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.
TrueUSD provides its token holders regular attestations of escrowed balances, full collateral, and also the legal protection against misappropriating underlying USD. The team believes that TrueUSD will be able to come up with the stable trading instrument for the traders of cryptocurrency that has been long-awaited. This will allow the businesses and consumers to use the digital currency as a medium of an exchange. The goal of the TrueUSD team was to build a coin that is stable and which can be used and trusted by them too. TrustToken is a platform that creates the tokens backed by assets that can easily be purchased and sold all around the world. The first asset token of TrustToken is TrueUSD, which is a stable coin and can be redeemed 1-for-1 for US dollars. TrustToken have partnered with registered fiduciaries and banks for holding the funds securely backed by TrueUSD tokens. To increase the amount of security, fiduciaries, and banks directly handle all the funds. Escrowed funds do not give access to the TrueUSD system. TrueUSD works with various trust companies which already manage around billions of dollars. Just pass an AML/KYC check, send USD to a trust company with an agreement of escrow. When the funds get verified, their API tells the smart contract of TUSD to mint an equal amount of TUSD to your public Ethereum address. The USD funds are regularly verified in scheduled attestations by a very much trusted auditing firm. USD funds are kept safely in a third party account, that is escrow accounts, wherein TrustToken does not hold any direct access to the funds and cannot abscond with them even if they wish to. The token burning and minting system makes sure that every TUSD token is backed by 1 USD. A mandatory check of AML/KYC makes sure that TUSD keeps shady people away from the entire project. TUSD makes faster transactions in low transaction fees. Even though TUSD is a unique offering, it is most likely overshadowed by its bigger competitors - Tether. While TUSD arguably offers more security and features, it may be losing the marketing battle. This is not to say that the situation will remain the same. With more crypto investors joining the market every day, the good times for TUSD may be on their way.