Huobi (HT)

Huobi, rebranded HTX in September 2023, is a centralized cryptocurrency exchange founded in China in 2013 by Leon Li (Li Lin).¹² Huobi Token (ticker: HT), later succeeded by a redesigned HTX Token issued under a new contract, is the exchange's native utility token, offering trading-fee discounts and other platform benefits to holders.³⁴ Once among the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world — briefly accounting for more than 60% of global bitcoin trading volume in 2016 — Huobi weathered two rounds of Chinese regulatory crackdowns before being acquired by an investment firm associated with TRON founder Justin Sun in 2022.¹⁵ The following years brought a wave of security breaches, regulatory action in the United Kingdom, and a comprehensive rebrand, alongside continued operation as a major global exchange. As of July 2026, HT/HTX Token traded at a small fraction of a dollar, with data providers reporting sharply differing figures for its market capitalization — ranging from roughly $8 million to $16 million — reflecting confusion in the market following the token's 2024–2025 contract migration; the token remained more than 99% below its 2021 all-time high of approximately $39.70–$39.81.⁶⁷

Overview

Ticker	HT
Category	Exchange-based Tokens
Website	https://www.huobi.com/
Twitter	@HuobiGlobal
Telegram	huobiglobalofficial
Reddit	https://www.reddit.com/r/huobi/
Contract Addresses
ethereum	0x6f...61Copied!
near-protocol	6f...arCopied!
elastos	0xec...f3Copied!
harmony-shard-0	0xba...f2Copied!

HT was created as a loyalty and utility token for the Huobi exchange, offering holders discounted trading fees and, historically, voting rights on new asset listings through a platform called the Huobi Autonomous Digital Asset Exchange (HADAX).¹⁴ The token also served as the gas currency for Huobi Eco Chain (Heco), an Ethereum-compatible blockchain the exchange launched to support decentralized applications.⁸ To manage the token's supply, Huobi historically allocated a portion of platform profits — reported at 20% — toward periodic token buybacks and burns.³⁴ Following Huobi's 2023 rebrand to HTX, the exchange transitioned HT holders to a new HTX Token under a revised contract, with a formal deadline of January 20, 2025 set for converting legacy HT to the new token.⁹ This migration, layered on top of years of prior corporate and ownership changes, has made the token's history somewhat more complex to track than that of most exchange-issued tokens, with different data providers continuing to report inconsistent figures depending on which contract and distribution history they treat as authoritative.⁹⁶

History

Founding and early growth in China (2013–2017)

Leon Li, a Tsinghua University graduate and former Oracle computer engineer, founded Huobi in 2013, acquiring the huobi.com domain in May of that year and launching a Bitcoin trading platform that September.¹¹⁰ The exchange received early angel investment later that year and a $10 million venture round from Sequoia Capital in 2014, alongside an acquisition that year of Bitcoin wallet provider Quick Wallet.¹ Huobi grew rapidly to become China's largest digital asset trading platform, with cumulative trading volume exceeding 30 billion yuan by the end of 2013, and by November 2016 the exchange's total transaction volume reportedly accounted for more than 60% of global bitcoin trading activity.¹¹¹ During this period, Huobi also cultivated academic and industry ties within China, including a 2015 research partnership with Tsinghua University's Wudaokou School of Finance and participation in a Shenzhen-based fintech alliance in 2016.¹

China's 2017 crackdown and international expansion

In September 2017, Chinese regulators banned initial coin offerings and domestic cryptocurrency exchange trading, a policy shift that rendered many Chinese crypto holdings effectively untradeable within the country and forced Huobi to restructure its business around international markets.¹ Within months, Huobi expanded into South Korea, Singapore, and Japan, and in March 2018 announced plans to launch in the United States.¹ That August, Huobi completed a reverse takeover of Hong Kong-listed electronics manufacturer Pantronics Holdings, acquiring a 74% stake and becoming a publicly listed entity on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.¹

Launch of HT and continued growth (2018–2021)

Huobi announced its native token on January 22, 2018, distributing 300 million HT (60% of the token's fixed 500 million total supply) over roughly two weeks to "Huobi Pro" members who purchased discounted service packages — a distribution method the exchange characterized as distinct from a conventional initial coin offering.¹³ Of the remaining 200 million HT, 20% was set aside for user rewards and platform operations and 20% was vested over four years as a team allocation.³ Huobi went on to launch Heco, its Ethereum-compatible sidechain, and continued expanding regulated regional operations, including a Malaysian entity, Huobi Labuan, in November 2020.¹ HT's price rose substantially amid the broader 2021 cryptocurrency bull market, reaching an all-time high of approximately $39.66–$39.81 that year.⁶⁷

China's 2021 ban and ownership turmoil (2021–2022)

