By
Steve Muchoki
May 10th, 2024
Cryptocurrency exchange Huobi is entering new markets. After some difficult times in China last year, Huobi has announced its launch in the US.
One of leading Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges Huobi has announced its soonest launch in the United States. As many other its competitors, Huobi suffered losses last year due to the ban that the Chinese government imposed on cryptocurrencies and after that it was obliged to look for any ways out of the prevailing situation.
Initially, in January Huobi relocated its resources to Japan and South Korea with a view to restart its trading activity outside China. At that time, Huobi team revealed their plans to set up its operations in the USA.
As it has become known, on March 21, Huobi was registered with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) as a money services business. The company also informed that their office will be opened in San Francisco.
Le Lin, the founder and chief executive officer of Huobi, made an announcement that their platform is planned to be launched in May this year. This will be a separate exchange that will deal only with cryptocurrencies. It will be created especially for US clients and it won’t be a part of the already functioning platform Huobi Pro. Moreover, it is said to have its own liquidity.
Despite the fact that Huobi is already registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Huobi management board still has some worries regarding possible regulatory issues that they may face when they start their operations on the new market.
At the moment, many exchanges that are also registered with FinCEN as money service businesses are looking forward to seeing clear regulations for their sector while things are still not clear. Nevertheless, they hope that they will be provided with reasonably developed frameworks rather than a complete ban.
As we have mentioned above, one of the first step made by Huobi after the situation in China was to consider Japan as an appropriate platform for resuming its activities. In December, it was announced that Huobi and Japan-based investment group SBI had established business collaboration with an aim to launch two cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan: Huobi Japan and SBI Virtual Currency exchanges.
The second exchange even had earlier been registered with the Japan’s Financial Services Agency and had obtained rights for performing its activities. The platforms were said to start functioning in March, but SBI Holdings had changed their plans and cancelled the deal as it was revealed some weeks ago.
Among the reasons that SBI Holdings representatives named to explain their move are lack of security in this collaboration and necessity to have a partner that will be able to react promptly to local and international regulations.
As it is said in the SBI Holdings statement, now they plan to use their own resources for developing a system that will boast higher level of security and strong operating capacity.
But Huobi doesn’t stay still. A week later after the news with SBI Holdings, it was informed about Huobi’s partnership deal with a Washington D.C.-based blockchain incubator DigitalX100. Huobi Labs will collaborate with DigitalX100 having an aim to find promising blockchain companies worldwide and provide them assistance in their development.