The first half of 2026 has concluded. It was a turbulent six months for the crypto market, marked by rapid sector rotations across AI, RWA, stablecoins, and TradFi. As market opportunities shift rapidly and narratives rise and fall, traders and investors are asking one key question:
Which platform can identify emerging trends first while remaining secure and reliable enough to earn their trust?
For over 59.49 million registered users worldwide, HTX has delivered a compelling half-year performance report. According to DeFiLlama data, HTX repeatedly ranked at the top of the industry for daily and weekly net capital inflows. Concurrently, the platform has continued to advance its global compliance footprint and secured prestigious international accolades, including Best P2P Platform of the Year and Best Web3 Venture Capital Institution of the Year, further strengthening its brand influence. Behind these numbers lies a clear trend: an increasing number of users are choosing HTX as their platform for managing assets, trading, and investing.
Spot Trading Nearing $400 Billion as Trending Assets Deliver Outsized Wealth Effects
For retail investors, the defining characteristic of the market this year has been the accelerating pace of sector rotations. Meme coins give way to AI; AI yields to RWA, BTCFi, stablecoins, and TradFi — with some projects delivering multi-fold returns in a matter of days.
In the first half of the year, HTX carefully selected and listed 58 new assets aligned with market trends, spanning almost every high-conviction sector, including meme coins, AI, RWA, BTCFi, and stablecoins. Guided by the principle of listing what the market demands, HTX rigorously vetted projects to curate high-quality assets with strong wealth creation potential. The Chinese-culture-inspired meme coin “老子” surged 573% after listing, while “我踏马来了” gained 412%. In the AI sector, ELSA delivered an exceptional peak gain of 620%, while BNKR and RIVER climbed 162% and 282%, respectively. For many users, HTX was the first venue where they discovered and purchased these trending tokens.
Equally important has been HTX’s first-mover advantage in listing multiple top-tier assets. Following its joint listing debut, Billions Network (BILL) surpassed a $2 billion market capitalization, delivering a 141% gain. After HTX became the first platform to list CHIP, multiple major exchanges quickly followed. Meanwhile, the jointly launched RWA project BTW recorded a peak gain of 388%, while ZEST climbed 131% after listing. By Q2 2026, as the market’s focus shifted toward narrative-driven sectors such as RWA, AI computing, and stablecoins, HTX stayed ahead of the curve by listing RWA leader RE (up 145%), AI computing project OpenGradient (OPG, up 118%), and MegaETH ecosystem stablecoin CAP, capitalizing on every major market trend. HTX has consistently enforced its delisting mechanism, removing tokens with insufficient liquidity or inactive development teams. This market-based selection approach continuously enhances asset quality, helping direct users’ capital toward projects with genuine value and strong liquidity.
The spot trading data tells an even clearer story. In H1 2026, more than 420,000 users traded spot, generating $379 billion in trading volume. HTX now supports over 612 spot trading pairs, spanning mainstream assets, trending sectors, and high-potential new projects. With deep liquidity, fast execution, and robust security, HTX continues to provide a trusted trading platform for users worldwide. Furthermore, HTX launched its “Predict FIFA World Cup 2026 Matches” campaign and continued to host its flagship Trading Championship series, engaging tens of thousands of active participants. These initiatives transformed trading from a simple execution process into an interactive, reward-rich experience.
Beyond Buying Crypto Assets, HTX Earn Turns Idle Assets Into Continuous Yield
A growing number of users recognize that active trading alone does not maximize capital efficiency. In the first half of the year, HTX Earn saw its subscription user base exceed 120,000, with cumulative subscription volume breaking past $4.1 billion.
