Huobi Opens Brokerage Platform for Institutional Investors

Huobi Group is opening its first digital asset brokerage platform, offering trading products and services to institutional clients and high net-worth customers. 

Announced Tuesday, the Gibraltar-based Huobi Brokerage is also the first product launched under the company’s Global Institutional Business (GIB) division, according to a company statement. Formed in November 2019, the new division was created as part of Huobi’s effort to better serve institutional investors in the global market. 

The statement said the platform will enable institutional investors to use crypto services such as liquidity pools, a regulated fiat channel and over-the-counter (OTC) trading via its smart order routing system and trading algorithm. 

"One of the core value propositions of Huobi Brokerage is that it provides clients with best-price execution on large block orders," Ciara Sun, vice president of Global Business at Huobi Group, told CoinDesk.

Clients will also have access to real-time trade quotes and price locks that support block trades  of major crypto currencies and stablecoins, including BTC, USDT, HUSD, PAX, TUSD, and USDC. According to the statement, support for ETH, EOS, BCH, LTC, and XRP is expected to be available later during the first quarter of 2020. 

The platform will have a suite of services to add liquidity as well, targeting OTC, exchange aggregation and customized lending and financing. Huobi plans to roll out custodian services, and interest rate and alpha products in the second quarter of this year. According to Sun, the platform's financing & lending services and structure hedging products is set to be launched for the third quarter.

The company claimed Huobi’s institutional business has grown significantly since it launched the GIB project last year. The new division now has offices in London, Singapore and Hong Kong. 

"GIB is a central part of Huobi's international expansion strategy, which is the company's top priority for 2020," Sun said.