Huobi Launches Token Sale Platform to Let Investors Sample Pre-Release Altcoins

Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global is launching a dedicated platform for pre-release token sales, the company confirmed in a blog post on March 20.

The platform, dubbed Huobi Prime, aims to give participating investors access to new altcoin tokens before they appear on major exchanges.

Prospective projects will go through a vetting procedure, with successful applicants offering tokens to investors via three 30-minute flash sales, the blog post outlines.

Huobi Prime is geared to both large and small investors, with individuals subject to a maximum $1,000 investment cap.

The cap will be applied in terms of the native Huobi Token (HT), which will be the sole trading partner for new tokens on offer.

“We’ve designed it from the ground up to be a more innovative, direct, and responsive way to access up and coming new tokens,” CEO Leon Li commented in the blog post, adding the decision to create the product was in part due to customer demand.

Huobi named the launch date for the first token sale as March 26.

The move comes amid changes at the exchange as executives seek to absorb the impact of the ongoing price suppression in crypto markets. As Cointelegraph reported last month, Huobi restructured its eight-month-old Australian spin-off to cut costs, also revealing recent redundancies among staff.

A similar tale has unfolded at other major crypto industry firms, including mining giant Bitmain and Ethereum (ETH) blockchain developer ConsenSys.

Huobi Prime follows the precedent of major crypto exchange Binance. The exchange’s token sale platform Launchpad hosted the high-profile token sale for the Tron-based BitTorrent token (BTT) this January, followed by another public token sale for AI and smart contract project Fetch.AI in February.