With the passage of Bitcoin spot ETF in the United States, the price of Bitcoin has exceeded $72,000 and hit a record high. A group of global investors have shifted their attention to crypto assets. The latest data shows that the total asset management scale of Bitcoin spot ETF has reached $56.8 billion. At the same time, the market value of Bitcoin and Ethereum has risen to the 9th and 24th place in the global asset rankings respectively.

In this cryptocurrency boom, major trading platforms have shown their magical powers, trying to occupy more shares in the fiercely competitive market and share the dividends of this capital feast.

If we look back at history, with Bitcoin prices as the industry vane, for trading platforms, starting to deeply layout the market one year before the halving is the time with the highest input-output ratio. It also helps to create a wealth effect for platform users.

HTX, originally established in 2013, has experienced multiple rounds of complete bull and bear cycles, and is deeply embedded in the industry change cycle. Before the price of Bitcoin hit a new high, it had already attracted a large number of users and reshaped its brand with its keen market insight and innovative strategic deployment.

Gathering Wealth Effect, Meme Kingdom

Many users may mistakenly believe that the profitability of trading platforms has little to do with them. However, in fact, there is a symbiotic relationship between trading platforms and users: only those platforms that can bring convenience and wealth effects to users can achieve sustainable development. The ability to gather wealth effects is also an important criterion for evaluating the soft power of trading platforms.

According to statistics from the well-known KOL John Squire, in the past 15 months, HTX, Binance, and OKX have launched different numbers of assets. Since November 2023, HTX has accelerated the pace of asset launches.

Image source: Crypto KOL John Squire

The speed of new asset listings has increased without sacrificing the quality of the projects. In fact, 85% of the tokens have increased by more than 5 times since listing, including hundreds of times such as WIF and GTAI.

The competition between trading platforms is essentially a fight for traffic and assets. During the DeFi Summer, HTX, once known as one of the "Big Three", missed the opportunity for development due to cumbersome internal processes and lack of market foresight, resulting in lagging behind in the last bull market.

In this round of bull market, Meme has become a well-deserved hot track, but it has been ignored by many first-tier platforms. HTX, which missed the DeFi Summer, bet on Meme Summer in the hope of catching up. Meme itself is the product of the combination of culture and cryptocurrency. It is driven by strong narrative and virality, which can generate huge traffic and bring a large number of users to the trading platform. The latest data shows that in the first quarter of 2024, the HTX trading platform accounted for 95% of the trading volume of listed MEME tokens.

Bottoming out, revenue increased by 42% quarter-on-quarter

It is well known that in the crypto industry, living a long life is better than anything else. Only by being alive can you have the opportunity to take off in the wind.

Recently, the concept of Restaking proposed by the founder of Eigenlayer has rapidly emerged as an emerging market worth tens of billions of dollars, and HTX followed closely and launched the Liquid Restake service.

The core mechanism of Restaking is that the tokens or derivatives that have been pledged can be pledged again, so that participants can obtain additional benefits. It was initially popular in Ethereum and gradually expanded to networks such as Bitcoin.

HTX is based on the original form and has made innovations. Users only need to keep their assets in the HTX trading platform account, and investors do not need to directly provide funds for staking. In addition, the platform has invested $100 million in staking and shared the benefits with users. Although the benefits obtained by participating in HTX activities may be lower than directly participating in on-chain staking, it provides advantages such as low risk, strong asset liquidity, and low participation threshold.

In addition, HTX has also launched activities such as Trade To Earn and transaction punch-in. According to incomplete statistics, HTX launched 70 activities in January, 53 activities in February, and 79 activities in March. These activities have driven HTX's revenue growth, and the increase in revenue can support more activities, thereby empowering users. According to the speculation of well-known KOL John Squire, HTX's revenue in the first quarter was about 42 million US dollars, a 42% increase from 29.58 million US dollars in the fourth quarter of 2024. Meanwhile, Binance and OKX's latest quarterly growth rates were 27% and 18%.

Driven by a series of operational activities, the total assets of the HTX trading platform have also reached a new high. According to Nansen data, HTX's total assets reached 5.7 billion US dollars, a month-on-month increase of 72%.

Rebranding, from HT to HTX

For HTX users and HT holders, the biggest change in the past few years is not how many high-quality assets HTX has launched, but the emergence of HTX DAO.

HTX DAO was officially established on January 18, 2024. It is an open decentralized autonomous organization community. HTX tokens will not only replace HT tokens, but will also become the governance token of the HTX platform and DAO. This change marks a new chapter in the HTX ecosystem.

Justin Sun will play an important role in this as the initiator of HTX DAO and a member of the HTX Global Advisory Board. Of course, when Justin Sun was a member of the HTX Global Advisory Board in the early days, HT experienced multiple crisis events of liquidity depletion and short-term token plunges, which caused users to lose confidence in the future development of the platform.

In order to rebuild users' confidence in the platform tokens, HTX has launched a new attempt. To this end, HTX DAO introduced a "liquidity pledge" mechanism. Starting in 2024, the HTX trading platform will allocate 50% of its quarterly revenue to "liquidity pledge". HTX DAO will inject liquidity into the TRX-HTX pool on SUN.io and destroy the LP tokens obtained.

This behavior represents that HTX DAO has given up the ownership of HTX and TRX. Both HTX and TRX in the liquidity pool cannot be redeemed, which will help improve the previous liquidity crisis and prevent excessive market fluctuations in a short period of time. At the same time, this move also strengthens the connection between TRON and HTX DAO. As a public chain network co-created by Justin Sun, TRON is one of the most active public chains on the market, bringing thousands of times returns to investors. Currently, Tether has issued nearly $55 billion USDT on TRON, making it the main public chain with the most USDT issuance and usage scenarios.

The HTX token not only inherits all the functions of HT, but also adds more functions and rights, further expanding its scope of application in the HTX ecosystem.

According to the official statement of HTX DAO, the income from all BTC/USDT spot transactions in the HTX trading platform will be used to repurchase and destroy HTX tokens. Users who participate in the Trade To Earn event will receive HTX rewards that exceed their transaction fees; for example, if a user uses 10 USDT for BTC/USDT transactions, they will receive HTX equivalent to 11 USDT. This part of HTX comes from the official repurchase funds. Since not all users participate in the Trade To Earn event, the amount of repurchase and destruction will inevitably exceed the issuance.

Despite the numerous activities and benefits launched by HTX DAO, some users in the community are concerned that this may lead to overuse of HTX and may overdraw its future growth potential. At the same time, some investors have pointed out that HTX DAO's efforts to promote HTX are not sufficient.

HTX, which has undergone a rebranding, is now in its 11th year. The establishment of HTX DAO marks a major shift in the HTX ecosystem. It not only promotes the practice of decentralized governance, but also gives HTX new vitality.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia