Huobi, a Chinese cryptocurrency exchange, has launched Huobi Korea, its South Korea-based subsidiary, on March 30 with 100 coins listed.
Huobi Exchange Enters South Korean Market
The existing trading platform is now being marketed in the South Korean market through the company’s new subsidiary Huobi Korea. The exchange is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency-only platform that is able to go around China’s policy on initial coin offerings (ICOs) and domestic digital currency exchanges.
“The leading global digital asset exchange Huobi lands in Korea on March 30th, 2018. On that day, we will open 201 trading pairs of 99 digital assets which have passed the strict review for being listed on Huobi. Thanks for all your support to Huobi. Huobi Korea will continue to offer better service as we always do”, the official statement said.
Headquartered in Singapore, the platform has close to $1 billion in daily trading volume, $300 million away from the $1.3 billion in volume produced by Binance each day. Its newly-formed Korean Subsidiary is aware of the rising hacking attempts, namely Coincheck in January 2018, and has taken measures to prevent such incidents from happening to its own platform and customers. The exchange stores 98 percent of client funds in cold storage.
Additionally, the internal access to those funds have increased complexity: “In order to open the repository, we have added security to complex procedures that require multiple people to authenticate together”, a Huobi Korea spokesperson told news agency ZDNet.
The platform will facilitate the trading of 100 cryptocurrencies and 208 markets (98 BTC markets and 77 ETH markets) while preparing for a potential hacking scenario: “We are also creating an investor protection fund and run an investor protection program to immediately compensate for losses that are not investor error,” the official added.
The company has set up an international expansion plan to continue to grow its business despite the Chinese ban on cryptocurrency trading. The firm is targeting some of the world’s digital currency markets, including South Korea, U.S., and Japan, in that order. Having launched its Korean subsidiary in late March, the company plans to open its San Francisco office in late January.
Japan, the market with the highest adoption numbers in the world, is a priority for the exchange platform. The company, however, experienced a setback as SBI Group, a leading Japanese financial group, has decided to cancel the partnership that would launch its Japanese Subsidiary and SBI Virtual Currencies Exchange.
Founded in Beijing in 2013, Huobi has grown to become one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.