Huobi

Overview and History

Huobi is undoubtedly one of the biggest and oldest exchanges in the world. Unlike other big exchanges that have been left behind by the times, Huobi has consistently remained at the top and is still growing stronger. Launched in September 2013, Huobi quickly rose to the top of the Chinese market by the end of that year. By 2019, they have been battling for the top position of the entire world. Huobi currently reports over $2B in daily volume. Although it is currently based in Singapore, it was originally founded in China and still serves clients mostly from China. You will see that most of their products are made for the chinese market. Unlike other regional players, Huobi makes it accessible for users all around the globe. Their main products are available in multiple languages such as English, Russian, Chinese, Dutch and Spanish making it a truly global exchange. According to SimilarWeb, Huobi receives 44% of their traffic from, unsurprisingly, China. This followed by the U.S. Vietnam, Russia and Korea. Huobi currently offers 558 trading pairs for 228 coins.

In line with their global efforts, they have launched multiple exchange extensions. Huobi Korea was the first and was launched in March 2018 given the high demand and adoption in Korea. Huobi MENA launched later in October 2018 which is dubai based and serves 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa which is home to around 400 million residents. They also have working groups in different countries such as Argentina, Russia, Thailand, Nigeria and many others that are along the “Belt and Road” initiative of the Chinese Government.

Huobi Main Exchange

Huobi Spot Exchange

With over 500+ different trading pairs to choose from and good liquidity in most major pairs, it is no wonder Huobi is one of the top choices for traders. The user interface looks sleek and well organized fitting everything into one screen. The charts are at the left. You have the choice to choose between their own charts or tradingview charts. This includes all of the indicators as well as the drawing tools. The order books are at the right along with the recent market trades. The order options are at the bottom right of the screen.

Huobi offers only the basic order types and are as follows:

Limit Order – The basic order type is the limit order which fills your order after you specify your price and quantity.

Market Order – This is a type of order that buys or sells a certain number of cryptocurrency at the best market price.

Stop Limit – This is similar to the limit order but the order will be placed only after the trigger price indicated by the seller is hit.

Fees

https://www.huobi.com/en-us/about/fee/

Like many major exchanges, Huobi offers a tiered fees system. Huobi divides users into two groups, ordinary users and professional users. Ordinary users’ base rate start at 0.2% for both maker and taker fees. This is quite higher than other major exchanges. However, as you hold more HT (Huobi Tokens), your fees will go down.

The second type of user are the professional users. Unlike regular users, professional users do a lot of trading on Huobi. Trading 1,000 BTC worth of volume in a month qualifies you into the professional category. You must also be holding at least 5000 HT. Holding 100,000 HT will give you an additional 35% discount. Starting rates for professional users are 0.0388% maker fee and 0.0495% taker fee.

Deposit and Withdrawal Fees

Crypto Deposits
Like most exchanges, Huobi does charge any deposit fees for depositing any crypto currency.

Crypto Withdrawals
Huobi charges a small fee everytime you make a crypto withdrawal. The fee varies depending on the cryptocurrency you are withdrawing. Major crypto currencies like BTC, ETH and USDT will have fees of 0.0005BTC, 0.005 ETH and 1 USDT respectively. These fees are noticeably lower compared to other exchanges.

Leverage Trading

Leverage trading is a more advanced type of trading that offers greater risks and rewards. It allows users to amplify the tiny movements in an asset’s price. You can buy more than what you have on balance. But it also the risk of possible liquidation. In normal spot trading, your balance will never go to zero unless the underlying asset goes to zero. But with leverage trading offered, you can get liquidated depending on the leverage you use. Using a 10x leverage, a 10% move in asset can either double your holdings or bring it to zero.

Margin Trading

Margin trading allows you to borrow money from the exchange and trade with it using your available assets as collateral. Margin trading in Huobi allows up to 3x leverage across all available margin pairs. This max leverage is much lower than other exchanges. They currently offer it for USDT and BTC pairs of BTC, ETH, XRP, LTC, BCH, and EOS.

The exchange interface is basically the same. They just added a risk rate meter above your ordering section to keep you aware of the amount of loan you have and the corresponding risk.

Unlike other exchanges, Huobi uses a fixed margin interest rate for all of its loanable assets. It starts at 0.098% and gets lower the more HT you hold and the more volume you trade as seen in the tables below. The interest is incurred on a daily basis so make sure to pay it off when you are not using the margin.

