What Is Huobi Token (HT)?

Huobi Token (HT) is the native cryptocurrency of the Huobi Global exchange. The exchange was founded in China in 2013 but then moved its operations to Seychelles for more friendly crypto and finance regulations. It became a popular option among those seeking to enter the new world of crypto that lets users invest in projects through trading and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). Huobi followed Binance’s path by releasing the exchange token in 2018 that facilitates on-platform governance, rewards, and special event access.

Founders of Huobi

Huobi was co-founded by Leon Li, a former computer engineer at Oracle. Leon Li was a Bitcoin supporter from the early days and wanted to introduce blockchain and crypto technology to more people. The other co-founders of the exchange are Jun Du (CEO of Node Capital and BiKi.com) and Herbert Rafael Sim, founder of Crypto Chain University and media powerhouse with a history at Forbes, Huffington Post, and more.

Huobi now operates Huobi Global, Huobi China, Huobi US, and has acquired other tools, like Quick Wallet, to offer convenience to its customers. The Huobi Token has played a large part in one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, with a daily trading volume in the billions. 

How Does Huobi Token Work?

The Huobi Token works to provide Huobi Exchange users a better experience with new ways to get a discount on trading fees, access new cryptocurrencies, and vote on decisions about the future of the platform. With HT, exchange users can directly benefit from how well the platform does over time. If Huobi continues to move up in popularity, HT holders will see their accounts rise as well. 

The Huobi Token is part of the Huobi Eco Chain that hosts DeFi apps like decentralized lending and borrowing platforms. The Eco Chain is similar to the Binance Smart Chain, an established exchange-based blockchain. 

HT is an ERC-20 token that acts to secure the network and provides benefits and transaction methods for Huobi users. It acts much like Binance Coin (BNB) on the back-end. It also has similar tokenomics like BNB’s buyback or coin-burning strategy. Using this method, Huobi utilizes 20% of the revenue generated from contracts to buy back HT from the network and removes it from circulation to increase its value. 

There is 500 million HT in total, with 100 million reserved for platform operations and user rewards. 100 million tokens are held for the Huobi team as incentives, and 300 million HTs were given away so users could purchase points cards (the giveaway is now over).

What Makes Huobi Token Unique?

The Huobi token has a few unique benefits for users, but it is mostly a way to keep up with the evolving economics of the crypto exchange business. It was created in part to keep up with Binance and its native BNB token. The Huobi Token will provide a common or uniform method of payment across the ecosystem. It will also be used largely in OTC trading and corporate payments.

The Huobi Token currently ranks 50 on CoinMarketCap (at the time of writing) and has gained tremendous value since its release in 2018. In the beginning, HT was trading at around $1.30 USD. During the all-time-high period in 2021, it reached a price of nearly $35 before stabilizing. Many are optimistic in their future price estimates since native tokens of other exchanges have also performed well. 

The Future of Huobi Token 

As more people become involved in crypto trading, Huobi will benefit and grow along with the industry. It also provides a compelling loyalty and rewards scheme that will position it well in an increasingly competitive crypto exchange industry. 

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler Stresses Crypto Trading Platforms Must Be Regulated to Ensure Investor Protection

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is focusing on bringing cryptocurrency exchanges “inside the investor protection remit,” Chairman Gary Gensler has revealed. “If the trading platforms don’t come into the regulated space, it’d be another year of the public being vulnerable,” he stressed.

SEC Focusing on Regulating Crypto Exchanges

The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, talked about crypto regulation and the SEC’s priorities in a virtual press conference Wednesday.

Gensler said that he’s hopeful cryptocurrency trading platforms will take steps to become more directly regulated in the coming months. The chairman emphasized that additional oversight of crypto trading platforms is crucial for crypto investors to get the same kind of protection they have when trading stocks or other regulated financial instruments.

“I’ve asked staff to look at every way to get these platforms inside the investor protection remit,” the SEC boss revealed, elaborating:

If the trading platforms don’t come into the regulated space, it’d be another year of the public being vulnerable.

Gensler has repeatedly expressed the need to regulate cryptocurrency trading platforms. He believes that many of them are trading securities without registering. In May last year, he said crypto exchanges need more regulation and asked Congress to weigh in.

“We don’t have enough investor protection in crypto finance, issuance, trading, or lending,” he warned in September. “At this time, it is more like the Wild West or the old world of ‘buyer beware’ that existed before the securities laws were enacted.”

In December, the chairman said that the crypto asset class is “rife with fraud, scams, and abuse in certain applications,” emphasizing, “Right now, we just don’t have enough investor protection in crypto.”

New BHUNT Malware Targets Cryptocurrency Wallets via Software Installs

Bitdefender, a cybersecurity and antivirus company, has detected BHUNT, a new kind of malware that targets cryptocurrency wallets via software installs. The malware works on top of installs of unsecured or cracked software, that already comes packaged with the system to be deployed on desktop environments. Once installed, the software extracts passphrases and seeds from popular wallets.

