China did it again. Same old news but the market was blown away like a leaf on a windy day. The country maintained its anti-crypto stance, which in turn compelled Huobi, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in China, to comply with new regulations. As a result, Huobi stopped the registration of new users from Mainland China, as per reports. However, new users from Hong Kong can still register.
Huobi has been working with the changing norms and stringent regulations in China for a long time. In fact, in 2017 when the Chinese government banned the hosting of trades between crypto and fiat money, Huobi followed up by dismissing withdrawals.
While in June 2021, Huobi banned Chinese users from trading derivative products as they were deemed risky by the Chinese cabinet. However, shortly after, in July, the exchange had to dissolve its Beijing entity. The exchange made several corporate structure changes, and this was yet another means to comply with changes.
It was not clear whether Huobi barred users from all the regions, as reports noted that Taiwan and Hong Kong have been retained. Now, due to rising pressure, Huobi’s token [HT] plunged by 35% over the past week, as per data provided by Coingecko.
Meanwhile, a similar impact was felt by the other crypto exchange giant in China, OKEx. Its OKB token [OKB] had dropped by almost 30% in the same time-period. The two exchanges claimed to have moved out of China and suspended yuan fiat on-ramp, users could still exchange Renminbi with crypto assets through over-the-counter [OTC] merchants, as per reports.
However, things may get difficult for Huobi going forward, as it was also facing pushback in Thailand with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which asked the exchange to return all assets to customers. This was done after the agency learned Huobi was operating with an inadequate management structure. Nevertheless, the exchange has a vast reach, with entities across countries like the USA, Malta, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, and so on.
