Crypto Exchange Huobi Denies Founder’s Stake Transfer Plan
Leon Li, the founder of cryptocurrency exchange Huobi, is seeking to sell a 60% stake in the company that would value the business at $3 billion, according to a Bloomberg report on Aug. 12, citing people familiar with the matter. However, the report was dismissed by the platform, which claimed that “no plan has been made for the transfer of shares by major shareholders and Huobi continues to operate soundly as always.”
Bloomberg’s report also stated that Tron founder Justin Sun and Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX are among those who have been in contact with Huobi regarding the proposed share sale. The Sun later denied the news on Twitter.
Huobi is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, but CoinGecko’s data shows that platforms including Binance, Coinbase, FTX, OKX have now surpassed Huobi in terms of trading volume.
Back in 2013, when Bitcoin first entered China, Leon Li was one of the many entrepreneurs who flocked to the cryptocurrency circle. Before establishing Huobi, Li had explored the group buying industry in China but failed. After Li founded Huobi in 2013, the price of Bitcoin rose from 800 yuan ($118) to 8,000 yuan. Huobi also quickly grew into a top crypto exchange, and Li’s personal wealth has increased. He was previously ranked 531st with a fortune of 7.5 billion yuan on the Rich List published by the Hurun Research Institute.
However, with regulatory policy clarity, Huobi gradually withdrew from mainland China.
On September 4, 2017, seven ministries in China, including the People’s Bank of China, issued a notice to prevent the risk of Bitcoin, which calls for a halt to transactions of virtual currencies in China. Huobi later announced that it would stop user registration and close the RMB charging function, and began to move to overseas markets. Since then, Huobi has operated its global site outside of China.
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2021 was an important turning point for Huobi. On September 15, many Chinese regulators jointly issued the notice to further prevent the risk of speculation in virtual currency trading, including banning foreign virtual currency trading platforms from providing virtual currency trading services to mainland Chinese users. Subsequently, Huobi announced that it began to completely remove users from mainland China, causing a large loss of trading volume and users.
