HT’s Price Surge Alongside Huobi Global’s New Initiatives

With the entire virtual assets industry currently operating against a bearish backdrop, it is fairly unusual to observe significant price surges for any asset, especially within a short period of time. The two virtual asset mainstays, Bitcoin and Ethereum, have seen their prices drop by 0.62% and 4.7% on average respectively over the past month. Meanwhile, several popular DeFi tokens, such as Avalanche, Chainlink and Terra Classic, have seen their prices drop over the past 7 days, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Negative market conditions, however, will not deter price surges for tokens whose ecosystems have enjoyed an injection of confidence. One such token that has hit the spotlight is Huobi Token (HT), the platform token issued by virtual assets exchange Huobi Global.

HT’s price began rising from the $4.10 mark on 10 October 2022 and reached a peak of $8.11 on 14 October 2022. The token’s market cap rose during the same period, and nearly doubled from $628 million to $1.25 billion.

This phenomenal price rise can be partially attributed to a series of events that took place at Huobi Global. On October 8 2022, the exchange saw a change in majority controlling shareholder to Hong Kong-based About Capital. The same weekend also saw the exchange announce its new Global Advisory Board, made up of a committee of prominent individuals including About Capital CEO Ted Chen,  Huobi Global Co-founder Du Jun, Vice President of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Wang Yang, CEO of Valkyrie Investments (Issuer of BTF, one of the first Bitcoin ETFs in the US) Leah Wald, as well as TRON network founder His Excellency (H.E.) Justin Sun, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of Grenada to the WTO.

H.E. Sun is a well-known figure in the virtual assets industry, with numerous accolades to his name. Apart from being TRON network’s founder, Sun is also CEO of popular file sharing application BitTorrent and is known for his ownership of more than $100 million worth of NFTs and traditional art.

H.E. Sun announced his appointment to the Global Advisory Board on his Twitter account and affirmed his commitment toward Huobi’s global expansion plans. The virtual assets industry responded positively to H.E. Sun’s Twitter update and HT’s price began its climb.

During a 14 October 2022 with Bloomberg, H.E. Sun further revealed he owns “tens of millions” of HT and intends to boost and strengthen its price following his presence in Huobi’s Global Advisory Board, lending further credence to HT’s viability as a sustainable investment asset.

Huobi Global has unveiled a slew of initiatives aimed at strengthening its position as a leading virtual assets exchange, while adding value for HT holders. These promotions include:

HT deposits: In order to enable HT holders to obtain stable and high returns, Huobi Earn has increased the APY of its HT flexible deposit product by more than 12 times from 0.2% to 2.5%. In addition, Huobi Earn has added a fixed deposit product for HT. The APY for a 30-day deposit of HT now stands at 4.5%, which is much higher than that of other platform tokens such as BNB and OKB.

Zero transaction fees for USDD trading pairs: Following Binance, Bybit, and Kucoin’s introduction of fee-free promotions for stablecoins, Huobi has also waived transaction fees for 10 trading pairs involving USDD stablecoins. This zero-fee promotion will undoubtedly attract more users, which will enhance Huobi’s ecosystem, and in turn, add to market confidence in HT.

Membership upgrade: HT holders stand to enjoy higher-tier membership levels as the amount of HT assets they hold will be treated to a 1.5x multiplier when used for the purpose of Huobi Prime membership level qualification.

Token listing programs: HT holders can hold or lock HT to participate in token listing programs such as Primepool and Primelist to win a share of the token prize pool.

Fee rate discounts: Members who pay for their transaction fees using HT can enjoy an additional 12% discount, which could bring fees to as low as 0.0111% for spot trading; they can also enjoy rebates of up to 0.01% of the total transaction amount for derivatives trading.

Trading competitions: Huobi recently launched a HT Super Week where users can trade HT, predict the token’s price or team up to join the HT trading competition in order to win a share of a generous prize pool.

Community promotions: The HT Meme Contest has been launched, calling on users to create emoticons and videos featuring the HT logo; the platform also held an engaging HT price prediction event, encouraging participants to guess the price of HT in exchange for rewards.

These promotional efforts appear to be reaping rewards. HT’s has traded steadily above $7.50 for the past few days, and there is rife speculation that the current upward price trend is only the beginning. But there lies no doubt that Sun’s commitment to HT has added heat and excitement to a dismal crypto winter.