As Chinese bitcoin exchange Huobi suspends local CNY trading today, the ‘big three’ trading platform is looking at pastures beyond China.
In an announcement, Huobi founder Leon Li laid out the company’s future vision as the exchange implements “full cessation of all digital assets” trading against the yuan today.
Li wrote:
I believe that this is not only a milestone for Huobi, but also a watershed in the history of Chinese digital assets and even a memorable day in the development of global digital assets.
Li went on to underline that digital currencies has already “led to a great stir” that will “bring profound changes to the global financial system.” The founder of one of China’s biggest bitcoin exchanges also gave some insight into the authoritarian controls exerted by Chinese regulators to effectively shutter the cryptocurrency industry.
“In recent years, China’s economy is developing slowly. However, capital resources that are intended for the development of enterprises have been attracted to morbid speculations in some markets,” Li explained. “Since the second half of 2015, the financial industry has a cycle of strong regulation where the capital should support the economic development.”
Li added:
We believe that the strict control over digital assets trading is in line with China’s current situation.
Coinciding with Huobi’s cessation of its Chinese exchange is the launch of Huobi.pro, its international trading platform with support for Tether (USDT) with trading enabled for ten cryptocurrencies. The exchange is headquartered in Singapore with a subsidiary in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Huobi China will transform from a cryptocurrency trading platform to a blockchain consulting and research platform.
China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, first announced a sweeping ban on all initial coin offerings (ICOs) and cryptocurrency trading on 4th September. In this post, Li revealed official notices received from the PBoC on 15th September, forcing the exchange to suspend user registrations and RMB deposits on the same day.
Huobi’s shuttering of trading in China comes a month after fellow ‘big three’ exchange BTCC, the world’s oldest bitcoin exchange, shut its doors following the regulator’s squeeze.