Why Huobi completely bans tens of millions of customers

Authur Colin Wu

On December 14th and December 15th, Huobi will stop the deposit and transaction business of users in mainland China. Huobi’s retirement work has officially arrived. On December 31, Huobi will close the RMB OTC business. At this point, the Chinese business of Huobi Global Station will be completely closed.

In 2020, Huobi disclosed that it has 15 million users. Today, this number may have more than 20 million Chinese users. Banning such a huge customer is rare in the history of cryptocurrency and even business history.

Unlike other exchanges that serve Chinese users, Huobi has adopted a thorough and resolute removal strategy, leaving almost no room for it. The internal emphasis of Huobi is that “no one can block the removal work”. A notable feature is that even if the user uses an overseas company subject to register, but the main registration/ultimate beneficiary is Mainland China, it is still not accepted.

Huobi’s complete retirement has a major relationship with its founder Li Linshen. He did not leave China like CZ and Star Xu. On October 6, Li Lin stated that he did not want to go abroad. His family and children are in China. The family members are not willing to go abroad. He even told the Chinese investors: “Without Huobi, you can use Binance and ok, if everyone is disappointed because of this, I am sorry.”

Huobi hopes to imitate another Chinese exchange, Bybit, completely banning users in mainland China and moving to overseas markets. But the difference is that Bybit focused on overseas at the beginning. However, Huobi became №1 in the market in China, then it abandoned the Chinese market and moved to overseas markets.

At the same time, Huobi’s senior personnel are changing. After Li Lin and COO Zhu Jiawei returned from Shanxi, Zhu Jiawei gradually separated from the management and retired. Some employees have joined Bybit, and some employees have chosen to start their own businesses. Weng Xiaoqi, the former CEO of Huobi Global, is resigning. Cao Fei, the head of Huobi mining pool, resigned. Ciara, the head of Huobi Asset Center, also announced his resignation on December 13.

Huobi’s top management formed a decision-making committee under Li Lin, with the former CTO in charge, and Du Jun(in charge of the market, etc.) and Lan Jianzhong(in charge of the back-end, etc.). In the current overseas market, Huobi mainly focuses on emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Turkey, Russia, and Africa, and has accumulated millions of users.