Photo: Huobi Global / Medium
HBUS, the US branch of the world’s leading digital asset trading platform Huobi, is staking on institutional investors. With the purpose of developing additional services for institutional customers, the company has created a group headed by Katelyn Mew, a former BlackRock VP and HBUS’ current VP of sales and marketing, and Oren Blonstein from fintech provider Tora Trading Services.
Mew explained:
“Institutional clients are seeking sophisticated trading platforms and a trusted marketplace. Unfortunately, the current landscape is significantly behind the traditional financial services industry. As more and more institutions integrate digital assets into their portfolios, they’ll need trusted, secure and compliant partners, such as Huobi.com.”
According to Blonstein, the team will focus on introducing new services for institutional investors, such as token lending, over-the-counter (OTC) trading, and even issuing its own stablecoin (details regarding the stablecoin launch were not confirmed though).
Blonstein said:
“We set up a new institutional sales and customer service group just to have some focus and resources on this segment of the market where we see a lot of the growth coming from. We’re entering the market now with a real institutional offering, we’re definitely going to be offering some new products and services.”
Blonstein did not give any names but claimed that they already have some clients onboarding.
Frank Fu, CEO of HBUS adds, believes that cryptos are getting mass adoption, that’s why it is proper time now to establish an environment for institutional clients. He stated:
“The crypto crash in 2018 actually benefited the industry, creating an environment where only the strongest, most useful projects survived. We see the industry warming up with participation from traditional hedge fund managers, banks such as JPMorgan, and technology giants like IBM. Institutional investors realize that regulations are firming up, and they are paving the way for mainstream adoption.”
In addition to developing new services, San Francisco-based HBUS is looking to expanding its geography.
Oren Blonstein commented:
“If you’re a U.S.-based fund, so are now or in the future could be regulated by a U.S. regulator, it’s important that you’re working with another compliant institution. So if you’re in the U.S. [but] if you want to access to liquidity outside the U.S. … you need to do that through a U.S. platform.”
Currently, HBUS has licenses for money transmission in different states, with petitions to those jurisdictions where it still needs a license. Registered as a money services business (MSB) with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a bureau of the U.S. Treasury, HBUS is also planning to get a BitLicense from the New York Department of Financial Services.
About Huobi
Founded in 2013 in China, Huobi is the world’s leading exchange that offers trading and investment in more than 100 digital asset pairs. In August last year, it became a publically listed Hong Kong company.
After a ban on Bitcoin exchanges imposed by the Chinese government in 2017, Huobi stopped Bitcoin withdrawals and shut down its Chinese website, but continued operating overseas as “Huobi Pro”, a Seychelles-registered company. Huobi China continues to operate as a blockchain consulting and research platform.
Recently, Huobi’s over-the-counter (OTC) trading platform has added XRP to the list of supported digital assets. This update is now available to the platform’s users in 24 different world’s currencies, including USD, GBP, CND, CAD, EUR, and others. The maker fee depends on the currency. As for the taker fee, it is set at 0%.
Huobi Global has also announced plans to launch its selective new coin launch platform dubbed Huobi Prime. The first token to be listed through Prime was said to be TOP, the native token of TOP Network that represents itself a public blockchain platform built for the real-world business of any volume and size.
