For HTX, 2025 was a year of steady growth and continuous breakthroughs amid this rapid industry transformation. As Justin Sun, Advisor to HTX, has noted, the platform practices long-termism with the conviction of “making incremental progress every day “. Each promising asset listing, every improvement to the product experience, and every instance of paying heed to users has been transformed into sustained forward momentum.
HTX, which has now navigated 12 years of bull and bear cycles, has achieved a series of major milestones this year. User scale and trading volume expanded steadily, with cumulative global registered users surpassing 55 million, and 6 million new users added during the year, representing an 85% year-on-year increase. Annual trading volume reached approximately $3.3 trillion, up 39% year on year, while net capital inflows totaled $608 million. HTX was also approved for Pakistan crypto exchange registration, further strengthening its overall compliance framework and service capabilities. Throughout the year, the platform maintained a flawless record of zero security incidents. It was named one of the “World’s Most Trustworthy Crypto Exchanges” of 2025 by Forbes, while Global Advisor Justin Sun appeared on the cover of Forbes and received multiple industry awards. Multiple breakthroughs have not only marked pivotal moments in HTX’s development history but also earned the platform recognition from both users and the market. According to a CoinDesk research report, as of November, HTX recorded a 2.06% increase in market share in 2025, ranking first among mainstream centralized exchanges worldwide.
In a year characterized by a slowing industry pace and structural rebalancing, HTX no longer chose to chase short-term hype. Instead, it focused on reinforcing its foundational capabilities amid market volatility, adhering firmly to a user-first philosophy and preparing itself for the next crypto cycle as a long-term builder in the industry. Whether under extreme market conditions or liquidity pressure, the platform’s asset reserves, risk-control framework, and security mechanisms have stood firm in market tests.
HTX 2025 Overview 
I. Business Innovation and Market Performance
In 2025, HTX drove comprehensive breakthroughs across its core businesses, including spot, futures, OTC, Earn, and margin trading, by centering on intelligent upgrades, forward-looking asset positioning, and deeper infrastructure development. In a volatile market, it achieved steady growth.
Spot and futures trading volumes continued to expand, while tools such as trading bots, futures grid, and Smart Copy saw rapid adoption, becoming essential instruments for users navigating volatile market conditions. HTX’s asset-listing strategy evolved from chasing short-term sentiment to prioritizing first-launch value, with multiple assets generating an amplified cross-platform effect following their debut on HTX. Ongoing optimization of derivatives, margin, and Earn products, particularly in liquidity depth, capital efficiency, and risk control, further strengthened the platform’s professional trading ecosystem. In OTC trading, HTX spearheaded a service paradigm shift through its P2P Premium, setting a new industry benchmark for P2P trading experiences with higher security standards and a full compensation mechanism. Meanwhile, multi-tier yield products, along with a diverse array of asset campaigns and trading competitions, worked in concert to fuel user enthusiasm and drive a virtuous cycle of ecosystem growth.
1. Spot Trading: Steady Growth Amid Market Volatility, with Smart Tools Becoming New Favorites
In 2025, more than 922,000 users participated in spot trading on HTX, including 545,000 newly registered users who completed trades. Cumulative spot trading volume exceeded 1.9 trillion USDT, representing a nearly 30% year-on-year growth. Annual trading volume reached approximately 84.8 billion USDT for BTC and 40.4 billion USDT for ETH.
● Spot Trading Bots
Spot trading bots have gradually become a core tool for users to navigate volatility and participate in the market with greater stability. In 2025, total grid trading volume rose 97% year on year, while capital allocated to grid strategies increased 100% year on year. More and more users adopted the approach of “setting a price range and automatically buying low and selling high”, turning market fluctuations into executable trading logic. From a trading structure perspective, the use cases for spot trading bots continued to broaden. Grid trading volume related to stablecoins surged 352% year on year, while grid trading volume for major cryptocurrencies grew 122% year on year. In an environment marked by uncertainty, spot trading bots are emerging as a more convenient and reliable trading solution for users.
2. New Asset Strategy: From “Chasing Hype” to “Creating First-Launch Value”
In 2025, HTX listed a total of 166 new cryptos. Unlike previous years, the platform’s listing strategy gradually shifted from an emphasis on market sentiment and traffic toward an upfront evaluation of narrative origins, community structures, and asset life cycles, allowing HTX to identify, position, and list high-potential assets at an earlier stage.
The meme sector served as a clear embodiment of this strategy. Throughout the year, HTX maintained a forward-looking grasp of on-chain narratives, with early judgment and early listings delivering standout results. In January, $TRUMP debuted and quickly became the most representative asset. After listing on HTX, it recorded a peak gain of 10x, forming the largest-scale and highest-participation single-asset trading event of the year. In March, HTX was among the first to list meme tokens such as $TST and $MUBARAK, supported by narratives combining CZ’s influence and rising Middle Eastern capital engagement with crypto. Both achieved gains of over 2x. In July, $M captured widespread attention with a staggering 42x surge. In November, AI meme frontrunner $PIPPIN began its rally, delivering a cumulative gain of 95x over the year. HTX also listed a series of assets with strong wealth-creation effects, including $BANANAS31, $DONKEY, and $GIGGLE, which achieved gains of 13x, 69x, and 4x, respectively.
In the stablecoin and crypto financial infrastructure space, HTX’s strategy likewise emphasized upfront validation and strong narrative-execution capability. In May, HTX became the first exchange globally to list USD1, a stablecoin associated with the Trump family, and took the lead in expanding its ecosystem use cases, emerging as the earliest mainstream platform to systematically capture this narrative. In September, HTX further reinforced its first-mover advantage in compliance-oriented financial narratives by being the first to list $WLFI (World Liberty Financial). At the same time, HTX maintained a sharp focus on the leading edge of emerging narratives, taking early positions in the popular PerpDEX theme. Following their debut on HTX, $AVNT on Base recorded a peak gain of 14x, while $ASTER on BSC surged 4x, making them trend-setting assets within their respective sectors. Driven by a rigorous asset-selection strategy, HTX sustained a steady cadence of high-quality listings month after month, ensuring that every user trading on HTX has the opportunity to gain early access to the most explosive asset cycles as they unfold.
