HTX Review

Introduction to Huobi Global

Founded by former Oracle engineer Leon Li in 2013, Huobi has earned a reputation as a dependable player in the altcoin exchange industry. They are generally regarded as a quick, efficient, and customer-friendly way to purchase Bitcoin and hundreds of altcoins. As one of the first and longest-lasting altcoin exchanges, Huobi recognizes that innovation should not be stifled in this industry and is willing to give a shot to new projects quite readily. In addition, they are considered a safe and fair exchange, with a great deal of respect for their customers and dedication to keeping user funds secure.

Why use Huobi Global?

With daily trading volumes exceeding $1.3 billion, Huobi is one of the most liquid of all major exchanges. This volume is spread across 500+ trading pairs, with some of it going to coins that aren’t generally carried on exchanges of Huobi’s magnitude. For more expert traders, Huobi offers up to 125x leverage on some derivatives instruments and offers margin trading of 5x for several coin pairings. In addition, their number of futures trading instruments is pretty much unparalleled by other exchanges. For novice crypto users, Huobi offers options to make the purchasing experience extremely easy.

Getting Started

Huobi Global is not available for customers in the U.S. or any of its territories or Japan. However, most services are available to customers in just about every other part of the world, so long as cryptocurrency trading is permitted by national law. Note that Futures trading (derivatives) is not allowed for citizens of Turkey, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Cuba, and a handful of other countries. Additionally, be aware that you will have to perform KYC verification before making any sort of withdrawal from Huobi.

Registering an Account on Huobi Global

After pressing the “Sign Up” button in the upper-right hand corner, you will notice that there are two different ways to register an account: by email or by phone. You will most likely want to use 2-Factor Authentication afterward, so it is recommended to sign up by email. You will be asked to enter your nationality, generate a password, agree to the terms and conditions, and then verify your email by entering a six-digit code sent to it. After verifying your email, you will have created your account.

Note that you cannot change it once you enter your nationality and create your account.

How to Get Verified on Huobi Global

KYC is pretty much an essential part of Huobi Global, and while it isn’t required for making coin deposits and trades, it is required to make a withdrawal. You will also need to complete the verification process to make fiat deposits. Luckily, the process is pretty simple. To get started, hover over the personal settings icon (to the right of the Orders tab in the top menu bar) and click on “Identification.” You will need to provide the following information:

• Passport / Driver’s License / other legal ID numbers
• First and last name
• Photo of the ID (or information page + photo for passport)

Next, click the “Verify” button. The verification process may take up to 24 hours to complete.

How to Make a Deposit On Huobi

To make a fiat deposit, hover over the “Balances” menu and select “Fiat Account.” Note that fiat deposits are converted into USD, which can be converted into several different stablecoins such as HUSD (Huobi’s dollar-backed stablecoin), USDT, PAX, TUSD, or USDC.

The USD deposit option will be the first option listed. Click on the “Deposit” button in the right column to bring up the following deposit options:

• US Domestic Wire Transfer (ABA) (0% fee, one business day)
• International Wire Transfer – USD (SWIFT) (0% fee, 3-5 business days)
• International Wire Transfer – non-USD (0% fee, 3-5 business days)
• Silvergate Exchange Network (0% fee, instant)

After selecting your method and clicking “Deposit,” you will be asked to provide your banking information. Upon entering this information and electing to continue, your deposit will be processed and reflected in your USD balance upon arrival.

How to Make a Crypto Purchase

Suppose you are interested in purchasing crypto directly without going through the hassle of setting up an order for a trade. In that case, there are a couple of different ways to do this, both of which can be found by pressing the “Buy Crypto” menu tab towards the top of the screen.

The first option is “Buy/Sell Quick,” set by default. Here USD funds can be used to buy or sell any of the following coins quickly: BTC, USDT, ETH, HT, EOS, BCH, XRP, LTC, HUSD, ETC, BSV, DASH, or HTP. Payments can be made using your USD balance or credit card, but you will get a less competitive rate when purchasing using a credit card.

The second option is “P2P Market” trades which will connect you with a list of buyers and sellers of 13 different coins. These merchants offer different ways of making purchases, including credit cards, AliPay, SWIFT, and Western Union. The information shown for each vendor includes the total amount of coins available on hand, min and max limits, the price (displayed in denominations of your local fiat currency), and payment methods. Next, choose a seller by clicking the blue “Buy” button in the right of the row, create a trader nickname and fund password, enter the amount you wish to purchase and click “Confirm.”

How to Trade on Huobi Global

The easiest way to find the coin pair you wish to trade is by clicking on the “Markets” menu tab, navigating to the pair base (USDT, HUSD, BTC, ETH, HT), and searching for the coin to be traded using the search option in the upper-right hand corner of the menu. Coin pairs can also be displayed by Top Performances (highest gains) and Newest Listed. After finding the coin you want to trade, click the “Exchange” button on the right side of the listing. This will bring you to the Spot Trading screen. From here, you can place the following types of orders:

• Market (buy/sell coins at the best available price)
• Limit (buy/sell coins at a price lower/higher than the current market price)
• Stop-Limit (enters a Limit order after a specific price has been reached)
• Trigger Order (enters a Limit or Market order after a specific price has been reached)

Three different types of Spot trades can be made for over 100 different coins:

• Exchange. This is for regular trades (buying or selling coins that can be moved on or off-exchange)
• Margin. This is to buy or sell coins on margin, allowing you to borrow up to 5x your total collateral to increase the size of your trades (must be closed out for collateral to be returned)
• Brokerage (OTC). This is used to place substantial orders (institution-sized) to get the best possible rates that may not be currently offered on the regular Spot market.

