Huobi Review for Canada 2024

Making Crypto Simple

According to CoinMarketCap, Huobi is one of the most successful cryptocurrency trading platforms in terms of trading volume, variety of currencies, liquidity, and market offer.

Huobi Global Logo

Because Huobi is one of the top 10 altcoin exchanges, we thought it would be beneficial to investigate its features in greater depth. Here’s our Huobi exchange review.

About the Huobi Exchange

Huobi is a veteran cryptocurrency exchange operating since the early years of the crypto revolution. Leon Li, a seasoned computer expert, launched Huobi Global Limited in Beijing in 2013.

Thanks to Li’s vision of integrating cryptocurrencies into everyday living, the trading platform saw a significant rise in its standing. Nowadays, Huobi is considered to be among the best in the world. 

Huobi exchange homepage

However, it wasn’t always smooth sailing. Namely, the business was compelled to relocate its services to another country due to China’s gradual restrictions on crypto trading. Huobi had to move its headquarters to Seychelles, and it also established offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and South Korea over time.

As a direct result of the regulatory hurdles, Huobi Group developed not one but three distinct web platforms to cater to as many crypto investors as possible: Huobi Global, Huobi Japan, and Huobi Korea

The Huobi exchange operates in a manner analogous to that of other crypto exchanges. Users can purchase and sell cryptocurrencies on this platform, and the site generates revenue through transaction fees.

Types of Huobi Accounts

Huobi provides trading accounts for each financial instrument offered through the exchange. Thus, you have the following types of balance accounts at your disposal:

  • Spot account for your deposits and withdrawals. If there are no funds on this account, you cannot open a trade in the order book. 
  • The margin account provides an overview of your cross-margin and isolated margin trade balances and a calculated risk expressed in percentage.
  • The fiat (exchange) account provides an instant estimate of your crypto balance to USD. This account displays all your fiat and crypto assets that you can move to other blockchains, withdraw from your balance, or simply hold the coins.
  • The derivatives account displays all the vital market analytics for using this volatile trading instrument. This account presents all USDT-M and coin-margined contracts, coin-margined exchanges, and the most relevant market indicators. A review of your Derivatives account balances may be helpful if you have many open deals since you can determine if some of them are near closing. 
  • The quant account holds your grid trading balances. After a grid trading strategy has been established and implemented, this account will only reveal your invested assets. The platform moves invested assets and profits into the Exchange account when grid trading is completed.
  • The Huobi Earn account holds your high-yield interest savings earned through some of Huobi’s passive earning products. This account segregates the coins you want to use to earn passive income and collects interest.
  • The pool account serves users who stake their tokens and participate in the Huobi pool’s mining activities and are eligible to receive staking incentives, airdrops, and Huobi Pool Tokens (HPT).
  • The collateral account presents the details of the loans you obtained through the exchange. The ‘Loaned’ statistic shows the total amount of all your loans, while the ‘Current Collateral Amount’ shows the total amount of collateral, or the amount backing your Huobi loan.
  • The options account displays the total amount of BTC, ETH, and USDT available for creating new contracts and the total amount of frozen digital assets. At the moment, Huobi Global provides clients with the ability to trade American Options, European Spread Options, and Touch Options for BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT trading pairs.

Once you register on the exchange, you can access all of these accounts through the Huobi Global dashboard for easier management of your portfolio. 

The Huobi Dollar (HUSD)

The HUSD digital currency is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain. The native token of the Huobi exchange distinguishes itself from the other coins by a high level of decentralization and stability. Namely, the HUSD is a stablecoin tethered to the US dollar in a 1:1 ratio. 

Huobi HUSD coin

The Huobi Group created the Huobi token to ensure that prices on the cryptocurrency market remain steady. Thanks to that, it is more likely to garner the interest of experienced traders and can be accepted by the international marketplaces.

Holders of HUSD can use this token as a payment method for a variety of items and services and minimize the trading fees on the Huobi platform.

Paxos Trust, a financial technology company located in New York, stores the US dollars used to back the HUSD token in its safe vaults. With this approach, Paxos Trust protects the long-term stability of the HUSD cryptocurrency. 

Supported Cryptocurrencies

This exchange’s collection of digital assets is so impressive that you’ll undoubtedly find the most suitable coin for your trading strategy here. Huobi supports over 500 digital assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), Ripple (XRP), Dogecoin (DOGE), Cardano (ADA), and Litecoin (LTC), to mention a few.

The list of accepted fiat currencies is similarly impressive, as it includes practically every major fiat currency, including CAD, AUD, USD, EUR, and over 40 more.

Huobi payment methods

Payment Methods

You can fund your Huobi accounts with various payment methods, such as virtual currency, credit or debit cards, SWIFT, wire transfers, or even by transacting via the AdvCash payment service provider.

