The 1 Minute Summary

• Houbi while not in the top three exchanges, has a solid offering.
• It follows Binance in a close second with a broad range of altcoins such as Shiba Inu and Polygon. 
• It brings a host of products under one roof, staking, margin trading, peer 2 peer exchange and a strong education element

Congratulations on taking the first steps to digital currency (cryptocurrency) investments. It is a good idea to hold a diverse set of assets, however a word of warning associated with all crypto trading activities, digital currencies are highly volatile so it’s recommended to invest only a small percentage of your net worth.

Overview

Huobi, one of the leading crypto exchanges was founded in 2013 by Leon Li in China. After a change in the Chinese government’s regulation in September 2017, where they banned Initial Coin Offerings and domestic crypto exchanges Houbi moved to the Seychelles. 

Houbi launched their own coin in January 2018, called the Huobi Token (HT) and was distributed to existing loyalty users (60%) and the remainder to the platform operator (40%).

Signup

Signing up for Huobi is incredibly easy with worldwide support. Initial account access is granted with an incredibly frictionless experience of just identifying your nationality (not changeable subsequently), email address and a password.

Huobi Account Verification has a number of levels

Level	Verification requirement	Account limits
Unverified	Email Nationality	0.1 BTC per day
Initial level (Account funded by coin wallet transfer)	The initial level of Verification is achieved by providing Huobi your full name, passport number and a copy of a state approved ID. This level of authenication	Withdraw up to 200 bitcoins within 24 hours.
Fiat Advanced Level	To deposit fiat you need to have completed the now routine, “Know Your Customer” checks.	Ability to add fiat to your wallet.

Security 

In terms of security, Huobi has got the essentials covered and more with 2 factor authentication (2FA) by SMS and Google Authenticator or other compatible authentication apps. Surprisingly they recommend SMS level of verification which I personally disagree with. My personal preference is to use Google Authenticator or compatible app (I recently switched to Authy that offers a similar capability) where possible as SMS has been compromised. 

The technology is really reliable and well proven. Just remember no one from Huobi will ever ask you for a 2FA code.

Finally, like a growing number of exchanges Houbi supports an Anti-Phishing code, which is a unique code you specify that only Houbi knows so you can verify any Houbi related emails. As a reminder phishing is the activity by fraudsters to send you fraudulent emails that appear from a validate sender but are designed to extort or steal assets from you.

Payment Methods

Huobi has a plethora of methods of funding your trading account. Supporting multiple payment methods and recently adding direct bank transfer is Europe with SEPA. To transfer fiat you will have to go through more advanced Know Your Customer (KYC) onboarding. Alternatively just transfer existing cryptocurrency funds over to your new Huobi wallet.

Trading

In terms of trading pairs, Huobi is up there with Binance with literally 100s of pairs available for trading. 

Trading can be approached from two main interfaces:

Buy Crypto

A simple, uncluttered ecommerce like experience to purchase/sell/convert a good number of the larger cap coins. At the time of the review you can use a Visa card payment or use an existing USD balance.

Spot Trading

Here you get a proper trading like platform with layout that on initial appearances looks very similar to other exchanges. After using it for a while it is someone more intuitive to navigate with pairs easily accessible and a host of charting options readily available.

There are more advanced options like Brokerage and Margin trading available.

The standard trading fee is 0.2% of the transaction, however if you hold their Huobi Token (HT) the fees are reduced.

Saving

As like other feature sets, Huobi is playing catch up here against Binance, but they do appear to have already a healthy selection of options rather than leaving your coins stagnant.

If you are holding long positions (holding for long term) you’d be silly to ignore the benefits of many saving products available to you.

Huobi offers three key types of saving products, Flexible Terms, Fixed Terms and their Structured Earning Products.

Product	Option	Description
Flexible	Flexible	Earn income safely, compounded daily and redeemable at any time. You can enable auto transfer from you exchange account so your holdings are always working for you. Minimum investment, No minimum Fees: Zero fees APY: Dynamic APY  Distribution: Daily Risk: None, guarantees capital earnings
Fixed		At the time of the review currently only available for USDT, for a 90 day term.

In addition to the products listed here, Huobi has another portal called Huobi Pool. In the Huobi Pool, Huobi offers a series of more complex products, targatingh not just investors but also miners. Miners can join a pool of other miners and get rewards but more importantly you as an investor you can also join in and get rewards by staking your assets. 

Staking is part of the protocol that miners have to follow to mine under the Proof of Stake consensus model. This is where miners have to commit actual funds to show they are serious to partake in the Blockchain where they are then rewarded transaction fees as part of this work. So when you stake your coin you are supporting miners activities and so get a share in their earnings.

Education

It’s good to see Huobi like other exchanges has committed resources to education but looking at the investor training material it is definitely targeted towards more experienced investors, explaining how to trade options etc.

Summary

Huobi is a solid offering for an exchange, but having used Binance for quite some time I don’t find myself tempted away. Huobi fees are higher than Binance unless you hold a significant amount of the Huobi Token.

With that said, I wish you all the very best of luck in your trading!