Chinese Crypto Exchange Huobi Announces $1 Billion Incubator Fund for Local Blockchain Startups
World's third-largest cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has launched a $1 billion incubator fund in order to finance blockchain-related startups in China. The fund has been launched in collaboration with Tinya Community Network Technology, China’s local social networking platform based in Hainan.
The fund will also be used in building a “Global Cultural and Creative Blockchain Lab”. The Hainan Special Economic Zone has been tasked a new mission for economic reformation under the “new era of Chinese socialism characteristics,” which has been personally planned by China’s President Xi Jinping.
In order to solidify this strategic partnership, crypto exchange Huobi is also considering to shift its headquarters from Beijing to Hainan. In its official blog post, the crypto exchange said that it will be using a national level strategy by deploying its resources, technology, talent and capital in the global blockchain industry while contributing to the development of Hainan Special Economic Zone and also promote the development of an international free trade port.
Huobi’s blog post mentions: “Against the background of the new era of Chinese socialist characteristics, we have given Hainan’s Special Economic Zone a new mission of economic reformation.”
Katt Gu, managing director at iBlock, said: “Although China has banned ICOs, there are tons of blockchain-related projects like decentralized gaming apps being developed in China that have not issued ICOs. Huobi has set up the fund to invest in these promising projects as it doesn’t want to miss out on the trend.”
Having been ousted by China after the crypto-ban of 2017, Huobi shifted its operations to Singapore and simultaneously started opening up offices in San Francisco and much recently in London.
Vice President of the Huobi Group, Peng Hu said: “Not Malta, not Switzerland. Absolutely London, more precisely Britain, is the entry point for the European market for us.”
Huobi’s senior business development manager in Europe - Chern Chung - that establishing an office in London reflects “Huobi’s commitment and determination to go mainstream,” and that “we are not afraid of regulation nor are we escaping regulation.”
In a further push to its diversification strategy to expand into major Asian markets of Japan and South Korea, the Chinese crypto exchange has also announced to launch its own digital currency called “Huobi Token”.
This Huobi token will be developed on the Ethereum blockchain platform using the ERC-20 standard as is said to be capped at a total of 500 million tokens. In a post on their website, the firm explained that ‘Huobi Token, short for “HT”, is a token system based on Blockchain launching and management.’