Coindesk reports today that the Huobi US operation, which was stopped in December 2019 due to regulatory concerns, is on the way back stateside. Now the United States office is set to reopen with headquarters in Nevada, where the company has earned a trust license to operate.
“The Seychelles-based exchange has since been evaluating different ways to reenter the U.S. market,” writes David Pan. “In April, Huobi Group global head Ciara Sun previously said the exchange might team up with a fully regulated brokerage in the U.S. to operate its businesses across the country.”
Huobi is actually licensed in 43 US states, according to internal resources, but most of that licensing is only for crypto to crypto deals. However, with so many other on-ramps from fiat to crypto now available to investors, it may make sense for the exchange to mostly handle cryptocurrency pairs moving forward. Alternately, Huobi US may be preparing the kind of framework that will allow the exchange to expand into fiat-crypto.
The Huobi exchange has fared well in today’s spate of global AML/KYC investigations. However, it’s been treading cautiously, not unlike other major exchanges with a reputation to uphold.
Binance, for example, has been very tentative about American operations.
“The world’s largest crypto exchange is going legit,” Jon Russell reported at TechCrunch last June. “Binance, which processes more than $1 billion on a daily basis and for so long has embodied crypto’s Wild West culture, announced that it will launch a U.S.-based service — but, in the meantime, it is implementing restrictions for U.S. passport holders worldwide and those based in the country.”
Since then, Binance has been working back toward a fuller global expansion, but slowly.
Huobi, for its part, has avoided the kind of scrutiny given to platforms like BitMex and OKEx, with various crypto entrepreneurs actually being hauled away in cuffs.
For investors, the regulatory “solidity” under the platform is important. Consider it as you make a crypto play of any kind.