BHUNT Malware Spotted in the Wild

Bitdefender, a leading cybersecurity firm, has issued a report regarding a new kind of password stealer that focuses on cryptocurrency wallets users have on their PCs. BHUNT, as this new malware is called, enters computers through infected software installs, mostly of cracked software. According to the technical document issued on the software, BHUNT attacks Exodus, Electrum, Atomic, Jaxx, Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Litecoin wallets. Once installed, the software can transfer the funds of the users to another wallet, and also steal other private data residing in the infected computer.

Password stealers are not new to the PC sector, as computers can already be infected by various viruses that also have these capabilities. What is special about this software is that its presence is heavily encrypted and it is packaged as digitally signed software, but the issued certificate does not match with the binary of the program.

Infection and Prevention

Bitdefender concluded that BHUNT was released in the wild with no clear target by the way it has spread. On how the software spread, Bitdefender’s report states:

All our telemetry originated from home users who are more likely to have cryptocurrency wallet software installed on their systems. This target group is also more likely to install cracks for operating system software, which we suspect is the main infection source.

The company indicated the level of infections detected on a map, and the countries with the most infections presented were Australia, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S.

Bitdefender also issued recommendations to avoid being infected with BHUNT or with other, similar password-stealing malware. “The most effective way to defend against this threat is to avoid installing software from untrusted sources and to keep security solutions up to date,” the report concluded.

Recently, a torrent that contained the new “Spiderman: No Way Home” movie was reported to also contain cryptocurrency malware.

What do you think about the new BHUNT cryptocurrency-stealing malware? Tell us in the comments section below.

Gold Supported Prior To NFP

Gold made a small breakout yesterday, but it is supported prior to the NFP. We might see a move up before the NFP.

The main even the Nonfarm Payrolls will determine the move in gold. However, we might expect a small move to the upside prior to the news. After the NFP, we could see the following scenarios:

1. Move up from the 1799 zone towards 1812 and if it breaks 1830.
2. 1830 holds and we have a sell trade there.
3. 1830 breaks and 1855 is next.
4. 1795 breaks and the price goes lower to 1786.
5. 1786 breaks and 1765 is retested.

Watch for the full NPF report and trade GOLD.

All Eyes On NFP

It’s NFP Friday, and the market mood is not too bad when we think that the major news in the wire point that the rapidly spreading delta variant is about to threaten the economic recovery sooner rather than later.

There are event cancellations, companies pushing back their plans to bring employees back to office and a clear shift in consumer behaviour.

Happily, the company earnings are relatively strong to keep investors from sliding into a new depression.

Yet, it’s important to gauge the risks of a fresh contagion crisis starts on businesses, as the overshoot in inflation significantly decreases the maneuver margin for the Federal Reserve (Fed) policy, and the Fed may not be as supportive as it has been in the first year-and-a-half of the Covid crisis for helping companies keeping their heads above water.

Still, one ‘good’ news is, if things get worse, we might well see inflation starting to ease and softer inflation could eventually give a window of opportunity to the Fed for keeping its policy loose enough to help companies survive another crisis. But that’s a stretched expectation and can not be taken as a basis for policy expectations.

For now, the major US indices are pricing in the strong company earnings rather than the rising delta worries, and even the possibility of seeing a soft NFP print doesn’t interfere with the bullish market mood.

But still, after Wednesday’s miss on private job additions in the US, investors are not walking light-heartedly to the NFP print. US futures are flat to negative, as although there is no significant correlation between the ADP and the NFP prints, a soft ADP figure inevitably dents the mood into the nonfarm payrolls.

The US economy is expected to have added 870’000 nonfarm jobs in July, slightly more than last month’s 850’000. However, the analyst estimates tend to be inaccurate these days, therefore, we could well see a number significantly higher or lower than the consensus of analyst estimates.

A strong figure should further boost appetite in US equities, even though I expect the energy and cyclical stocks trend behind the stay-at-home stocks due to the rising Covid worries. A soft figure, on the other hand, could hardly change the expectation that the Fed will announce bond tapering sometime between the end of this year and the beginning of the next, and the first rate hike in 2023. And that’s ok, it’s still some two years away from now, and things could change!

In the FX, we will likely see a strong figure boosting gains in the US dollar against the euro and apply an additional negative pressure on the EURUSD, which failed to clear the 1.19 resistance recently.

And the recent rebound in the US 10-year yield is now pressuring gold prices lower. One curious thing about the significant easing in the US 10-year yield was the fact that the yellow metal remained relatively unresponsive to it, hinting that the low US yields mostly boosted appetite in the better-paying stock markets. In this respect, the yellow metal has a better chance to break its 1790/1830 range to the downside, unless the US prints an abnormally low jobs data that throws the investor appetite against the wall.