Futures Contracts (Huobi Derivatives Market)

Unlike perpetual swap contracts, futures contracts have an expiry date. You can trade up to a max leverage of 20x. They offer weekly, bi-weekly and quarterly contracts. For example, if you are trading the “BTC0327” contract, you are trading the BTC contract that will expire on March, 27 of 2020. You will see the amount of time left before this is settled. If you expect the BTC price to settle at $10,000 by March 27, you can buy it now for 8,800 and receive the BTC upon expiration. For futures contract trading, you will not be charged funding fees which is an advantage against perpetual swap contracts.

Huobi Products

Out of all the exchanges, Huobi is one of the few that constantly brings new products and features to their users. They have a whole slew of products made for a wide range of people from crypto newbies to traders that also want to explore mining.

Huobi News

https://www.huobiinfo.com/

Huobi has a section called Huobi News. You will be able to see the latest news and updates not just of Huobi but of crypto in general. Being an exchange founded and serving mostly the chinese people, Huobi news is written directly in chinese. But with simple google translate, you can easily read the articles as well.

Huobi OTC and Fiat Gateway

You can also buy cryptocurrencies directly from Huobi with your credit card or debit card. They process payments through Simplex which is a partner payments merchant. Simply type in the amount of crypto you would like to buy and it will show you the corresponding charges. The purchase minimum is $50 and a maximum is $20,000. Available cryptocurrencies for purchase are: BTC USDT ETH XRP HUSD XRP LTC and EOS.

If you’re looking to buy larger amounts, Huobi has their own OTC desk. The minimum purchase here is $100,000. Huobi OTC Desk is regulated with DLT License to provide crypto trading service for professional and institutional clients.

Huobi Mining Pool

In the beginning of Bitcoin, mining was done by CPUs and GPUs. Anyone who had spare resources could use it to mine Proof of Work tokens. But with the rise of ASICs, mining farms were born. It is no longer profitable to mine by yourself. Joining a mining pool would make more sense. Huobi Pool was launched in March 2018. Joining a mining pool allows you to put your resources to work while taking part of the rewards as well. This increases your chance of getting rewards.

Huobi Pool currently offers PoW mining services for BTC, BCH, LTC, ETH, ETC, and DCR.

Huobi Chat

Huobi really is building an ecosystem of products for all users. Huobi launched their Huobi Chat app in 2018. It aims to be the first exchange-based trading social network. It has all the basics you’d look for in a messenger. It also allows blockchain projects to create groups and for users to join in the discussion. This looks like Huobi’s bet to take on telegram as the social media of choice for blockchain enthusiasts. It is available on both Android and iOS as well as Windows and Mac OS.

Huobi Prime

Huobi Prime is the IEO token sale platform of Huobi. Launched in March 2019 at the beginning of the IEO craze, Huobi Prime has had 7 successful IEOs already. An IEO is similar to an ICO, also known as an Initial Coin Offering. An ICO is the first time that a crypto token has been made available for sale to the public. This is akin to an IPO in traditional markets. What makes IEOs different is that instead of companies raising funds directly from users, companies transact via a trusted third-party exchange. This allows projects to leverage an exchange’s brand as well as user base.

Huobi Wallet and Mobile App

Huobi has made it very accessible for you to access Huobi outside of the website interface. Their mobile app is available on both iOS and Android. Aside from mobile apps, they also offer desktop platforms for both Windows and Mac OS.

Looking into the mobile app, Huobi’s app is one of the best out there. For beginners, they offer a more simplistic version called Huobi lite. Simply select the asset you’d like to buy and a line chart will show. There’s no confusing candlestick charts that may only intimidate new users. Just input the amount you’d like to buy and you’re done. They also provide a brief description of the project. As it’s tailored for beginners, you can only choose from a handful of the top tokens namely BTC, ETH, USDT, HT, EOS, BCH, XRP LTC, and HUSD. Prices are also displayed in Chinese Yuan showing that they know their main audience which are the chinese.

For more experienced traders, Huobi’s professional app doesn’t disappoint either. All the basic functions are available. The chart is seen right in the middle with the order options and order books right below. Although there are no drawing tools here, they do offer some of the most popular indicators such as MA (moving average) and BB (Bollinger Band). This version covers all the tokens available on the main Huobi trading platform.

Huobi Wallet

Huobi offers their own multi-chain wallet that supports all major blockchain networks. It’s a non-custodial wallet which means that you have complete control over the wallet. Unlike the wallet that you find in the Huobi exchange, the private keys are kept and stored by you through the mnemonic phrase during the setup. This means that if you forget your password, there won’t be a forgot password button. On the plus side, by being non custodial, this means that when Huobi is hacked, your wallet is unaffected.