3. Futures Trading: Monthly Growth in Trading Volume, with Deepening Liquidity and Product Capabilities
Through continuous optimization of trading depth, liquidity structure, and product experience, HTX Futures steadily reinforced its core competitiveness in the derivatives market. As of December, total futures trading volume on HTX in 2025 reached $1.4 trillion, representing a 50% increase compared to 2024, with trading volumes showing consistent month-by-month growth. In terms of asset coverage, HTX Futures listed 208 new futures trading assets in 2025, among which nearly 132 assets experienced growth exceeding 200%, accounting for over 63% of total new listings.
Against the backdrop of persistent volatility across global crypto markets in 2025, HTX also demonstrated the responsibility expected of a leading platform. It launched the “Sail Together Initiative”, offering traders worldwide $100 million in total. Through its real-fund incentive mechanism, the initiative materially eased users’ trading pressure during periods of extreme volatility, helping more traders navigate market cycles while continuously enhancing trading experience and long-term participation confidence.
● Trading Depth and User Experience
By deepening collaboration with multiple top-tier market makers and continuously refining its internal trading structure, HTX Futures saw a marked improvement in liquidity beginning in April 2025, notably enhancing order-book depth and execution stability for core futures trading pairs such as BTC/USDT and ETH/USDT.
In addition, over the course of 2025, HTX completed more than 120 futures-related feature optimizations, with a strong focus on high-frequency use cases, including improvements to funding-rate display logic, auto-snapping order sliders, newly added pair selectors, and ongoing refinements to order types. These upgrades continuously reduced users’ operational costs and further improved overall trading smoothness.
● Smart Trading Tools
Futures Grid was upgraded to Version 2.0, driving rapid expansion in its user base. The number of monthly active users surpassed 30,000, while average daily trading volume exceeded $20 million. The strategic value of futures grid trading in range-bound markets was further validated, with rising market penetration gradually establishing it as one of the go-to tools for users to participate in futures trading.
The Copy Trading system was upgraded to Version 4.0, with the introduction of Smart Copy. This upgrade significantly strengthened the profit-synchronization mechanism and the fund-isolation system, delivering more accurate trade replication and higher-level capital protection across complex market and strategy execution scenarios. In parallel, the Trader Mode was comprehensively enhanced, ensuring stability and execution consistency even in high-volatility environments.
● Capital Efficiency and Risk Management
To address users’ demand for more efficient utilization of idle funds in futures accounts, HTX continued to enhance its SmartEarn product and introduced SmartEarn APY Booster Coupons, further improving the flexibility of generating stable returns within futures trading accounts.
On the risk-management front, HTX steadily advanced its Multi-Assets Collateral mode for futures trading, which now supports five assets: BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, and USDD. Platform data shows that trading volume under the Multi-Assets Collateral mode now accounts for over 60% of total futures trading volume. This mechanism effectively improves users’ capital utilization efficiency while strengthening the overall risk-buffering capacity of futures accounts.
4. OTC Trading: Building a Full-Scenario On/Off-Ramp Ecosystem, with Premium Leading an Industry Service Upgrade
In 2025, HTX continued to refine its OTC trading ecosystem, revolving around security, compliance, and global accessibility. By building a full-scenario service platform encompassing P2P trading, deposits and withdrawals, Convert, and fiat transactions, HTX achieved simultaneous growth in both business scale and service quality amid an increasingly complex and dynamic global on/off-ramp environment.
As a critical gateway for capital inflows and outflows, HTX OTC served a total of 3.93 million users worldwide throughout the year, facilitating approximately $360 billion in transaction volume. The platform currently supports 187 cryptocurrencies, 74 fiat currencies, and more than 600 payment methods, with services spanning 231 countries and regions, demonstrating a mature and robust system capacity. Supported by a dual-layer protection framework that combines intelligent risk control with manual review, alongside 24/7 global customer support and a multi-jurisdictional compliance licensing strategy, HTX OTC continues to deliver secure, efficient, and compliant fiat trading and asset circulation services to users worldwide, steadily solidifying its role as a cornerstone of the platform’s global financial infrastructure.
● P2P Premium
In April 2025, HTX launched the industry’s first high-quality P2P trading zone—the P2P Premium. Built around the core philosophy of “eliminating risk at the source”, Premium introduced a systematic redesign of advertiser onboarding standards, risk-control systems, protection mechanisms, and the overall trading experience. It not only addresses the long-standing trust and risk-control challenges inherent in traditional P2P models but also pioneers a new P2P service pathway for the industry.
Through stringent advertiser selection and ongoing review mechanisms, Premium significantly elevates overall advertiser quality and mitigates risk at its origin. Since its launch, it has maintained a zero-freeze operational record, setting a highly influential benchmark for security standards within the industry.
On the user protection front, Premium introduced an industry-first “100% full compensation” mechanism, explicitly committing to full reimbursement for qualifying cases involving judicial account freezes. This truly delivers on the promise of “zero freeze on withdrawals, and 100% compensation”, eliminating user concerns at the institutional level. This mechanism has not only substantially enhanced user trust but also redefined the security boundaries of P2P trading.
Furthermore, Premium rolled out a zero-fee policy with strict price controls, offering users more competitive prices while ensuring compliant advertiser operations. Through a diversified ad label framework and an intelligent matching system, the platform effectively improves order-matching efficiency and completion rates, striking a balance between high-quality transactions and efficient execution.
● Global Localized Services
In its global expansion, HTX OTC continued to double down on investment in localized service capabilities worldwide. In 2025, HTX established and strengthened local operations and service teams across multiple key markets, enabling localized coordination across trade matching, advertiser management, and customer support.
By developing a deep understanding of local payment habits, regulatory requirements, and user needs, the platform significantly enhanced the overall advertiser quality and user activity across multiple regions, providing robust support for the healthy growth of its OTC business. Beyond handling daily operations and services, local teams also play critical roles in advertiser reviews, risk identification, and dispute resolution, ensuring HTX OTC’s consistently high service standards and security levels across the globe.
