What is Huobi Token?

Huobi Global exchange allows users to buy, sell, stake, and borrow a broad range of cryptocurrencies, encompassing a comprehensive ecosystem for experienced crypto traders and investors. The Huobi Token (HT) is the primary medium of exchange and native asset on the Huobi Global cryptocurrency exchange.

A brief history of Huobi Token

Huobi was founded in 2013 by Leon Li, a former computer engineer at Oracle. It has since expanded into public chains, digital asset trading and wallets, mining pools, proprietary investments, incubation, and digital asset research. In 2018, Huobi launched its native cryptocurrency, Huobi Token (HT), and became a publicly listed Hong Kong company.

Huobi Token (HT) was distributed via the trade of ‘point cards’, which are prepaid cards for basic services on Huobi, where one point is equal to 1 Tether (USDT). Holding HT gives consumers savings on trading and margin costs based on a tiered approach. Following the trend of Binance, which began enabling direct token sales via its initial exchange offering (IEO) launchpad, Huobi unveiled its competing platform Huobi Prime in March 2019.

U.S. firm Jump Capital is a major investor in HT. Huobi launched HT by distributing 60% of the tokens to customers who bought prepaid services on the site. While not officially a token sale, it resembled one, as customers who paid the exchange received tokens. The remaining 40% of tokens went to paying for operations, team incentives, and user rewards.

There are 500 million HT tokens in total, with 100 million reserved for user incentives and platform operations. A total of 100 million tokens were set aside as incentives for the Huobi team, and 300 million were for users to purchase reward cards.

Huobi also introduced a token burn program that removes HT tokens in order to gradually deflate the token’s total supply. As of 15 May 2022, Huobi has burned a total of 292.649 million HT tokens.

How Huobi Token works

HT is a component of the Huobi Eco Chain, which hosts DeFi apps such as decentralised lending and borrowing platforms. It aims to improve the Huobi Exchange user experience by offering opportunities to access new cryptocurrencies, save money on trading fees, and vote on platform decisions. Exchange users may immediately benefit from how effectively the platform performs over time using HT, which is an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum network.

What is Huobi Token used for?

HT provides Huobi users with a few unique benefits, but it is primarily a means of running Huobi’s centralised exchange smoothly. HT was a means for Huobi to compete with Binance and its native BNB token. HT intends to serve as a common mode of payment across the Huobi ecosystem. The token is also widely used in over-the-counter (OTC) trading and corporate payments.

HT facilitates promotional airdrops, and HT holders are rewarded in the form of HT anytime the exchange publishes new crypto assets on its marketplace. Huobi distributes these rewards for two main reasons: to reward holders and promote the newly listed currency on the platform. Holders may also get a wallet bonus.

Furthermore, the tokens purchased by the exchange go to an investor protection fund to compensate for any financial losses. In other words, the exchange has set up a fund from which it would draw money to replace any losses suffered by traders and investors due to bad actors, system failure, etc.