Bringing more liquidity to the cryptocurrency market is never a bad idea. Huobi, one of the largest Chinese exchanges, will do exactly that. The company announced Ethereum trading will go live on the platform as of today. This is quite big news for the Ethereum ecosystem. The bigger question is whether the other major Chinese exchanges will follow their lead or not.
An Interesting Decision By Huobi
It has always been rather odd not to see Ethereum on major Chinese exchanges. These platforms tend to focus on Bitcoin first and foremost. However, this situation is coming to change as of today. Huobi is enabling ETH trading on their platform. This makes them the first of the big three exchanges to do exactly that. It is doubtful BTCC and OKCoin will follow this example, though.
BREAKING: Huobi to list ETH trading today!https://t.co/UWlu7tWwHx
— cnLedger (@cnLedger) May 27, 2017
To be more specific, BTCC confirmed they will enable Ethereum Classic trading soon. There is still some “bad blood” between Ethereum and Ethereum Classic. The latter is the original blockchain without the contentious DAO bailout fork. The former is the ecosystem with the most media attention and a growing number of use cases. It will be interesting to see how both ecosystems will evolve over time.
The addition of ETH trading to Huobi can be quite eventful. Chinese exchanges generate a lot of volume on a daily basis. Whether or not this means demand for ETH will increase, is anybody’s guess. It is safe to assume more liquidity is a good thing. Having a direct trading market against the Yuan can only mean positive things will happen for Ethereum. A massive price increase should not necessarily be expected, though.
In the end, it is good to see Huobi make a bold decision. Chinese exchanges have lost some of their appeal ever since withdrawals were halted. As a result, both Japanese and Korean trading platforms have leapfrogged China in trading volume. The addition of Ethereum to Huobi and ETC to BTCC could have some interesting results, though. The bigger question is whether or not Huobi will enable ETH withdrawal, or just provide an option to buy Ethereum.
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