After denying rumours last week, Poloniex and Huobi are moving closer to a merger. The two exchanges owned by Justin Sun have announced a strategic partnership to share cash and projects as well as develop the HT ecosystem – Huobi’s token.
Huobi partners with Poloniex
On Wednesday, December 30, the two centralized exchange platforms Huobi and Poloniex announced a strategic partnership. This follows the rumours of a merger mentioned at the beginning of last week, although denied by the main parties involved.
Huobi @Poloniex
We’re thrilled to announce that Huobi has established a strategic partnership with @Poloniex
We will join together in multiple business aspects:
1. HT development
2. Project connectivity
3. Liquidity sharing
4. Global complianceMore coming soon…
– Huobi (@HuobiGlobal) November 30, 2022
This collaboration involves “cash sharing, common compliance, connectivity” but most importantly, development of the HT ecosystem, the token of the Huobi exchange. The goal is to build the world’s best platform to buy cryptocurrencies and thus gain the trust of users.
Furthermore, the release explains that Huobi’s executive board will conduct a monthly evaluation of all Poloniex projects. The most successful and promising ones can be listed directly on Huobi.
Poloniex is by far the smaller of the two platforms. According to CoinGecko data, it processes only $40 million in transactions per day, compared to just over $300 million for Huobi.
Huobi in full development
It’s been a busy few months for the Chinese exchange. Last August, co-founder Leon Li announced the sale of his shares in the company, representing 60% of the total capital. These were bought by About Capital, for about 1 billion dollars.
About Capital’s main investor is none other than Justin Sun, controversial entrepreneur and founder of Tron (TRX). In other words, he is now at the head of the Huobi exchange alongside Leah Wald, CEO of Valkyrie Investment, and Ted Chen, founder of About Capital.
Since then, Huobi has been growing steadily, offering more and more new features. Recently, the platform added a new affiliate program for influencers, offering commissions of up to 50% for the spot market and 60% for derivative contracts.
Justin Sun also recently distinguished himself by working with Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of FTX. He had allowed users holding TRX or HT tokens to withdraw their funds from the platform, even though withdrawals were already locked in. A move that was divisive, as he was getting richer by doing so.
