Major global crypto exchange Huobi has reported a 100 percent growth in trading volume in 2018 over the 2017, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Feb. 7. The Singapore-headquartered company has reportedly expanded its staff from 400 employees in early 2018 to more than 1,300 people by 2019, with 15 offices in 12 countries and regions, as Huobi CEO Leon Li told Cointelegraph. Huobi’s over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk has reportedly become one of the most traded OTC platforms worldwide, while the recently launched service Huobi Cloud has managed to enter in more than 100 partnerships over six …

Huobi.com, the United States-based partner of Singapore-headquartered crypto exchange Huobi, is launching fiat-crypto trading services, with initial support for three USD-crypto trading pairs. The development was revealed in a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Feb. 5. Huobi.com is operated by HBUS, which launched as a strategic partner of Huobi Group — operator of the flagship Huobi Global crypto exchange — via a newly created San Francisco-based company “HBUS Holdco, Inc.” last June. Following a rebranding campaign and adoption of the Huobi brand name, HBUS.com migrated to Huobi.com this January. Huobi.com’s expansion beyond crypto-crypto transactions comes as other leading crypto …

In a transaction that has all the hallmarks of a reverse initial public offering (IPO) — also called a reverse merger — OKC Holdings Corp., which is the parent company of OKCoin and OKEx (the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume) bought a controlling share in Leap Holdings Group on Jan. 14. Leap Holdings is a construction company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), with a market cap of 978 million Hong Kong dollars ($124.7 million). OKC Holdings bought 3,182,790,001 shares at a price of HK$0.1520 ($0.019) each, for 60.49 percent of the company and voting rights. …

Alipay and WeChat Pay reportedly requested that crypto exchange Huobi remove their payment services from its over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk, local media agency Sina reported on Jan. 25. Major Chinese digital payments providers, Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay, have reportedly sent legal letters to Huobi, claiming that using both their services and logos on the exchange’s OTC market is unauthorized. According to information acquired by Sina, both Alipay and WeChat Pay have not provided Huobi with its payment services, nor given it permission to use their respective trademarks. However, Huobi’s OTC trading platform reportedly allows users to upload QR …

Top 5 cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has plans to launch its own stablecoin this year as part of its 2019 road map, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph Jan. 22. During a presentation in Singapore today, Huobi’s CFO said the company will also update its trading platform and continue its international expansion. “2018 brought us huge challenges but I’m personally optimistic about the crypto market. I do think we’ll see things get better this year,” CFO Chris Lee told the audience at the members-only event. Reportedly after his speech, Lee added: “This year will be huge for stablecoins and …

On Jan. 17, Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, one of the largest players on the market, relaunched as a fully licensed platform in Japan after merging with the BitTrade exchange. Branching out to Japan, where compliance is valued and many regulatory measures are imposed for crypto players by domestic regulators, is a complex process. Here’s how Huobi entered the market, and which firms might soon follow suit. Specifics of the Japanese market and the FSA’s role in it Japan is one of the world’s largest markets for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoins can be used as a legally accepted means of …

Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi — currently the world’s 7th largest by daily traded volume — has relaunched as a fully licensed platform in Japan after merging with BitTrade. The news was announced in a press release published Jan. 17. As reported, Huobi Global's wholly owned subsidiary, Huobi Japan Holding Ltd, acquired a majority stake in BitTrade last September. At the time, BitTrade was one of only 16 crypto exchanges in the country to have secured a license from national financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA). Leon Li, Huobi Group Founder and CEO, has said that securing the license represents a …

The latest Exchange Security Report from independent analysts at ICORating has given 16 percent of the world’s biggest crypto trading platforms an A rating, and none of them an A+. The analysis, published Dec. 18, ranked Kraken (A), Cobinhood (A) and Poloniex (A-) as the top three most secure exchanges globally. ICORating assessed 135 crypto trading platforms, all of whose daily trade value reportedly exceeds $100,000, on the basis of four security categories: user account security, registrar and domain security, web security and DoS attack protection. No exchanges sealed an A+ ratings, two exchanges (representing 1.5 percent) received a solid …

HBUS, the United States-based strategic partner of China-born crypto exchange Huobi, has announced the rebranding of its retail trading service from HBUS.com to Huobi.com. The rebranding was shared in a press release with Cointelegraph on Jan. 11. As reported, HBUS launched as a strategic partner of Huobi Group — the operator of the flagship Huobi Global crypto exchange — via a newly created San Francisco-based company “HBUS Holdco, Inc.” last June. The latter will reportedly continue to operate the platform after its rebranding. Under the new licensing agreement, HBUS.com will migrate to the domain name of huobi.com, while Huobi Global …

Leading cryptocurrency exchanges OKEx and Huobi Global will support the Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople hard fork which is estimated to happen between Jan. 14 and 18, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph. The Constantinople hard fork is an upgrade, which is supposed to fundamentally change the Ethereum blockchain, with the synchronous nodes update to the entire system. The hard fork encloses separate Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) in order to soften the transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to the more energy efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm. OKEx will reportedly take a snapshot of all the OKEx accounts at the block height …

Huobi Group plans to launch the company’s first cryptocurrency exchange — which will be dedicated to EOS — in the first quarter of 2019, according to a press release sent to Cointelegraph on Dec. 29. The exchange will be reportedly launched by Huobi Pool, the group’s cryptocurrency mining arm. Cao Fei, the CEO of Huobi Pool, described the launch of the EOS exchange as “the next logical step in our support” as an EOS Block Producer (BP). The release states that the exchange will allow clients to trade in the altcoin EOS against several other cryptocurrencies. Huobi is currently the …

Daily traded volume of cryptocurrency contracts on the Huobi Derivatives Market (DM) has broken past $1 billion, according to a press release shared with Cointelegraph on Dec. 27. Huobi Global — which operates the world’s third-largest largest crypto spot market trading platform — launched Huobi DM last month. The new platform allows traders to trade Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) contracts that aim to allow for arbitrage, speculation, and hedging. Having reportedly broken past $1 billion in daily trades on Dec. 25, Huobi DM is today expanding its crypto contracts offerings to include altcoin EOS. Huobi claims its crypto contracts …