Trading Fees and Limits

Huobi offers vast trading possibilities with some of the lowest fees in the industry. The fee for trading with more advanced financial products is calculated based on the type of order you place, whether you create a new order or accept an already open order. 

The average commission rate for selling or buying Bitcoin or other altcoins through Huobi is 0.2%, regardless of the trading pair. The professional traders pay a maker/taker fee that ranges from 0.0362% to 0.0462% per trade.

These trading costs decrease if traders have a substantial 30-day trading volume of the exchange’s native token, the HUSD.

Deposits and Withdrawal Fees

While funding your trading account on Huobi is free, the withdrawn coin’s blockchain status determines each supported cryptocurrency’s withdrawal fee (i.e. blockchain fee). 

Huobi Global Features

The Huobi Global Limited’s exchange, Huobi Global, is geared towards international crypto traders. The platform offers an impressive number of investments and passive earning opportunities and financial instruments suitable for both beginners and experienced traders. Some of the most popular trading tools include:

  • Huobi Earn, 
  • P2P market, 
  • Huobi Light trading platform for beginners, 
  • Trading bot for automated trading, 
  • OTC (over-the-counter) trading deck, 
  • Advanced trading options (market orders, limit orders, stop-limit orders);
  • Spot trading, 
  • Margin trading, 
  • Futures trading, 
  • Mining pools,
  • Crypto loans and borrowing,
  • Multi-chain crypto wallet, etc. 

In 2021, Huobi Global launched the INJ (Injective Protocol) to facilitate decentralized derivatives trading as part of the platform’s plan for continuous development.

The INJ (Injective Protocol)

Injective Protocol is a standardized DeFi protocol for trading derivatives across different investment products, such as spot trading, futures, and perpetual swaps. The platform uses both the Ethereum and Cosmos ecosystems through a protocol that enables cross-chain value transfers between chains.

Huobi opens up even broader trading opportunities for its users by employing INJ in its platform’s architecture. Users can create, order and trade on any derivative market through this exchange using only a price feed. 

Apart from Huobi Global, the Injective Protocol is also used by some of the industry’s most liquid and reputable crypto exchanges, such as Binance, Kraken, and KuCoin.

Huobi Earn

Huobi Earn provides users with digital asset management services, offering a selection of investing and wealth management solutions to meet their needs. You can earn an annual percentage yield (APY) on your digital assets by moving them into Flexible Deposits or Fixed Deposits balance. 

At the same time, the introduction of time-limited promotions such as Prime Earn and Featured enables new interest-earning opportunities for customers. These financial instruments take current market circumstances into account to help you earn a higher passive income from cryptocurrencies that you do not intend to trade.

Huobi Earn feature

Investors benefit from increased investment income and greater flexibility thanks to Flexible Earnings. This tool enables users to move balances into instruments generating daily APY without committing to such instruments for a specific period.

On the other hand, Fixed Earnings are an investment vehicle that earns APY but comes with a lock-in term and may only be redeemed after the term ends. The Fixed Earnings instrument gives a greater annual percentage yield (APY) than the Flexible Earnings instrument.

To use the Huobi Earn feature, users need to have a fully registered and ID-verified account. 

Huobi Staking

Huobi provides users with many different opportunities to generate passive income through staking crypto. When you deposit cryptocurrency into your Huobi Earn account, you are eligible to get interest rates ranging from 0.1% to 88%. Your potential return as a percentage will be determined by the cryptocurrency you want to stake and the length of time you want to lock in your funds on the Huobi blockchain.

The exchange offers you the opportunity to earn interest in four distinct ways: featured, flexible, fixed, or first-timer option.

First-Timer Staking

Traders who have never staked their coins before can test it out on Huobi by locking in their cryptocurrencies for a week for an incredible 88% annual percentage yield. On the downside, if you decide to stake your coins after the trial time under fixed or flexible conditions, the APY will decrease to a much lower yield.

Featured Staking Option

With the featured staking option, you can earn interest on cryptocurrencies that are only available for a short time on the platform and in restricted quantities. The offers will be determined according to the cryptocurrency currently favoured by the crypto investors. According to the deal, your cryptos can be locked for seven to ninety days.

Flexible Staking Option

By keeping your cryptocurrency in your Huobi earn account, you can participate in flexible staking and earn accumulated interest on it. You are not required to lock the assets, so you can swap them or remove them anytime. However, the returns are reduced as a result. The staking incentives will stop increasing your balance once you make a withdrawal or trade.

Huobi trading and app

Fixed Staking Option

During the fixed period, you won’t be able to sell or remove your staked cryptocurrency from this platform. On the other hand, the return on the fixed staking rate is more profitable than the return on the flexible staking rate. 

If you have cryptos in your portfolio that you don’t find helpful for your trading strategies, this might be the best option to use them to earn passive income. 