In September 2021, Chinese authorities imposed a more comprehensive ban on cryptocurrency trading and mining, prompting Huobi to formally cease serving mainland Chinese customers.¹ In August 2022, a Hong Kong crypto news outlet reported that Chinese police had detained several Huobi executives for investigation, triggering a wave of user withdrawals — reported at more than $73 million over one week — and public speculation, including from at least one prominent crypto analyst, about the exchange's possible insolvency; Huobi executives and its advisor Justin Sun publicly disputed the rumors.¹¹² In October 2022, according to Bloomberg News, Huobi was acquired by an investment firm led by Justin Sun.¹⁵

Rebrand to HTX and a wave of hacks (2023)

On September 13, 2023, Huobi announced it would rebrand globally as HTX, a change commentators noted bore a visual and phonetic resemblance to the name of the recently collapsed FTX exchange.¹¹³ Industry analytics firm Kaiko subsequently published research documenting an unexplained surge in trading volume at both HTX and the Sun-owned Poloniex exchange around the same period, raising questions — which the firms involved did not substantiate as proven wrongdoing — about whether the volume increases reflected genuine organic activity.¹³

The rebrand was followed by a severe cluster of security incidents. On September 24, 2023, HTX suffered a hot-wallet exploit resulting in a loss of approximately $8 million, with blockchain security firm Cyvers attributing the breach to a suspected private-key leak.¹⁴¹⁵ On November 10, 2023, Poloniex — also owned by Sun — was hacked for an estimated $100 million to $126 million, again reportedly tied to compromised private keys.¹⁶¹⁷ Then, on November 22, 2023, HTX itself suffered a second exploit, initially estimated at $13.6 million and later revised upward to approximately $30 million, while the same week the associated Heco Chain cross-chain bridge lost a further $85.4 million to $86.6 million to a separate attack, bringing the combined HTX/Heco losses for that incident to more than $115 million.¹⁸¹⁹²⁰ In total, the cluster of hacks affecting Sun-linked platforms over roughly two months was estimated at more than $200 million.²¹

Justin Sun responded publicly to each incident, pledging full compensation to affected users on both HTX and Poloniex, offering the Poloniex attacker a "white hat" bounty of up to $10 million (later increased from an initial $6.3–6.5 million offer) in exchange for returning the stolen funds, and separately floating a job offer to whoever had carried out the HTX hack if they came forward.²¹²²²³ HTX said the funds lost represented only a small fraction of the platform's total assets and would not affect normal operations, and both HTX and Poloniex resumed deposits and withdrawals within days of their respective incidents.¹⁹¹⁸ Blockchain security firm Hacken suggested at the time that the concentrated pattern of attacks across multiple Sun-affiliated platforms raised the possibility of an internal information leak, though no such connection was ever formally established.²¹

Founder dispute and token migration (2023–2025)

Separately from the hacking incidents, Huobi's original founder, Leon Li, pursued a legal dispute in Hong Kong against Huobi Global over rights to the Chinese-language "Huobi" (火币) trademark, which Li's own company, X-Spot Global, had retained following the exchange's 2022 sale; a Hong Kong court reportedly sided with Li, affirming his continued legal control over use of that trademark even though he no longer owned the exchange itself.²⁴ Through 2024 and into early 2025, HTX carried out a broader transition of its native token from the original HT contract to a redesigned HTX Token, encouraging holders to convert their legacy HT ahead of a January 20, 2025 deadline, a migration that subsequently left cryptocurrency data providers reporting inconsistent price and market-capitalization figures for the token, depending on whether they were tracking the original or the migrated contract.⁹

UK regulatory action (2025–2026)

HTX's regulatory difficulties intensified in the United Kingdom. On October 22, 2025, Britain's Financial Conduct Authority filed a lawsuit in London's High Court against Huobi Global S.A. and unnamed associated parties, alleging the exchange had repeatedly and unlawfully promoted cryptoasset services to UK consumers on social media platforms including TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, in violation of the UK's financial promotions regime.²⁵²⁶ The FCA said HTX operated an "opaque organisational structure" that concealed the identities of its owners and website operators, and that the exchange had continued its promotional activity despite prior regulatory warnings, in what the regulator described as conduct in "stark contrast" to firms that had cooperated with the UK's new rules.²⁶²⁷ On February 10, 2026, the FCA escalated its response, formally requesting that Google and Apple remove HTX's apps from UK app stores and that HTX's social media accounts be blocked for UK-based users, in what the regulator characterized as its first enforcement action of this kind against a crypto firm.²⁵ In May 2026, the UK government separately imposed sanctions on Huobi Global S.A., alleging the exchange had provided funds, economic resources, goods, or technology to individuals and entities connected to Russia's financial sector; an HTX spokesperson said regulatory compliance remained the company's "absolute top priority" and that it "proactively monitor[ed] and strictly adhere[d] to regulatory frameworks in all jurisdictions."²⁸²⁹