By advancing globalization and localization in parallel, HTX OTC has gradually built a replicable and scalable operating model, laying a solid foundation for the platform’s future expansion of fiat and on/off-ramp services into more regions.
5. HTX Earn: Building a Multi-Layer Yield Matrix to Cope with Market Uncertainty with Predictable Returns
As market volatility intensified, user demand for stable and reliable yield solutions continued to rise. HTX Earn rewarded users with a better product experience, a wider range of Earn options, higher yields, and richer brand-led campaigns, driving the continued expansion of its Earn ecosystem. In 2025, HTX Earn served over 600,000 users, supported more than 300 cryptocurrencies, and launched over 390 Earn products throughout the year. Its structured product, Shark Fin, rolled out 112 rounds, with cumulative subscription volume exceeding 1 billion USDT.
Through three core pillars, namely, Simple Earn, structured products, and on-chain products, HTX optimized its Earn product matrix and subscription workflows, bringing them in line with top-tier industry standards. The platform significantly outperformed its peers in hotspot asset tracking, APYs, and listing speed, establishing clear differentiated advantages, most notably its consistently industry-leading yields on PoS assets. At the same time, HTX introduced themed Earn Bonanzas and monthly user reward activities, further strengthening product stickiness and brand recognition.
6. Margin Trading and Collateral Swap: Record-High Trading Volume and User Activity Driven by Product Strength and Professionalization
Since the beginning of 2025, HTX has undertaken comprehensive upgrades across its margin trading and Collateral Swap product suites. By advancing improvements in user experience, asset diversity, risk management, and efficiency in tandem, the platform has propelled both trading scale and user activity to new highs.
● HTX Margin
The number of users surpassed 160,000, with cumulative loan volume reaching $4.7 billion and total margin trading volume approaching $50 billion. Average daily outstanding borrowings exceeded $100 million for the first time. During the year, HTX restructured its position models and introduced real-time PnL displays through a full overhaul of its margin trading interface, allowing users to monitor positions and real-time returns more intuitively and significantly improving trading efficiency.
At the same time, the platform continued to expand its asset lineup, adding a total of 82 new assets eligible for margin trading and extending coverage across a wider range of mainstream and trending assets to support more flexible and diversified trading strategies. On the user incentive front, HTX Margin rolled out multiple rounds of limited-time low-interest and zero-interest campaigns throughout the year, along with themed initiatives such as the Collateral Swap promo. These efforts effectively reduced users’ capital costs, boosted their trading enthusiasm, and helped them seize market opportunities.
● Collateral Swap (formerly Crypto Loans)
To better serve users’ medium- and long-term capital utilization needs, HTX launched a revamped Collateral Swap featuring multiple key upgrades. It now supports multi-asset collateral, covering nearly 40 mainstream and popular assets, significantly enhancing capital utilization efficiency. System stability and security have been strengthened in tandem, delivering a smoother and more reliable borrowing experience. In addition, users can enjoy fee reductions more conveniently with interest vouchers, further lowering borrowing costs. Data shows that since the start of 2025, nearly 200,000 users have utilized Collateral Swap services on HTX, with a cumulative loan scale exceeding $8 billion, making it one of the most steadily growing core products in HTX’s lending ecosystem.
● Liquidity Boost (formerly OTC Loan)
Building on its original OTC loan framework, HTX launched and continuously refined its Liquidity Boost. User management GMT was fully upgraded and migrated to unified management on the HTX homepage, substantially enhancing account security. The UI and monitoring features on the management interface were comprehensively optimized. The interest-free loan policy was also upgraded, introducing selectable trading volume targets and supporting standalone spot trading targets, thus offering high-frequency and professional traders more tailored incentive mechanisms. In 2025, total loan scale grew by more than 50% from the beginning of the year, surpassing $150 million, further strengthening the platform’s liquidity support capabilities.
Driven by both product experience enhancement and scale expansion, HTX’s margin trading and Collateral Swap businesses are steadily forming a development landscape characterized by high efficiency, robust risk controls, and multi-scenario coordination, offering users more stable and flexible fund management and trading solutions.
7. Asset Campaigns: High-Frequency Momentum and Innovative Engagement Fuel User Participation
In 2025, HTX anchored its efforts around two core themes: asset trading and hot-topic marketing. Through frequent trading contests, its flagship Trading Championship, and innovative Launchpool mechanics, the platform achieved explosive growth in both trading volume and user activity.
● Popular Assets
Throughout the year, HTX hosted a total of 303 trading events centered on popular assets, drawing 1.65 million participants and onboarding 228,000 new traders. Powered by strong traffic momentum, spot trading volume reached 15.36 billion USDT, while futures trading volume hit 23.38 billion USDT. Over$1 million in rewards was distributed to users, effectively boosting platform liquidity and overall market activity.
● Launchpool
In asset empowerment, Launchpool emerged as a highlight of the year. HTX launched 23 high-quality projects, with the largest reward pool exceeding 2.28 million USDT. A cumulative total of over 67.8 trillion $HTX tokens was committed, while participation surged to 200,000 users. Launchpool supports a “one asset, multiple rewards” model, allowing users to stake $HTX to earn airdrops from multiple projects simultaneously, significantly stimulating demand for $HTX holdings.
● HTX Trading Championship
In the fourth quarter of 2025, HTX launched its first-ever large-scale global trading league, the Trading Championship, featuring a million-dollar prize pool to support traders worldwide across both bull and bear market cycles. The HTX Trading Championship featured three core competitions: the Points Contest, the Trading Challenge, and Team Battles, with dual tracks covering both spot and futures markets. The series achieved a staggering total trading volume exceeding 14 billion USDT, attracted more than 90,000 participants, and distributed nearly 1 million USDT in rewards. This event effectively stimulated trading enthusiasm while further enhancing platform liquidity and overall market activity.