Huobi’s wallet supports major cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, EOS, ONT and LTC. On the first tab, you will see the wallet interface and all the wallets that you chose. You can add at any time if you end up needing a certain coin. On the second tab, you will see a quick overview of the current prices of your chosen assets. And on the third, they offer different dapps (decentralized dapps) from DeFi projects (Decentralized Finance) to different blockchain games.

Huobi Cloud

Huobi Cloud is a B2B2C product offered by Huobi to other companies that want to build their own digital asset exchanges. Building on top of Huobi cloud instead of their own allows exchanges to tap into Huobi’s expertise, support, risk control systems and also into their order books. By pooling it together, this adds even more depth to Huobi’s order books. This is a win win situation for both. It also allows new exchanges to set up faster and offer a more secure exchange.

Huobi China

Huobi China is Huobi’s initiative to be a connector for different blockchain projects, supporters and services in China. They aim to aggregate and be at the center of the action. It starts off with Huobi’s own initiatives such as Huobi Research Institute, Huobi University (China), and the Industry Empowerment Center. This is more of an industrial play for Huobi aiming to aggregate and offer different blockchain services and applications for governments and enterprises.

For customers, It’s a one-stop shop for blockchain + industrial services provided by Huobi China. For service providers, it allows them to reach more clients and customers to offer their Blockchain related services.

Huobi Capital

Huobi Capital is the investment arm of the Huobi Group. They focus on blockchain and crypto related projects. Investment includes several high profile blockchain projects such as Theta Network, Thunder Token, Ontology and Blockstack.

Huobi Token (HT)

HT, short for Huobi Token, is the global ecological token of the Huobi ecosystem. It is currently an ERC20 token with a total supply of 500M.

Huobi has done a great job of ensuring HT token’s usefulness and maximizing it’s value. For starters, HT can be used to decrease the fees used on the Huobi exchange as seen in the fees table in the fees section earlier.

Huobi buys back HT from the open market. 20% of revenues from trading fees collected quarterly will be used to buyback HT tokens and subsequently be burned. This creates a deflationary token that the law of supply and demand dictates should increase the price of the token. HT holders will have exclusive access to certain events and will also be given allocation for prime IEOs. From time to time, newly listed projects on Huobi will airdrop tokens to HT holders.

The ICO was held in February of 2018 and the token was sold in the ICO for around $1.5. They raised $300,000,000 from the sale and have so far given more than a 100% return to its investors.

Huobi Customer Support

Huobi offers multiple ways for users to get in touch in case they run into any issues. They offer a comprehensive FAQ and knowledge base section that is easy to navigate and covers a lot of base. You can also have a live chat with one of their customer representatives. But before getting to a customer rep, they have a bot that will narrow down your concerns and try to help you with it. If it still remains unresolved, you will be put on queue to speak with an agent. Customer representatives are very knowledgeable and courteous.

Operation Security

Like many top crypto exchanges and financial institutions, Huobi takes security very seriously. They apply industry best practices in order to achieve a safe and secure trading experience for their users. Several security features include:

2FA – This has been a standard form of account protection for most crypto exchanges. This involves using a separate device that generates a unique code or combination every few seconds. You will be asked to enter this upon signing in.

Mobile Verification – You will receive an SMS verification code which you have to input for withdrawals, changing of passwords and security settings and API management.

Funds Password – A password will be required for placing orders when enabled.

Email verifications – Whenever you would like to withdraw funds, an email will be sent to your email address for you to confirm if this transaction is legitimate.

Anti-Phishing Code – This security feature makes sure the emails sent to you are officially from Huobi. You will configure and choose a word that will be your anti-phishing code. All emails from Huobi will include this email. This is an effort to combat email spammers and phishing links.

Hot and Cold Wallets – This is a standard security practice for crypto exchanges that separates revolving funds (hot wallet) and most user funds (cold wallet). The cold wallet is disconnected from the internet so it is less likely to be hacked. It is akin to banks not having all of their money locked in a giant safe. They only hold what they expect to be transacted that day.

Liquidation Fund

Huobi liquidation funds is a fund set up for their futures and derivatives market. This fund will be tapped into when liquidations happen that cannot be covered anymore by a user’s balance. They currently have over 1,300 Bitcoins in this liquidation fund.

Conclusion

Huobi is one of the most innovative exchanges in the world. It is the favorite in China but has still positioned itself to thrive in the global market. It grew from the top regional player to one of the top exchanges in the world. They have consistently impressed users with new products that are quickly accepted and used by millions users. They have also developed an entire ecosystem that very few other exchanges have done. There is no reason why top traders and also institutional clients come and trade on Huobi. Their security, support, and liquidity are world class.