Technical design and tokenomics

HT was issued as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum with a fixed original supply of 500 million tokens.¹³ Beyond trading-fee discounts, the token historically conferred voting rights on new asset listings through the now-largely-superseded HADAX platform and functioned as the gas token for Huobi's Heco sidechain.¹⁸ A recurring buyback-and-burn program, funded by a share of platform profits, was intended to offset new token issuance and support the token's value over time.³⁴ Since the 2024–2025 migration to the HTX Token, the exchange has described the new token as operating under a "HTX DAO" governance framework, though the practical scope of token-holder authority under this structure — relative to the exchange's centralized corporate operations — has not been independently verified in detail by outside researchers.³⁰

Market history

HT/HTX Token reached its all-time high of approximately $39.66 to $39.81 in 2021, amid the same broader bull market that lifted most major cryptocurrencies.⁶⁷ The token's price fell sharply over the following years, and data providers reported an all-time or multi-year low in the range of roughly $0.086 to $0.095 in February 2026.³¹³² As of July 2026, various exchanges and data aggregators quoted meaningfully different prices and market capitalizations for the token — from about $0.03 with a market capitalization near $8 million on one major aggregator to roughly $0.10–$0.15 with a market capitalization closer to $16 million on others — a discrepancy that reflects both thin trading liquidity and the lingering confusion created by the token's contract migration rather than a single, clearly defined market consensus on its value.⁶³²³³

Positive developments and continued operations

Despite its regulatory and security setbacks, HTX has continued to operate as one of the world's larger cryptocurrency exchanges by trading volume. Industry analytics firm Kaiko reportedly ranked HTX among the top eight global spot exchanges by trading volume in its second-quarter 2025 report, and the exchange has published a series of monthly reserve reports that it says demonstrate reserve ratios above 100% for more than two and a half years running, a transparency practice intended to reassure users about the exchange's solvency following the FTX collapse and the broader industry's renewed focus on proof-of-reserves reporting.³⁰ HTX has also highlighted external recognitions, including a claimed listing among Forbes' most trustworthy cryptocurrency exchanges.³⁰ The exchange's ability to survive two separate, sweeping Chinese regulatory crackdowns (in 2017 and 2021) by successfully pivoting toward international markets, and to continue operating and processing substantial trading volume more than a decade after its founding, has been cited by some industry observers as evidence of organizational resilience relatively uncommon among cryptocurrency exchanges of a similar age.¹³⁰ Following its 2023 hacks, HTX and Sun both publicly committed to, and reportedly followed through on, fully compensating affected users rather than leaving losses to fall on customers, a response some commentators contrasted favorably with exchanges that have handled comparable incidents with less transparency or slower restitution.¹⁸¹⁹

Criticism and risks

HTX's most serious documented risks stem from the cluster of security breaches that followed its 2023 rebrand, during which the exchange and its sister platform Poloniex collectively lost more than $200 million to hackers within a roughly two-month span, alongside a further loss on the Heco bridge — incidents that, while the exchange pledged and reportedly carried out full compensation for affected users, nonetheless raised sustained questions among security researchers about the robustness of the exchange's internal key-management and custody practices.¹⁸²¹ Kaiko's research into anomalous trading-volume patterns at HTX and Poloniex around the time of the rebrand, while not constituting a formal legal finding of wash trading, added to broader skepticism about the transparency of reported exchange activity during this period.¹³ The UK Financial Conduct Authority's description of HTX as operating an "opaque organisational structure" that conceals the identities of its true owners and operators, its subsequent request that major app stores and social platforms restrict HTX's presence in the UK, and the UK government's May 2026 sanctions citing HTX's alleged provision of resources to Russian financial-sector entities together represent a significant and escalating body of regulatory concern from at least one major Western jurisdiction.²⁶²⁸ More broadly, HTX's ownership and governance have remained closely associated with Justin Sun, a figure who has separately faced a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission civil lawsuit alleging unregistered securities sales and market manipulation in connection with his other ventures, a background that critics argue warrants continued scrutiny of the exchanges under his influence, even though Sun himself was not named as a defendant in the FCA's 2025 lawsuit against HTX.¹⁷²⁵ The persistence of the "Huobi" name dispute with the exchange's original founder, resolved in Leon Li's favor within Hong Kong courts even after the business itself had changed hands, further illustrates the degree of organizational and legal complexity that has accompanied HTX's various ownership transitions since 2022.²⁴

This pattern of large, closely timed breaches across multiple Sun-affiliated platforms — HTX, Poloniex, and the Heco bridge, all within roughly a two-month window in late 2023 — has made the episode a frequently cited case study in ongoing industry discussions of concentration risk among commonly owned or affiliated cryptocurrency platforms.²¹²⁰

References