Stablecoins remain the most sought-after vehicle. Flexible Earn products for USDT, USDC, and USDD delivered maximum APYs of up to 10%. For trending assets, the platform launched 50 fixed and flexible Earn products offering maximum APYs of 20%, drawing over $500 million in cumulative subscriptions from more than 50,000 participants. For high-net-worth users, HTX introduced the VIP Flexible product, initially offering up to 9% APY on USDT. Combining premium yields with flexible subscription and redemption, it enables large capital allocations to achieve greater capital efficiency. For many long-term holders, assets are no longer left idle waiting for price appreciation — they are generating daily passive income.
Futures traders can also keep their capital actively utilized. Following its upgrade, SmartEarn reached a peak APY of 7.21% and has maintained an average APY of around 2.5% in recent months. More importantly, deposited assets can still be used as margin for futures trading, allowing users to earn yield without missing trading opportunities. In addition, USDD SmartEarn offers an exclusive fixed APY of 4%.
HTX Leads TradFi Integration While AI-Powered Tools Redefine the Trading Experience
A structural trend is taking shape in 2026: crypto-native users increasingly want unified access to both digital assets and global traditional financial instruments. HTX has positioned itself as a first-mover in the TradFi tokenization sector.
In H1 2026, HTX futures trading volume approached $500 billion, while the number of supported trading pairs surpassed 350. Within this lineup, the TradFi sector alone generated over $1.5 billion in trading volume, spanning 129 assets across high-growth sectors such as AI, gold, commodities, U.S. equities, ETFs, aerospace, and new energy. In May 2026, HTX took the lead in listing highly anticipated Pre-IPO assets, including SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, providing users with a vastly diversified investment suite. Earlier in H1, the platform successfully timed market movements driven by geopolitical tensions and energy constraints, capturing significant volume in cyclical commodities like crude oil, base metals, and natural gas.
Meanwhile, the Futures system has also undergone a comprehensive infrastructure upgrade, introducing new features such as enhanced capital efficiency for Cross Margin, independent leverage for Isolated Margin, Smart Copy Trading, AI Lead Trader Recommendations, Trailing Grid, and Auto-Deposit Margin. These enhancements enable users to trade with greater flexibility and efficiency. For regular users, highly complex strategies are now executed automatically by the product itself. The copy trading division exhibited counter-cyclical growth in H1: the number of lead traders surged 53% quarter-over-quarter, driving lead trading volume up 74%, while follower trading volume jumped 44% over the same period. For users who prefer a hands-off approach, Futures Grid bots recorded $1.18 billion in trading volume in the first half of the year. With Trailing Grid set to launch in early July, the grid will automatically adjust as the market moves, allowing users to trade more efficiently without monitoring the market every day.
In the first half of this year, nearly every core product in the HTX suite received an upgrade. Following app startup speed optimizations, launch speeds improved by over 55% on iOS and approximately 44% on Android, making app opening wait times nearly imperceptible. The platform also introduced professional modules such as the TradFi Market Leaderboards, Tokenomics Displays, and expanded K-line indicators. Most notably, the official launch of the HTX Holo, the platform’s AI-powered trading assistant, has dramatically lowered the barrier to market information. Capable of interpreting market charts, summarizing news feeds, and actively recommending tailored Earn products, it effectively functions as an institutional-grade research assistant embedded directly within the app. Furthermore, a unified Event Center and fully revamped live-streaming rooms were rolled out across the half-year, allowing users to easily participate in platform events.
Global Expansion Continues as HTX DAO Ecosystem Growth and Deflationary Mechanics Advance in Parallel
HTX Research and HTX Ventures continue to serve as the exchange’s strategic watchtower over the digital-asset industry. In the first half of 2026, the team published a total of 6 major research reports centered on core topics such as AI, RWA, stablecoins, TradFi, geopolitics, and the linkage between these themes and the crypto market. These include 2025 Annual Review: Crypto Assets Move Toward Mainstream Adoption, The Rise of Yield-Bearing Currency: How Crypto Neobanks Are Challenging the Traditional Banking Model, RWA Perps: A New Frontier in the On-Chain Expansion of Global Financial Markets, and the Q3 forward-looking report Liquidity Defines Crypto: A New Crypto Order Under Global Liquidity Repricing. The team has not only continued to deliver in-depth research content, but has also built the long-term content brand HTX DeepThink, publishing 73 market insight articles in the first half of the year, along with weekly market reviews to help users establish a clearer investment framework amid complex market conditions.
