Huobi Meets ‘Loud and Clear’ Demand for Crypto Savings Accounts

Seychelles-based exchange Huobi Global is rolling out cryptocurrency savings accounts tomorrow.

The new product will go live at 7:00 a.m. UTC on Aug. 20, with availability restricted to certain jurisdictions. Residents of China, Hong Kong Japan, Singapore, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom are, for now, not eligible for the offering.

All others who wish to apply for a crypto savings account will need to first clear Know Your Customer checks.

In total, Huobi’s new crypto savings product will be available to roughly 1,000 users. Each individual account will have a 3,000 Tether (USDT) limit — or the equivalent value in Bitcoin (BTC).

The set-up for the new accounts is flexible, enabling users to make deposits and withdrawals at any time. Interest will be paid out daily to users’ crypto savings accounts, with support for real-time settlement. For “newbies,” Huobi is offering a specialized account rate with an annualized yield of 88%.

As well as being geographically limited, the crypto savings account is not yet available for Huobi’s mobile version. Ciara Sun, the vice president of Huobi Global Markets, has said this will be rolled out at a later date. 

Sun has said that the momentum behind the new product was user-driven, claiming:

“We have a lot of users who want to keep their assets in one place and want to earn a good profit worry-free. We hear their demand loud [and] clear, we react to it fast.” 

Huobi isn’t the first crypto exchange to explore savings accounts. United States crypto exchange Coinbase has rolled out similar offerings for tokens such as Dai (DAI) and USD Coin (USDC).

Cointelegraph has also recently published a guide to the emerging options for another relatively new phenomenon in the crypto space: crypto asset lending. Such programs can often provide investors with higher percentage yields than traditional savings accounts, though typically at a higher risk than traditional federally regulated products.