users with more diversified income channels, bridging the gap between individual investors and institutional investment targets.
In terms of asset activities, Huobi HTX plans to iterate on star products such as PrimeVote and large-scale current wealth management, launch new products such as Shark Fin and cooperate with Fireblocks for asset custody, providing users with secure and diversified options for storing and increasing the value of cryptocurrency assets.
In terms of instant feedback on market hotspots, Huobi HTX is obviously comprehensively deploying new assets to explore sustainable wealth effects for ordinary users:
On the one hand, it is deepening cooperation with mainstream ecosystems, including but not limited to public chain ecosystems, Layer2 ecosystems, Meme ecosystems, etc;
On the other hand, it continues to pay attention to emerging market dynamics, actively contacting various high-quality project parties to ensure that new digital assets can be listed on Huobi HTX for the first time to meet the trading needs of users for spot and rich derivative products.
For example, in the Meme Coin frenzy in April this year, Huobi HTX was one of the exchanges that listed popular tokens such as PEPE and ArbDoge early, helping to ignite a speculative frenzy in the market at that time. Moreover, Huobi HTX has also reached strategic cooperation with global well-known service providers, public chains, project parties, etc., such as TradingView, Polygon, UniSat Wallet, etc., to create a multi-level business ecosystem and promote user experience upgrade.
In addition, the Mars Plan, a special action for the tenth anniversary of Huobi HTX’s ten-year anniversary event, proposes that lucky users can enjoy three rewards, including: candidate for space travel, one-time use of a private plane, and a refurbished Tesla Model 3 (equivalent to 20,000 USDT + 20,000 USDT contract experience gold), trying to attract more users’ attention and enter the cryptocurrency market with diverse gameplay and rewards.
As mentioned above, grasping the mainstream ecosystem to ensure users’ trading needs, and grasping the innovative market to give users wealth effects, is not only the core service demand that encrypted users cannot do without under the current market environment, but also highly consistent with Huobi HTX’s vision of “enabling 8 billion people worldwide to achieve financial freedom” after brand upgrade.
Where do exchanges go in the second half?
“People always overestimate short-term impacts and ignore long-term trends.” From Uniswap to Cryptokitties, every turn and change in the blockchain industry has basically laid the groundwork for future disruptive waves. Many seemingly inconspicuous “sharp edges” may bring revolutionary changes to the entire industry in the future.
Looking at the exchange track, nearly one year has passed since the sudden collapse of FTX in early November 2022, and the entire cryptocurrency industry and exchange track have entered the “post-FTX era”.
The main change is that head platforms such as Binance, OKEx, Huobi HTX, and a number of medium and small exchanges have successively launched asset proof reserves, which has further promoted the development of asset security in exchanges. For example, Huobi HTX recently updated the Merkel Tree Asset Proof in September, and the specific reserve ratio remains at a surplus level of over 100%.
According to the Cryptocurrency Exchange Trends and Prospects report released by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), cryptocurrencies are still in the initial stage of adoption curve, with the number of cryptocurrency users expected to reach 1 billion by 2030. It is estimated that the top five exchanges in the future will account for 65% to 75% of spot trading volume and 80% to 90% of derivative trading volume.
In short, in the foreseeable future, CEX will still be at the core of the cryptocurrency market. However, as the exchange race enters the “post-FTX era,” the trend of “one dominating player” has reached its peak, whether from the perspective of objective development rules or risk diversification.
Therefore, as CEX welcomes expansion in scale, the pattern of “one superpower and multiple strong players” may be the industry’s background in the next wave, and the scope of competition among exchanges will undoubtedly expand.
In this context, regulatory compliance and product innovation are destined to have an increasingly significant weight in the competition. Similar to Binance’s development process of suppressing first and then rising, regulatory compliance and product innovation will be the most direct competitive advantages. Although this trend is not yet prominent, time will gradually amplify its impact.
“Although the week belongs to the old state, its destiny lies in innovation.” As the continuation of the legacy of the old Huobi enters the ten-year commitment, and the restructuring of the new Huobi is nearing its first year, the two timelines merge, with the boundaries between the new and the old being both blurry and clear:
With the international brand “HTX” as the horn, the new Huobi practices a strategy of “globalization,” deeply advancing regulatory compliance and product innovation, and opens up the next “ten-year commitment.”
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