Beijing-born crypto exchange Huobi has announced that it is planning to open an office in London, as it continues its expansion overseas, Finance Magnates reported April 18.
Explaining he vice president of Huobi Group, Peng Hu, told reporters:
“Not Malta, not Switzerland. Absolutely London, more precisely Britain, is the entry point for the European market for us. Soon we will have an office here.”
Financial Magnates further reports that Chern Chung, Huobi’s senior business development manager for Europe, explained that the exchange “wants to have a presence” in the city because “our statistics show that London is the most active trading scene across all of Europe.”
The choice of London sends a clear message, according to Chung, that the exchange wants to “go mainstream” by being compliant with relevant regulations. He told reporters, “[w]e are not afraid of regulation nor are we escaping regulation.”
Huobi is currently the world’s fourth largest crypto-exchange by trade volume, according to data from CoinMarketCap, trading about $1.2 billion in the past 24 hours to press time. Huobi group launched its Huobi Pro Global exchange, headquartered in Singapore, after the Chinese government banned ICOs and domestic crypto-fiat exchanges in September 2017.
Arguably, a robust and transparent regulatory climate that has crypto-particular guidelines – rather than shirking regulation altogether – is what the major international crypto-exchanges are now after. In late March, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, announced it was opening its headquarters in Malta, which has been proactive in providing legal and regulatory frameworks for Blockchain and virtual currencies.
Huobi Pro opened a South Korean subsidiary on on March 30, and unveiled plans earlier this year to open an office in San Francisco.