Huobi, the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, recently announced and launched a new currency. The Huobi Token (HT) rewards exchange users for their loyalty with lowered transaction fees while also carrying its own value in tradable pairs against popular currencies. The hope was to bring greater value to Huobi’s millions of users, mostly located in Asian countries. The launch of the Huobi Token follows in the footsteps of other loyalty-building tokens that other exchanges have launched. The first and most successful of these tokens has been Binance Coin (BNB). The creation of BNB secured Binance’s place as the world’s leading exchange. It offered discounted trading fees in exchange for customer loyalty, primarily functioning as a loyalty rewards system. Huobi officially announced its intentions to launch a new token on January 22, 2018. Over the course of 15 days, Huobi would distribute 300 million HT (60% of the total supply) to its pro users who purchased a discounted service package. Each morning, a new batch of HT would become available on a first come, first served basis. Huobi declared this token distribution scheme, “not an ICO,” due to the nature of the offering. Users are buying a specific service package, part of which includes HT that give a discount toward trading fees. The exchange launched the Huobi Token as part of an overall strategy to recover its user base after tightening regulations in China severely restricted cryptocurrency trading. In an interview with CoinDesk, Leon Li, Huobi’s founder, revealed that Chinese rule changes had decimated the trading volume on Huobi by 95% between September 15 and November 1, 2017. The HT token distribution began on January 24 and wrapped up on February 7, 2018. Each day of the distribution, millions of tokens sold out in mere minutes after going on sale. At that point, 300 million HT had been distributed to Huobi Pro members who bought packages. That’s 60% of the total supply currently in public circulation. Another 200 million HT, 40% of the total supply, was set aside. 20% goes toward user rewards and platform operation. The other 20% is vested for four years and constitutes the team reward. Huobi isn’t the first exchange to issue its own token. Binance (BNB), Bibox (BIX), KuCoin (KCS) and Coss (COSS) have all issued their own tokens as well.
CommerceBlock is a public blockchain infrastructure company that is architecting a platform that allows anyone to build and use financial products and services historically reserved for commercial banking customers. The CommerceBlock network will be the first technology platform that provides a combination of trust minimal trade, decentralised contract execution, on-chain derivatives, and asset-backed token issuance to public blockchains. The advent of the Bitcoin protocol has enabled permission-less financial innovation. CommerceBlock’s product offerings provide a suite of tools that enables anyone to build and use services that construct contracts, manage trade flows, engage in multiparty dispute management, issue assets, and hedge currency risk. Developers and end users will be able to manage all stages of a business interaction and fulfil their contractual obligations by utilising the CommerceBlock platform. These services will be integrated into infrastructure we have already implemented. We have released the first open-source implementation of the pay-to-contract and homomorphic address protocol outlined by Timo Hanke and Ilja Gerhardt. The protocol has been designed in such a way that all business logic, customer funds, and trade details are managed on the client side meaning at no point does CommerceBlock have access to customer funds or private information.