II. Product and System Upgrades: System-Level Renewal Reshapes the High-Frequency Trading Experience
To comprehensively enhance user experience and platform competitiveness, HTX rolled out broad, multi-layered product and system upgrades centered on three core areas: trading experience optimization, user asset management, and growth-tool innovation. By refreshing its design system, reconstructing core flows, and refining its strategic matrix, HTX not only significantly boosted product usability and efficiency but also laid a solid groundwork for sustained business growth.
1. Comprehensive Trading Platform Upgrade: Unified Interaction and Seamless Performance
This upgrade focused on creating a more unified and efficient trading environment for both professional traders and everyday users, delivering end-to-end optimization across visual design and functions.
Unified Interaction, Platform-Wide Renewal: HTX completed a unified trading system upgrade spanning spot, margin, and futures. The new visual design and interaction logic consolidated and streamlined core operational flows, such as order placement and position management, enabling a seamless cross-product trading experience.
Core Experience Redesign: The K-line trading interface underwent a deep overhaul, introducing “one-click order placement” and significantly shortening the path from market analysis to trade execution, enabling users to seize market opportunities more quickly. In futures trading, upgrades to modules such as the trading pair selector and order placement sector significantly increased users’ propensity to place orders. Spot and margin trading experiences were also comprehensively optimized across core modules, including order placement panels, order books, open orders, and asset displays. These enhancements deliver richer decision-making information, streamline trading actions, and markedly improve order placement efficiency.
Underlying System Breakthroughs: A new futures trading system was launched, supporting both Multi-Assets Collateral and single-crypto trading. This provides a robust system foundation for future feature expansion and rapid iteration of futures products.
2. Strategy and Copy-Trading Tools: Evolution and Growth Engines
To meet users’ increasingly diverse trading needs, HTX systematically enhanced its suite of strategy products while rolling out innovative tools designed to drive growth.
Completion and Upgrade of the Strategy Matrix: Building on the existing Spot Martingale, grid trading, and regular investment, HTX introduced Futures Martingale, forming a comprehensive portfolio of strategy products and offering users a broader range of automated trading options.
Innovative Growth Tools: HTX introduced innovative growth tools such as Spot Grid Trial Bonuses and Phase II Futures Trial Bonuses. Effectively lowering the entry threshold for strategy products, these tools became key drivers for driving user participation, trading volume, and asset growth. Data shows a significant increase in spot grid strategy adoption.
Comprehensive Upgrade of the Smart Copy System: The copy-trading product underwent a major upgrade, with a major focus on enhancing profit synchronization mechanisms and fund-isolation systems. This delivers more precise trade replication and higher-grade asset protection. In addition, the new system fully strengthened the Trader Mode, ensuring smooth and accurate trade replication even under complex strategy execution and rapidly changing market conditions.
Launch of the Upgraded SmartEarn : Yield-generation capabilities for futures holdings were further expanded. Asset balances, position margin, open-order margin, futures grid margin, and Futures Martingale margin are now all eligible to earn returns through SmartEarn, offering more flexible use cases and higher yields for users.
3. Refined Asset Management and Earn Services
HTX carried out a comprehensive revamp of all asset-related pages and functionalities, making users’ asset positions clearer at a glance and Earn operations safer and more convenient.
Redesigned Homepage: A clean layout with simplified modules and clearer asset display.
Panoramic Asset Visualization: Asset pages were fully redesigned with the introduction of a new asset overview page. Asset trends and allocations are clearly presented through charts, with support for multi-dimensional views by account, cryptocurrency, and other criteria for clearer asset summaries.
Core Feature Experience Optimization: Deposit and withdrawal processes were fully upgraded, with streamlined steps and clearer presentation of key information to ensure easier and smoother operations. At the same time, asset displays, trading panels, and order book information for spot and margin trading were optimized, improving efficiency across core trading workflows.
Enhanced Earn and Collateral Swap Services: The Earn homepage received a complete redesign, simplifying product categorization while upgrading information structure and visual presentation to enhance product distribution and intelligent recommendations. Products such as Dual Investment now feature simplified subscription and redemption processes, along with the newly introduced Auto Reinvest feature. Meanwhile, the upgraded Collateral Swap now supports multi-asset collateral and introduces interest vouchers, further improving capital utilization efficiency and operational flexibility for users.
Security and Customer Support Safeguards: On the security front, HTX added support for YubiKey hardware key binding, providing users with a higher level of asset protection. On the service side, HTX launched an AI-powered customer support system that can identify and resolve users’ issues quickly and accurately, significantly improving service quality and efficiency.
III. Security, Compliance, and User Services: Strengthening the Platform’s Foundations of Long-Term Trust
Amid industry volatility and an evolving regulatory landscape, security and compliance remain HTX’s most critical foundational capabilities. Through sustained investment in 2025, HTX’s stable, high-frequency, and systematic security operations have built a robust foundation for the platform’s long-term and sustainable growth.
1. Security Development: Round-the-Clock Risk Control + Reinforced Foundational Capabilities, with Surging USDT Reserves as a Testament to User Trust
Normalized Risk Monitoring and Stable Year-Round Risk Prevention Operations
In 2025, HTX continued to strengthen account security monitoring and user risk-alert mechanisms. Over the course of the year, the platform issued more than 3.68 million security alerts to users and successfully took down 298 phishing websites and counterfeit app download portals. These efforts reduced users’ exposure to high-risk scenarios at the source and substantially enhanced overall account security.
In the area of transaction security, HTX focused on risk prevention and loss recovery for everyday users. Throughout 2025, the platform successfully intercepted 34 withdrawal attempts to known scam addresses, helping users avert potential losses of nearly 250,000 USDT. Meanwhile, it actively cooperated with security reports from multiple external channels, handling 142 cases involving inflows of stolen assets during the year and assisting in the freezing of more than 3.54 million USDT in compromised funds, playing a constructive role in industry-wide security collaboration.
