Huobi Acquires BitTrade, a Licensed Crypto Exchange in Japan for Expansion

Huobi Acquires Licensed Crypto Exchange Eyeing Expansion To Japan

It looks like Huobi is planning to expand its services to Japan. It is a natural move since Japan is one of the greatest crypto markets in the world right now. The company decided to purchase a local crypto exchange called BitTrade to start the plan.

The announcement was made today, in which Huobi stated that Huobi Japan Holding Ltd, its wholly owned subsidiary, was able to secure a deal with Eric Cheng, the former sole owner of BitTrade, to acquire a major stake in the company. This is an important move because BitTrade is one of the only 16 licensed crypto exchanges in the whole country and is also a member of the Japanese Virtual Currency Exchange Association.

While Huobi decided to make the acquisition public, it did not announce how much money it paid for the ownership of the Japanese company. However, we can speculate on the values that were exchanged. For instance, the previous owner of the company had bought FX Trade Financial for about $50 million USD recently, so it is clear that Huobi paid a lot more than that.

Huobi Comments on the Acquisition

According to Huobi’s Chief Financial Officer, Chris Lee, BitTrade will be vital for the expansion of the company as it has a license approved by the local government and can be very important for the company to establish some dominance over the Japanese market.

This is not the first time that Huobi tries to get some action in Japan. The company almost secured a partnership with SBI Holdings to be in the country last year. The partnership would have allowed Huobi to launch its own crypto exchange in the country. However, the company backed out at the last moment and it uses its in-house resources instead of Huobi to do it.

Huobi has also made a recent effort to acquire 60 percent a public company listed in the Hong Kong exchange as a way to find a backdoor for listing its crypto exchange.