Huobi | A growing blockchain ecosystem
Huobi Group recently announced their new Vice President Livio Weng through their twitter handle update on 21st October this year.
Who is Livio Weng?
Livio is a graduate with a masters in Software Engineering from Tsinghua University, one of the most respectable Chinese institutions of higher learning established in 1911. He has had an impressive work experience despite his young age, and has held several top positions in his previous firms. Just before joining Huobi Group as the Vice President he had a similar position at Jiedaibao which is a blockchain startup offering a Chinese peer-to-peer financial lending platform.
At Jiedaibao he was able to attract $600 million worth of investments which clearly shows he is a real performer. Prior to joining Jiedaibao, he worked as a product director at Sohu and played an important role in the design and development of Kuaizhan mobile site product. The development of the student social network, SXBBM.com website, is one of his major achievements in the number of years of successful work he has spent on Internet companies.
Livio Weng, in a previous interview with Blockt.com, introduced himself as the Vice president at Huobi Group pointing that his background is in Fintech, peer-to-peer lending, and social networking. He added that his current role oversees all Huobi’s business development, branding, marketing and public relations.
Huobi is more than an exchange; it’s an ecosystem.
According to Livio Weng, Huobi Global is the world’s leading blockchain company and places it among the top three cryptocurrency exchange companies around the globe by trading volume achieving about $416 million in trades on the day to press time. Huobi also runs a complete ecosystem of blockchain products and services and that to him is really what sets Huobi apart from other digital asset exchanges.
Huobi makes use of its ecosystem to provide a range of services that include but not limited to; Huobi Mining Pool, Huobi Wallet-a multi-chain crypto wallet, and flagship exchanges on Huobi Global. Huobi Global has two venture capital and investment arms that is the Huobi Capital and Huobi Global Ecosystem Fund. They also have a blockchain incubator in San Francisco named Huobi Labs and other several projects in the global outfit.
Introducing HUSD: what are its benefits?
On 22nd October, Huobi officially released its stable coin called HUSD. I know you might be wondering what is a stable coin? Well, it is a cryptocurrency backed by a tangible value such as fiat currency, gold or any other items of value that can be centralized or decentralized just like in the case of most cryptocurrencies.
Huobi Group COO, Robin Zhu, attributed the development to the growing community concerns that had been driving a strong demand for the stable coins across the crypto space. He added,
“We believe strongly in consumer choice. HUSD provides this in the form of an integrated solution that allows individual users to save costs and time when switching among stable coins. At the same time, it will provide our community as a whole greater liquidity when trading and investing with stable coins.”
HUSD will be listed on the Huobi exchange platform and can be interchanged with any of the stable coins supported by the USD-backed stable coin solution that includes; Gemini Dollar (GUSD), USD Coin (USDC), True USD (TUSD) and Paxos Standard (PAX). A trader can, therefore, deposit any of the stable coins which will then be converted and stored into HUSD. When the trader wishes to withdraw their coins, then they will have an option to withdraw from any of the four stable coins providing them with the option for choosing.
HUSD will trade against other cryptocurrencies such as Stablecoin Tether (USDT), Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). Huobi reiterated that they look forward to more stable coins being involved in the HUSD system. Concurrently, they will evaluate the existing stablecoins in the HUSD system on a real-time basis and if the stablecoin doesn’t meet the corresponding risk control standard, then they will remove it.
Benefits.
- The primary aim of introducing HUSD is to do away with the need to choose between various stable coins that are already in the market. Traders have now been offered access to stable coins of their choice.
- Minimizing the associated costs of exchanging the stable coins. There is also a significant reduction in the level of risk associated with stable coin exchanges.
- The aggregation of the USD- backed stable coins into HUSD, one single stable coin would improve the liquidity of the Huobi crypto exchange’s stable coin.
