HTX

HTX is the exchange most people still think of as Huobi. Founded in China in 2013 by Leon Li, Huobi grew into one of the world's largest exchanges before Chinese regulatory pressure pushed it offshore and reshaped the business. The pivotal change came in late 2022, when Li sold his controlling stake to About Capital, an investment firm tied to Justin Sun, the founder of the TRON blockchain; Sun took a public advisory role and became the platform's most visible figure.

In September 2023 Huobi Global rebranded to HTX, timed to its tenth anniversary, with the letters standing for Huobi, TRON and Exchange. That name change made explicit what the ownership shift implied: HTX is now deeply entwined with Sun's broader ecosystem, including TRON and the stablecoin and DeFi projects around it. For users, the brand is new but the exchange, its history and its leadership associations are what to weigh.

HTX's security record is uneven and closely tied to the turbulent period around its rebrand. In 2023 it was hit by two separate thefts: an $8 million hot-wallet drain in September that was fully returned after the exchange negotiated with the attacker, and a much larger November exploit of the associated HECO Chain bridge alongside an HTX hot-wallet loss, cumulatively around $100 million, which was not recovered from the attacker. In the November case Justin Sun publicly pledged that HTX would cover all losses and the exchange resumed deposits and withdrawals, though there has been no independent confirmation that every affected user was made whole.

Beyond the incident history, the harder judgement for anyone considering HTX is governance. The exchange's fortunes are bound up with Justin Sun, a figure who has faced US securities-fraud allegations, and with TRON's ecosystem, which concentrates a lot of risk in one orbit. As with any custodial exchange it holds your keys, and here that trust extends to a specific set of owners and affiliated projects — a factor worth weighing separately from the raw feature set.