In the face of a relentless bear market, the trading volume Huobi’s crypto derivative platform, Huobi DM (Huobi Derivatives Market), just surpassed the $20 billion mark.
The news of the milestone came in an official statement from the exchange. If the figure is accurate, the trading volume on Huobi’s derivatives platform has doubled since the last number was published two weeks ago.
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Huobi DM launched in late November, starting with offerings of only BTC contract trading. The full version of the platform wasn’t officially launched until December 10, 2018. Trading volume reached $195 million on the first day of operations. On December 28, 2018, the same day that EOS contracts were launched on the platform, trading volume hit $10 billion, reaching as high as $12 billion before the end of the month.
Have questions about #Huobi DM? Check out our Huobi DM #FAQ section #translated in multiple #languages here: https://t.co/pszxyGAoDl
— Huobi Global (@HuobiGlobal) December 30, 2018
The Bear Market May Be Fueling Some Growth on the Platform
Livio Weng, CEO of Huobi Global, said that “this reinforces our belief that Huobi DM truly caters to our user’s needs. We’ve been getting positive feedback from our clients on our lack of clawbacks as well as Huobi DM’s capacity to help sophisticated traders manage the risk of spot market fluctuations,” adding that this is why the platform has managed to grow in spite of the bear market.
However, it’s important to note that the bear market could actually be fueling the growth of the platform, which offers its customers the ability to take both long and short positions on Bitcoin, Ethereum, and EOS. Many investors are eager to bet on the crypto market’s decline, buying into short contracts on these assets–the crypto lending industry has soared in the bear market for this very reason.
Indeed, a number of crypto trading companies have made moves to launch or expand futures offerings over the past several months. In early December, Hong-Kong based crypto exchange OKEx launched ‘Perpetual Swap’ contracts; earlier this week, Gate.io launched ‘Perpetual Contracts’ on its own platform.
Huobi Announced Lay-Offs Before the First of the Year
In spite of the success of the platform, however, Huobi is set to go through with a round of layoffs that was announced before the end of 2018.
The exchange did not publicly state how many of its 1000 would lose their jobs, simply stating that it would be “optimising staffing.”