In addition, the platform added nearly 35,000 high-risk blacklisted addresses in 2025. Over the year, it intercepted 103 deposits from blacklisted addresses, with total amounts exceeding 2.47 million USDT. By continuously expanding its risk address database and refining monitoring rules, HTX effectively reduced the potential risks associated with abnormal fund inflows.
● Reserve Transparency: Ongoing Merkle Tree PoR with Clear Visibility into Asset Structure Changes
In 2025, HTX continued to publish Merkle Tree Proof of Reserves (PoR) monthly, with reserve ratios consistently maintained at 100% or higher. As the most critical benchmark within the PoR framework, this standard was upheld with consistency and stability throughout 2025, fully demonstrating the platform’s long-term commitment to comprehensive asset coverage for users. The scope of assets included in PoR disclosures also continued to expand. In 2025, assets such as WLFI and USDC were newly added, bringing the total number of assets covered by the proof of reserves to 10.
From the perspective of reserve dynamics, HTX recorded significant growth in its USDT holdings in 2025. USDT reserves increased from approximately 695 million in January to around 1.765 billion in December, representing an annual growth of roughly 150%. This sharp increase reflects the platform’s strong capital retention capability and further underscores users’ confidence in HTX’s security and reliability.
In addition, the proportion of assets held under third-party custody rose markedly. For example, USDT assets under third-party custody grew from approximately 650,000 at the beginning of the year to around 10.62 million by year-end. Through a hybrid custody model combining self-custody and third-party custody, the platform offers users more diversified and decentralized asset custody options.
● Security Mechanism Development: Continuous Enhancement of Institutional-Level Custody and Account Infrastructure
Beyond day-to-day security operations, HTX continued to strengthen its foundational security capabilities to provide long-term support for future development.
Third-Party Custody and Institutional-Level Security Capabilities
In 2025, HTX entered into a tripartite custody partnership with BitGo, launching a next-generation custody solution based on an off-chain settlement mechanism. While ensuring security, this solution delivers low-cost and low-latency settlement, further expanding custody options for institutional clients. At the same time, the platform continued to optimize functionality and enhance risk controls for Fireblocks Off Exchange, supporting the steady and sustainable growth of institutional trading volumes.
Development of the Unified Account System
In 2025, HTX officially initiated the design of its strategic Unified Account project. By enabling core features such as account consolidation, shared margin, and unified risk management, the project aims to improve capital utilization and risk management efficiency for users, laying a solid foundation for efficient development and deployment in 2026.
2. Compliance Development: Advancing Multi-Regional Licensing and Continuously Strengthening AML Frameworks
● Licensing and Regulatory Progress
In 2025, HTX continued to expand its global compliance presence across multiple key regions.
In South Asia, HTX formally obtained a No Objection Certificate (NoC) from the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), becoming one of the first two global digital asset platforms to meet Pakistan’s licensing eligibility requirements. This approval marks an important milestone, signaling that after obtaining the NoC, HTX will continue to advance subsequent compliance procedures and the formal license application process under the Virtual Assets Ordinance 2025, while maintaining close communication with regulators to complete full authorization.
In the Middle East, HTX Dubai is applying for a VASP license under the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA). The platform has already received Approval in Principle (AIP) and has entered the final review stage. Once granted, the license will support services such as stablecoin-fiat exchange, further expanding HTX’s service capabilities in the Middle Eastern market. At the same time, HTX is actively advancing applications for custody and brokerage licenses in Bahrain, where it has already received approval in principle and continues to work closely with local regulators to further strengthen its regional compliance presence.
In the Australian market, HTX officially commenced operations by the end of 2025, providing local users with compliant fiat on- and off-ramp and asset custody services. In parallel, the platform is progressing with license upgrades to meet higher regulatory standards, deepen cooperation with local banks and financial institutions, and further enhance its overall compliance and service capabilities.
● Continuous Upgrades to AML and Anti-Crypto-Crime Frameworks
In the area of anti-money laundering (AML), HTX significantly stepped up its investment in 2025, completing major upgrades to its group-level automated AML systems across critical areas such as customer identity verification, on-chain transaction monitoring, customer risk profiling, and business transaction surveillance. These upgrades substantially improved the system’s operational efficiency and detection accuracy. To address the regulatory requirements of different countries and regions, the platform has progressively built localized, standalone AML systems, providing continuous and stable technical support to ensure compliant operations across regional markets.
In addition, in August, HTX officially joined Beacon Network, the world’s first real-time cryptocurrency crime response network initiated by TRM Labs, as a founding member. Through close collaboration with leading global exchanges and law enforcement agencies, HTX once again demonstrated its firm commitment to combating illicit financial activities, safeguarding user assets, and contributing to the development of a reliable crypto ecosystem.
3. User Services: Dual Upgrades in Service Scale and Security Experience
Throughout the year, HTX’s customer support teams remained on the front line, serving more than 2.724 million user interactions and effectively handling 1.157 million online inquiries and support tickets, covering high-frequency and mission-critical scenarios such as P2P trading, on-chain deposits and withdrawals, security risk control, and KYC verification. Overall customer satisfaction (CSAT) reached 82%, reflecting HTX’s ability to deliver high-quality service while maintaining rapid response under peak concurrency.
Beyond the numbers, HTX places particular emphasis on a sense of security in its services. To this end, the platform advanced a dedicated “user rights confirmation” initiative, returning procedural control to users to ensure permissions are clearly defined and actions are fully traceable. This “user authorization — customer support assistance” model not only clarifies operational responsibilities and significantly improves service efficiency but also adds a proactive layer of defense for the security of every user’s account and personal information at the process level.
IV. Brand Influence and Community Connection: Building an Engaging and Participatory Brand Relationship
For HTX, formerly Huobi, with more than 12 years of history, a brand is not a one-way transmission of information, but a relationship forged over time through consistent practice. By expanding into broader markets, maintaining authentic interactions with participants both online and offline across regions, and responding openly and responsibly to the expectations of the industry and users, HTX’s brand image is evolving from being merely recognized to being actively participated in. It is extending beyond a platform identity into a tangible, connectable, and enduring presence.