In addition, Huobi offers two types of Derivatives for trading BTC, ETH, EOS, LINK, BCH, BSV, LTC, XRP, ETC, TRX, ADA, ATOM, IOTA, NEO, ONT, XLM, XMR, XTZ, DASH, ZEC, KNC, ALGO, and ZRX:

• Futures. Trade contracts representing coin prices with up to 125x leverage. Contracts represent prices ending on Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Quarterly, or Bi-Quarterly periods.
• Swap. These perpetual swap contracts have no end date, which can also be traded with up to 125x leverage.

You can view Huobi’s trading screen in 3 different ways:

• Original. A basic chart screen only shows prices as represented by candles across a custom time period.
• Trading View. A more extensive screen with chart drawing and TA overlays.
• Depth. For viewing the total market depth of orders on both buy and sell sides.

Accounts

Funds on Huobi can be kept in 5 separate accounts, with each account having a particular purpose. Clicking on the “Balances” menu item will bring up the list of accounts which are as follows:

• Exchange Account. This is where crypto funds are deposited and withdrawn from.
• Margin Account. An account dedicated to margin trading, funds kept here are used as collateral toward maintaining your margin balance.
• Fiat Account. Fiat (national currency) funds are deposited and withdrawn from.
• Derivatives Account. This is where funds are stored for Futures trading. Again, you will need ID verification to open this type of account.
• Pool Account. This is where coins can be deposited to be staked; additionally, this is where your mining rewards will go if you join one of Huobi’s mining pools (they currently have mining pools for BTC, BCH, BSV, ETH, ETC, LTC, and DCR).

Before making a Margin or Derivates trade, you will first need to transfer coins from your Exchange account into one of these accounts. The funds stored in these accounts will act as your collateral balance.

Huobi Global Trading Fees

For regular traders (those who make less than 1000 BTC worth of trades every month), Huobi offers a flat 0.20% for both Maker (limit order) and Taker (market order) fees. For accounts that hold Huobi Token (HT), fees are discounted in tiered levels depending on the total amount of tokens being held. For instance, holding between 10 and 100 HT rewards the trader with 0.18% Maker/Taker fees, and holding between 100 and 500 HT rewards them with 0.16% Maker/Taker fees. This continues down to 0.07% Maker/Taker fees for those holding balances of more than 5,000 HT.

For a complete breakdown of Huobi’s trading fee structure, click here.

Huobi Global Withdrawal Fees

Withdrawal fees on Huobi are pretty much right in the middle of industry standards. At 0.0005 BTC, the withdrawal fee for Bitcoin is standard — perhaps a little on the steep side. Fees for withdrawing most other coins are lower in dollar price, with the fee for Ethereum being 0.005 ETH and the fee for Bitcoin Cash being 0.0001 BCH. All withdrawals must be conducted from your Exchange account.

Security

Though it is not uncommon for Huobi users to fall victims to phishing scams and have their accounts hacked, Huobi itself has never actually been hacked. It was developed by software engineers with strong programming skills and has a reputation for keeping user funds safe and secure. In 2019, Huobi finished a security upgrade for their hot wallets, which included the addition of an Investor Protection Fund. These are a reserve of coins stored to cover withdrawals in the event of a hacking event, which they have thus far remained free of. Additionally, investor funds are stored in multi-signature cold wallets, making them particularly difficult to hack.

It is highly recommended that you use 2-FA before depositing funds on your account. You can do this by clicking on the personal settings tab (the person icon to the right of the “Orders” tab in the menu area towards the top of the screen) and selecting “Account and Security.” The two options for 2-FA on Huobi are Google Authenticator or receiving a text by phone. Here, you can also enable a Fund Password that must be entered before a withdrawal is made and set an Anti-Phishing code that will be displayed on every email received from Huobi.

Benefits of Huobi Global Over Competitors

• A huge number of coin pairings, many with excellent liquidity.
• Several different options for buying/selling crypto, including instant purchases.
• Up to 125x leverage is available for some futures instruments.
• Highly secured, well-established and well-run operation.

Limitations of Huobi Global

• KYC is required for any sort of withdrawals and some fiat deposits.
• Doesn’t accept U.S. customers.
• Fiat trading options are limited to USD.
• Limited amount of TA overlay options.

Wrapping it Up

In all, Huobi Global is a solid, dependable exchange home to an enormous amount of trading pairs and carries a great amount of liquidity. Moreover, after completing the verification process, it is quick and painless to get in and out of the exchange with the coins you want to be acquired at a competitive price.

Besides not servicing U.S.-based customers and being strict on the KYC requirements, we don’t have much bad to say about Huobi. The more advanced traders may be a bit put off by their lack of sophisticated charting options. Still, they offer an insane amount of leverage for some futures products and a good selection of derivatives-based trading instruments that aren’t normally found elsewhere.