Huobi P2P Marketplace

When you purchase digital assets from Huobi’s peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace, you get exposure to fee-free conversion rates for swaps established between the sellers and buyers.

You will not be required to pay any commissions or fees to sell your cryptocurrencies in exchange for fiat currency if you use the P2P marketplace. 

Huobi’s peer-to-peer (P2P) system, which incorporates an escrow service and a sophisticated anti-fraud mechanism, governs the transactions carried out in this marketplace.

Huobi Lite

Huobi provides the Huobi Lite version of its platform to allow a more direct and speedier user experience for beginners and traders who don’t feel comfortable using advanced trade functionalities yet. 

Beginners in cryptocurrency trading can efficiently execute the basic trading operations on this exchange platform, such as purchasing, selling, and swapping coins.

Is Huobi.com safe to use?

Cybercriminals know that large, unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges like Huobi Global are easy prey, which is why Huobi Global has implemented many bank-level security measures.

There are multi-signature cold wallets for the funds, a two-factor authentication protocol (2FA) as an added layer of protection for user accounts, and SMS and email alerts if some of the security protocols are compromised to make the platform a safer trading environment. 

Huobi exchange security features

Generally, there are no user identification requirements for the Huobi clients upon registration on this site, enabling anonymous trading for those who prefer not to reveal their sensitive data to the exchange.

However, Huobi reserves the right to require confidential information from its users to conform with the API or KYC (Know Your Customer) criteria, especially when it comes to trading volatile products or withdrawing more significant amounts from the platform.

Personal information such as residence address and birth date are among the details that the exchange may collect. 

Customer Support

Traders who conduct trades on Huobi Global have access to a customer support team of professionals at their beck and call 24/7 to assist them with any general, technical, or account-related questions or concerns.

You can reach the customer support service via telephone, email, or real-time online chat and the ticket form that is available on their website.

Huobi customer support page

The exchange’s learning centre is something we loved about Huobi. On Huobi Learn, you can discover highly informative and instructional articles on all Huobi functionalities, as well as a wealth of blockchain-related publications to help you trade with greater confidence.

Huobi Pros and Cons

According to our assessment of the Huobi exchange, here are some of the highlights, both positive and negative:

Pros

  • One of the top 10 overall best exchanges in the industry;
  • Has a user-friendly platform;
  • Provides access to more than 500 cryptocurrencies;
  • Supports over 50 fiat currencies;
  • Offers low trading fees and no deposit fees;
  • Accepts credit card/debit card payments;
  • Provides offline storage for most of the user funds;
  • Has a 24/7 live customer support service.

Cons

  • Faced some regulatory issues in China and Singapore;
  • Unregulated exchange.

The Bottom Line

It’s more than evident that clients are always the priority for the Huobi team as they strive to develop a client-first culture by offering a wide variety of high-quality financial services. The exchange is a real trader’s heaven, be it a beginner or seasoned crypto investor. 

Namely, Huobi spoils its users for choice regarding the cryptocurrency variety, payment methods, fiat currency selection, trading tools – you name it. The trading fees on this exchange are pretty attractive too. 

Huobi, on the other hand, is not a regulated corporate entity. In most situations, you should approach unregulated marketplaces carefully because they provide no legal safety guarantees. 

However, given the exchange’s continuous success and credibility among millions of crypto investors worldwide, we can safely conclude that the best policies that lead to safe and profitable trading are sometimes the founders’ clear vision, transparency, and commitment to success. In the case of Huobi, honesty and client-focused commitment is, indeed, the best policy.

Sign Up with Huobi

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Huobi provides a secure and professional DeFi wallet compatible with all Android, Windows, macOS and iOS devices. The Huobi wallet is underpinned with some of the most advanced technologies to safeguard your assets.

Cybersecurity professionals from the Huobi group created the Huobi multi-chain light wallet. This innovative technological solution supports the Ethereum network, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), the OKex Chain (OEC), and Polygon, in addition to the Huobi Eco Chain (HECO). The Huobi wallet’s multi-chain functionality lets you hold tokens from multiple chains in one crypto wallet.

Moreover, users can easily handle their multi-chain holdings, check the real-time DeFi mining revenue, and collect incentives using Huobi Wallet’s dApp interfaces.

While Huobi Japan and Huobi Korea cater to Asian traders, Huobi Global caters primarily to international crypto investors whose place of residence does not fall under any of the Asia Pacific (APAC) jurisdictions. The Asian subsidiaries of the Huobi Global Limited group were established due to the Asian market regulations for trading cryptocurrencies

The social component of this Chinese exchange is referred to as Huobi Chat. Traders can expand their knowledge about blockchain trading by sharing their own trading experiences. You can access the platform using a mobile app that can be downloaded onto Android and iOS devices through the relevant app stores.