1. Global Perspective: Deepening Presence in Key Markets to Build a Crypto Brand That Faces the World
As part of its long-term global strategy, HTX continues to elevate its brand presence on the international stage, with a focus on key markets including the CIS region, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North America. By actively participating in world-class crypto summits and hosting a diverse range of brand activities, HTX is steadily strengthening its global brand recognition and industry influence.
By integrating the broad reach of global summits with its own brand identity, HTX actively takes part in industry dialogue through brand showcases, summit sponsorships, executive panels, and ecosystem exchanges. These efforts enable HTX to engage in meaningful exchange with local users, communities, and partners, while clearly communicating its core value propositions around security, ecosystem development, and long-term growth, guiding more users into its crypto ecosystem. With an open global vision at its core, HTX is steadily building an international crypto brand that connects the world and serves diverse markets.
2. Industry Recognition: Endorsed by Both Professional Institutions and Market Data
Over the past year, HTX has received extensive recognition from authoritative institutions and leading data platforms across multiple dimensions, including industry influence, platform credibility, and business performance. At the leadership level, Justin Sun, Advisor to HTX, was named to CoinDesk’s list of “50 Most Influential People in Crypto” and received the Asia Fintech Award for “Innovator of the Year”, underscoring his prominent standing in the global crypto industry.
HTX itself was listed among Forbes’ “World’s Most Trustworthy Crypto Exchanges for 2025” and won multiple Exchange of the Year awards from industry media outlets and summits. Meanwhile, its global investment arm, HTX Ventures, garnered multiple annual investment-institution awards for its forward-looking positioning in Web3 and primary markets.
From a market-data standpoint, HTX took a major leap forward in global rankings across major data platforms. Its positions advanced notably on leading platforms such as CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, where it ranked among the top ten, while also maintaining top-tier standings on platforms including AICoin and Feixiaohao. These ranking improvements reflect the market’s recognition of HTX’s liquidity depth, user activity, and overall strength.
3. Thematic Campaigns: Tapping into Global Hotspots and Continuously Leading the Crypto Narrative
In 2025, under the guidance of Justin Sun, Global Advisor to HTX, the platform stayed attuned to global crypto trends, consistently rolling out high-impact thematic campaigns. By offering generous rewards and creative mechanics, HTX invited its users to join the celebration. From the airdrop frenzy sparked by Justin Sun’s appearance on the cover of Forbes, to the Mars Program, which committed $6 million to help ordinary individuals pursue their dreams of space exploration, and from the TRUMP Dinner to the Bitcoin Pizza Day, where participants shared in million-dollar reward pools, HTX consistently captured public attention through a series of phenomenal events. These campaigns generated tens of millions of impressions, attracted a significant influx of new users into the HTX ecosystem, and collectively marked some of the most memorable highlight moments in the crypto world.
Over the course of 12 years, HTX has not only witnessed the ups and downs of the crypto industry but has also stayed alongside countless users throughout their digital-asset journeys. In August, HTX partnered with platinum sponsor Paycoin (PCI) to launch its 12th-Anniversary Carnival. By completing tasks such as spot trading, futures trading, and deposits, users could light up a planet and unlock rewards such as trading fee rebate vouchers, 0% margin interest vouchers, and token airdrops. The event saw overwhelming participation, attracting 252,822 participants and distributing 657,338 rewards worth 1.279 million USDT in total.
4. Community Engagement: Bringing the Platform Closer to Its Participants
Over the past year, HTX reshaped its social media matrix and refined HTX Community operations, building bridges for fast and direct communication with users and achieving a breakthrough in overall brand presence.
● Social Media
HTX comprehensively expanded its social media matrix and formed an “IP customer support team” centered around its official spokesperson, Molly. With users at the center, the team actively monitors user inquiries across all channels, responds quickly, and actively drives issues through to resolution, thereby significantly strengthening user trust. By cultivating a brand persona that feels warm, engaging, and genuinely helpful, HTX effectively narrowed the perceived distance between the platform and its users and enhanced overall brand affinity. As of December, HTX’s social media ecosystem reached 3.21 million followers, representing a 26% month-on-month increase, while the community user base surpassed 850,000, up 21.2% month on month, collectively driving nearly 180 million USDT in trading volume.
● HTX Community
HTX continued to strengthen its community operations framework, focusing on user participation, content co-creation, and community culture development to continuously unlock the vitality of its community ecosystem. Throughout the year, the platform hosted 145 community events and attracted 2.374 million participants, significantly boosting user activity and sense of involvement. Through the ongoing advancement of flagship IP initiatives such as “AI Hunting”, HTX cultivated a pool of 700 active strategy analysts, forming a core force for the sustained output of professional content and market insights within the community.
In terms of content ecosystem development, the HTX Community leveraged trending topics as anchors, launching a total of 678 discussion topics throughout the year. This effectively stimulated creator participation and drove sustained growth in content supply. In 2025, total community content output increased 29% year on year, with 5.79 million pieces of content published cumulatively. These efforts continuously enriched users’ information access and interaction scenarios, propelling the community toward a more open, diverse, and sustainable content ecosystem.
5. Social Responsibility: Turning Value Commitments into Ongoing Practice
In 2025, HTX joined hands with HTX DAO to fully launch a global philanthropic initiative under the guiding principle of “on-chain transparency with real-world warmth”. Through concrete actions, the platform demonstrated the social responsibility expected of a Web3 enterprise.
In China, HTX collaborated with HTX DAO charity ambassadors Yang Guo and Lu Yao, together with community volunteers, to carry out 13+ charitable events across 10 cities. These efforts provide long-term companionship and support for children with special needs, visually impaired groups, children in remote mountainous regions, children undergoing rehabilitation, families of medical workers, and military veterans, helping build a public-welfare ecosystem that is both warm and enduring.
Overseas, HTX expanded its global philanthropic footprint to 6 countries and 11 cities, including Georgia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Türkiye, Bangladesh, and Russia. Through targeted and efficient offline assistance, these initiatives have benefited more than 400 orphans, elderly individuals, and people with disabilities.