On the offline front, HTX organized and prepared 17 distinct brand events across the first half of the year, targeting key regions such as Southeast Asia and Turkey. Through industry summits, high-end VIP gala dinners, and regional strategic partnerships, the platform steadily deepened its global brand footprint. Meanwhile, the platform has also won numerous international awards, including Best P2P Platform of the Year and Best Web3 Venture Capital Institution of the Year, further enhancing its brand credibility and industry recognition.
Throughout H1 2026, HTX DAO actively drove the expansion of the $HTX ecosystem while reinforcing its long-term value framework through an open, transparent token deflation mechanism. Official disclosures confirm that HTX DAO successfully completed two major $HTX token burns on January 15 and April 15, 2026. This brings the cumulative total of $HTX burned and pledged to 110.32 trillion tokens to date, representing over 11% of the total token supply and establishing an annualized deflation rate of approximately 5.5%. This persistent mechanism makes $HTX one of the very few governance tokens in the industry to execute a transparent, large-scale, and long-term public token burn strategy. Concurrently, HTX DAO expanded its utility use cases and optimized its community governance framework. This included upgrading membership benefits, broadening yield opportunities, exploring AI × Web3 ecosystems, maintaining community consensus, and fostering developer networks through the Genesis Program, Hackathons, and Grants—effectively connecting developers, protocols, and the community to bolster long-term holder confidence.
45 Consecutive Months of PoR Disclosures, Establishing Security as a Core Competitive Edge
For many users new to the crypto market, security is the top priority, not returns. HTX continuously enhances platform transparency through Merkle Tree Proof of Reserves (PoR). The latest data shows that as of July 1, 2026 (UTC), the reserve ratios of major assets on the platform, including BTC, ETH, TRX, USDs, HTX, XRP, DOGE, and SOL, have all remained above 100%. HTX is committed to a strict 1:1 reserve principle, ensuring user assets can be traded and withdrawn at any time. Crucially, HTX has now publicly disclosed its PoR data for 45 consecutive months, making it one of the earliest and most consistent platforms in the industry to normalize routine reserve disclosures. This framework allows users to view reserves transparently, verify individual assets, and trade with complete peace of mind.
HTX has also pushed forward its global compliance architecture. In H1 2026, HTX advanced its licensing efforts in Kyrgyzstan. Following the acquisition of a No Objection Certificate (NoC) from the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), the platform proceeded with local corporate registration and the application process for a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license. Meanwhile, HTX continued to align its operations with Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) framework, further strengthening its global regulatory foundation.
Evolution from “Trading Exchange” to “Global Digital Asset Service Platform”
A review of the first half of 2026 demonstrates that HTX’s strategic focus extends far beyond mere volume growth. From listing high-potential assets early and maximizing capital efficiency through Earn products to expanding access to global investment opportunities via TradFi, empowering AI-assisted trading, and strengthening global compliance and security, HTX is building a one-stop digital asset service platform spanning trading, Earn, research, asset management, and global investment opportunities.
For users, these developments converge into a tangible improvement in their daily experience: more opportunities, better products, stronger asset security, and more efficient investing. As AI, RWA, stablecoins, TradFi, and other emerging narratives continue to evolve in the second half of 2026, the crypto market will present new growth opportunities. HTX remains committed to anchoring this growth by providing its global user base with richer asset classes, fully optimized product suites, and an expanded international presence.
Markets will always change. But for HTX, the true measure of the road ahead lies in its ability to seize every emerging opportunity while safeguarding users’ assets. That commitment will define HTX’s next chapter.
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. For further inquiries, please contact [email protected].
The post first appeared on HTX Square.