The woes of the competitor Tether (USDT), that led to its loss of parity with the US dollar promotes Huobi’s course and Huobi has since listed GUSD, USDC, TUSD and PAX so that traders are presented with optional stablecoins. However, the Group’s Vice President, Livio Weng, insisted that Huobi strongly believes in offering users a choice and stated that they have no intentions of abandoning USDT either. “We think its market capitalization and demand makes it indispensable and we have no plans to delist or restrict access to it,” he added.
Huobi Wallet now Supports EOS
The Huobi Wallet is a lightweight multi-chain wallet that allows users to conveniently and securely store their funds. Users maintain control of their funds through their private keys. The design is easy to use for beginners and experts alike.
- Huobi Wallet has multi-currency support for BTC, BCH, ETH, ETC, LTC, and all ERC20 tokens. The wallet also supports seven stablecoins including Tether (USDT), Paxos Standard Token (PAX), USD Coin (USDC), TrueUSD (TUSD), Gemini Dollar (GUSD), Stasis EURS (EURS) and Dai (DAI).
- The inclusion of exchange services within the wallet adds more convenience to users.
The addition of EOS is quite significant to users. To date, Block one, the company behind EOS, holds the record for ICO crowdfunding at approximately 4.1 billion dollars, which expresses the underlying confidence of the public in their value offering. EOS software aims to solve the scalability issue of blockchains which has hindered significant adoption of the technology.
EOS deploys a delegated proof of stake consensus mechanism which has been proven by early affiliated projects like Steemit and Bitshares to be highly scalable and functional. The EOS blockchain infrastructure will allow enterprise-grade apps to be developed and run on its blockchain. To visualize, Facebook or an entire Cryptocurrency exchange can run on the EOS blockchain, which supports millions of transactions per second. EOS has two key features:
- Feeless; EOS uses an ownership model in which the network allocates resources proportionately to the stakes owned by an individual or entity which eliminates the need to pay fees for transactions.
- Scalable; EOS supports millions of transactions per second through asynchronous communication and parallel processing.
WHAT NEXT FOR HUOBI?
The most notable factor is Huobi’s plan to establish a global presence. Towards this end, Huobi has made the following steps:
- Expansion into Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia (MENA) region; these markets are individually small but collectively they are a great market for Fintech services. These areas could benefit most from cryptocurrencies because unlike America which has the Dollar, and Europe which has the Euro, the MENA region has so many national currencies which make cross-border payments difficult. In addition, the region also has crypto friendly jurisdictions notably Dubai, Turkey and Israel.
- Huobi is actively creating local communities around its product all over the world. Huobi has already established active local communities and offers local exchange services in Korea and Australia. The list of regions is set to grow.
- Forays into Western markets: The regulatory environment of America is slowly warming up to Blockchain Digital Assets. In October, Huobi sent a delegation to the San Francisco Blockchain Week which allowed blockchain stakeholders from the East to mingle with their western counterparts. Huobi has offices in the United States to serve US customers. In addition, Huobi UK is scheduled for rollout in the next few months.
- The Huobi Global Elite Program was relaunched in September. The program is an invitation for cooperation with various blockchain influencers, funds, brokerage houses, proprietary exchanges and wealth management funds all over the world to help onboard new users to the Huobi platform and help in mainstream adoption of blockchain and crypto assets.
In my opinion, I welcome the move to bank the unbanked citizens of the world, who mostly live in third world countries. This would help achieve more decentralized and inclusive finance, which is the core value of blockchain technology.
I also expect the addition of support for more Cryptocurrencies in the Huobi Wallet. The Coinmarket cap website has a considerable number of coins/tokens listed with each offering a unique value within its ecosystem. In light of the stablecoin concerns this year, Huobi has shown a quick response to community concerns and flexibility to market demands which is commendable.
You can trade EOS, Bitcoin and other digital assets on Huobi exchanges. Register by following the link below:
Disclaimer: This article is not intended as investment advice. It is for informational purposes. You should always do your own research.
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