In addition, following news of the Tai Po fire in Hong Kong, TRON and HTX swiftly activated an emergency charitable response mechanism, donating HKD 10 million in designated funds to support frontline rescue efforts, temporary accommodation for affected residents, and the provision of essential living supplies.
V. Ecosystem Development: A Long-term Approach Integrating Governance, Research, and Investment
In 2025, HTX systematically advanced the ecosystem integration of HTX DAO, HTX Ventures, and HTX Research around three core objectives: deepening governance, restoring value, and strengthening ecosystem synergy. At the DAO level, governance mechanisms were fully brought on-chain, while the token economy continued its deflationary trajectory, simultaneously reinforcing both community consensus and value capture. On the investment and research front, HTX Ventures identified emerging industry directions through a forward-looking lens, while HTX Research provided systematic analysis to support business decision-making and market communication. Together, these three formed a mutually reinforcing ecosystem loop. This multi-engine, collaborative architecture not only consolidated the long-term value foundation of $HTX but also equipped HTX with a more resilient and scalable growth base for the next industry cycle.
1. HTX DAO: Community Governance and the Rebuilding of Ecosystem Value
In 2025, HTX DAO achieved breakthrough progress in consensus formation and value restoration. Over the year, the number of $HTX holders increased by a net 160,000, bringing the total to more than 868,000 and further solidifying the community fundamentals. Meanwhile, the buyback and burn mechanism continued to operate efficiently. In the first three quarters, 36.25 trillion tokens were burned, bringing the cumulative total of burned and donated tokens to 85.87 trillion. The marked improvement in burn efficiency further reinforced the token’s value foundation.
● Decentralized Ecosystem Development
Throughout the year, HTX DAO reached four major milestones centered on “on-chain governance” and a “closed-loop ecosystem”:
Launch of on-chain voting and refinement of governance mechanisms: This year, the HTX DAO governance forum and voting system officially went live. All $HTX holders can submit proposals, initiate votes, and participate in discussions on key issues such as ecosystem expansion, fund utilization, and incentives.
Initiation of listing governance and formation of a community-driven listing process: A preliminary community-driven token listing process was established, following a closed-loop pathway of “recommendation → popularity/pre-listing leaderboard → on-chain voting → exchange listing”. This marked a major milestone in building a “People’s Exchange”. In the month that listing governance was launched, $HTX TVL recorded a net increase of 40 million USDT, clearly demonstrating the appeal of governance rights to token holders.
Upgrade of strategic top-level design: A new white paper was released, systematically outlining the DAO’s vision, tokenomics model, and on-chain product roadmap. This clarified HTX DAO’s long-term strategic direction and laid a solid theoretical foundation for future ecosystem expansion and deeper external collaboration.
Financial Infrastructure Development: On-chain staking products were launched, forming a “staking → yield” financial closed loop and enabling a transition from “governance through token holding” to a financial ecosystem based on “shared returns”.
● Confidence Journey
In 2025, HTX DAO continued to roll out its “Confidence Journey” offline event series, hosting 21 sessions across Dubai, Singapore, South Korea, and multiple major cities in China, with more than 1,600 participants. Through face-to-face community gatherings and in-depth exchanges, HTX DAO presented its governance mechanisms, listing practices, and latest milestones in an accessible manner. These engagements not only strengthened community consensus but also significantly enhanced members’ understanding of and participation in the DAO governance model.
2. Investment and Research: An Industry Barometer and Ecosystem Engine, Building a Panoramic Research Framework
Over the past year, HTX Ventures and HTX Research fully leveraged their role as industry observatories, continuously deepening the integrated investment and research framework. A total of 41 in-depth research reports were published throughout the year, structured around three core pillars: professional research reports, investment research reports, and sector-focused research reports. Beyond analytical depth, these reports also emphasized accuracy in trend anticipation. Research delved into technological frontiers such as DeFi innovation, real-world assets (RWAs), AI agents and agent frameworks, while also addressing key macro-financial themes including stablecoin payments, crypto policy compliance and dollarization, and tokenized stocks. Specifically, HTX Research released 12 sector-focused reports closely aligned with listing timelines, providing rigorous value assessments and risk disclosures for newly listed projects and helping users invest rationally.
Through this series of high-quality research reports, HTX Ventures and HTX Research helped users cut through market noise to gain a comprehensive understanding of industry dynamics and technological evolution. This enabled them to make more forward-looking asset allocation and financial management decisions, effectively translating information access into long-term value creation.
In addition, HTX Research launched a premium column, HTX DeepThink, offering global users clear and insightful market analysis grounded in macroeconomic context, major industry events, crypto market trends, and more. The column further promotes industry dialogue and advances user education across the global crypto community.
HTX’s 2026 Roadmap and Outlook
The year 2025 was bound to be a defining chapter in the development of HTX. Amid intense market competition, HTX proactively broke through constraints, continuously amplifying its brand presence and its influence within global crypto culture. At the same time, during periods of market volatility, HTX upheld its responsibilities with concrete action, deploying real capital to safeguard users’ assets. These actions demonstrated not only HTX’s drive for growth and innovation but also its pragmatic commitment to serving users.
As the global crypto market and regulatory landscape continue to evolve, HTX will build on the solid foundation established in 2025 and further deepen its “user-first” philosophy. By elevating service quality, strengthening innovation capabilities, and raising security standards, HTX aims to create a more resilient, efficient, and value-driven global digital asset ecosystem. In 2026, HTX will advance its strategic positioning across all business lines around the following key priorities:
I. Core Trading Ecosystem: Strengthening Professional Capabilities and User Experience
Focusing on the three core trading scenarios of spot, futures, and P2P, HTX will consolidate and elevate its professional competitiveness through product innovation, experience optimization, and ecosystem development.
1. Deepening the Spot Trading Ecosystem: From Traffic-Driven to Value-Driven
● Product Upgrades: HTX will prioritize upgrades to its spot grid products, enhancing intelligent parameter recommendations and risk alerts. Coverage will be expanded across major cryptocurrencies, hot volatile tokens, and stablecoins, forming an automated trading loop that covers the entire process from opportunity discovery to continuous performance review.
