Huobi Pool, Huobi Group’s cryptocurrency mining arm, will launch a EOS-dedicated cryptocurrency exchange in Q1 2019, the company said last week. The new exchange will allow users to buy and trade EOS against “a number of other cryptocurrencies.”
Cao Fei, CEO of Huobi Pool, said launching an EOS exchange “is simply the next logical step in our support” as an EOS super node.
Huobi Pool said it has been working closely with the EOS community since the launch of the business earlier this year. Among other initiatives, it collaborated with other block producers to build an EOS test chain, the Crypto Kylin Testnet, where EOS-based projects can be tested. Huobi Pool also developed a voting platform for EOS holders and set up an EOS community to make holders more aware of node elections.
EOS is the native cryptocurrency of the EOSIO blockhain protocol. EOSIO operates as a smart contract platform and decentralized operating system intended for the deployment of industrial-scale decentralized applications through a decentralized autonomous corporation model. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second.
Block.one, a company registered in the Cayman Islands, is the developer of EOSIO. In June 2018, the company raised US$4 billion in the world’s largest initial coin offering (ICO) to fund the development of the platform.
Singapore-headquartered Huobi operates the third largest cryptocurrency exchange, handling around half-a-million dollars worth of trades every day, according to data from Coinmarketcap. It recently added EOS contracts on its derivatives platform Huobi Derivative Market.
The announcement of the EOS-dedicated cryptocurrency exchange comes at a time when Huobi is actively expanding its ecosystem. Last week, it announced the release of the whitepaper for Huobi Chain, a public blockchain project focused on security, transparency and fast and high frequency transactions, the company claims.
Huobi has also been expanding into other geographical markets including Russia, Indonesia, Taiwan, the Philippines and Canada.
Earlier this month, the company was granted a full Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) license by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC).
Lester Haoda Li, the head of Huobi’s global institutional business based in the company’s London office, said:
“Our Gibraltar DLT license will allow us to open a fully-regulated exchange for our global institutional clients and retail clients alike, so this is a big win for Huobi and a very positive step forward for our global strategy.
“Among other benefits, our DLT license will allow us to open doors to more institutional investors who were previously unable or unwilling to get involved in an unregulated sphere.”