● New Asset Listings: Adhering to a strategy of “restoring value”, HTX will tighten listing standards and prioritize assets with real revenue generation, compliance foundations, and sustainable business models. Strategic focus will be placed on high-certainty sectors such as RWA, prediction markets, perpetual DEX infrastructure, and mobile PayFi.
● Experience Optimization: The platform will continue refining the end-to-end trading experience, improving order placement smoothness and the clarity of information presentation.
2. Enhancing Futures Trading Competitiveness: Smarter, More Diverse, and Highly Interactive
● Functions and Systems: The futures system will undergo deep optimization to improve order-placement efficiency, position management, and stability. The new single-asset system will be fully adopted to remove underlying bottlenecks.
● Strategy Matrix: HTX will enrich its suite of strategy bots, such as Martingale and intelligent arbitrage, while launching a “Strategy Marketplace”. Copy trading for futures will also be upgraded to a more advanced version.
● Campaigns and Capital Efficiency: Activity entry points will be consolidated into a one-stop futures campaign hub, with strategy products integrated into individual trading competitions. Returns on SmartEarn products will be upgraded, and support for Multi-Assets Collateral will be further expanded.
3. Renovating the P2P Trading Experience: Building a Social and Intelligent Network
● Social Trading Closed Loop: HTX will fully integrate the P2P flow of “chat — payment — transfer”, creating a social trading ecosystem with private-domain operational capabilities and shortening communication and transaction paths.
● Intelligent Matching Engine: An AI-powered order-listing system will be introduced to identify real-time supply and demand, automatically optimize pricing and order amount, and improve matching efficiency and success rates.
● Global Compliant On- and Off-Ramps: In key markets, HTX will expand compliant fiat-to-stablecoin channels, offering users secure, reliable, and localized options for deposits and withdrawals.
II. Capital Management Choices: Expanding Yield Scenarios and Efficiency Tools
HTX will deliver one-stop solutions for asset appreciation and efficient capital management, catering to the full spectrum of user needs from conservative investors to professional traders.
1. Wealth Management (HTX Earn): A Focus on Predictable Returns
● Priority will be given to upgrading VIP Earn products and benefit structures, offering more refined, long-term yield solutions.
● Subscription processes and risk disclosures will be further optimized to enhance product transparency and ensure that returns remain sustainable and trustworthy.
2. Leverage and Lending Tools: Maximizing Capital Efficiency
● Margin Trading: Position yield displays and one-click order placement will be further optimized. Meanwhile, user costs will be reduced through initiatives such as Collateral Swap Promos and limited-time zero-interest campaigns, stimulating trading activity.
● Collateral Swap: VIP loan products will be further standardized, with exploration of credit-limit policies and expansion of supported assets to nearly 100, meeting the diverse allocation needs of professional traders.
● Liquidity Boost: For professional trading institutions, HTX will expand OTC loan product lines that support pure futures trading, while optimizing margin currency mechanisms to improve capital efficiency.
III. Platform Support Framework: Strengthening the Foundations of Security, Experience, and Ecosystem
Across multiple dimensions, including security assurance, user services, product experience, and brand ecosystem, HTX will systematically reinforce the foundational pillars that underpin its long-term growth.
1. Security and Compliance: Reinforcing the Foundation of Trust
● Security Technology: HTX will dynamically enhance the asset coverage of its Proof of Reserves (PoR), expand support for third-party custody solutions, and explore the adoption of advanced security technologies such as Multi-Party Computation (MPC).
● Compliance and Risk Control: Closely tracking global regulatory developments, HTX will continue to advance the intelligence and precision of its anti-money laundering (AML) monitoring systems, ensuring that operations remain compliant and controllable.
2. User Experience and Service Upgrades: Intelligent, Efficient, and Stable
● Intelligent Services: HTX will further strengthen AI-powered customer support capabilities, allowing common issues to be resolved within seconds. At the same time, foundational upgrades to the customer support system will be carried out to fundamentally resolve stability issues such as session drops and service interruptions.
● Product Experience: The platform will enhance homepage information distribution and further refine the account system, while advancing in-platform AI-powered investment assistance capabilities. Earn and trading scenarios will be more seamlessly integrated, alongside continuous optimization of asset module presentation and analytical capabilities.
3. Brand, Campaigns, and Ecosystem Co-Creation: Building a Vibrant Global Community
● Brand and Market Reputation: With a global vision, HTX will further amplify its brand visibility, focusing on key regional markets such as the CIS, Dubai, and Southeast Asia, achieving an integration of global outreach and localized operations.
● Asset Campaigns: HTX will design a broader range of themed trading campaigns and ecosystem engagement events. The scale and asset quality of Launchpool will be expanded, while yield mechanisms will be further optimized to empower $HTX.
● HTX DAO: HTX DAO will continue to execute quarterly token burns, with cumulative $HTX burns expected to surpass 10% of total issuance, further strengthening the token’s scarcity and long-term value foundation. It will deepen community-driven listing governance and actively expand the adoption and staking yield of $HTX across on-chain finance and other use cases.
● HTX Ventures: HTX Ventures will remain focused on early-stage projects that combine cutting-edge technology with real-world application value, ramp up investments in blockchain infrastructure, and expedite the large-scale adoption of Web3 applications.
All that has passed is now part of history. As we look toward 2026, a new journey is already unfolding. The tides of the crypto world never rest, but the rewards for long-termists are only just emerging.
We are grateful to every user for their enduring trust and support, and to every partner who has walked alongside us. In 2026, HTX looks forward to continuing this journey with all of you, advancing steadily along the path of innovation and compliance, reshaping value amid transformation, defining the future through challenge, and jointly writing a new chapter for digital assets.
To learn more about HTX, please visit https://www.htx.com/?invite_code=9cqt3 or HTX Square , and follow HTX on X, Telegram, and Discord.
The post first appeared on HTX Square.
