Huobi Group, the leading blockchain asset solutions provider, announced today the opening of its London office and the appointment of Lester Li as European Exchange Director and Josh Goodbody as General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Huobi UK.
These new senior level hires come at a time of rapid expansion by Huobi in Europe and high demand from the digital asset trading community.
Huobi’s presence in London will provide improved access to European financial markets and will enable UK-based blockchain and crypto asset startups to benefit from Huobi Labs and the Huobi Ecosystem Fund.
The news follows Huobi’s sell-out Quant Trading Summits in London and Amsterdam in June 2018, which saw over 200 crypto trading experienced crypto traders attend each event. At the summits, Huobi unveiled the extension of its over-the-counter (OTC) digital asset trading services to the European market.
London was selected as the first office in Europe, due to its preeminence as a global financial center and the largest cryptocurrency trading centre in the region with an active blockchain community and fast developing market. Huobi’s UK growth will be supported by high quality finance and technology talent pools and an open cryptocurrency regulatory environment.
Lester Li formerly led the Fintech Investment Banking Team at China Renaissance and brings to the role of European Exchange Director a wealth of experience from the worlds of finance and financial technology. CCO and General Counsel Josh Goodbody comes to Huobi UK from Autilla, where he was Head of Legal for the commodities FinTech company and prior to that Counsel at State Street, covering the Futures & Options Execution and Clearing business and the FX Connect and Currenex Multilateral trading facilities.
Huobi OTC will provide over-the-counter services for those who wish to trade large volumes of virtual currency. Set for UK beta testing in Q3 2018, Huobi OTC will protect users against price volatility; unlike with other platforms, transactions will be free with no commission fees.
Huobi OTC compliments Huobi’s Quant Trading service which allows investors to utilise the functions of market making, arbitrage and trend predictions. By using quantitative analysis based on mathematical computations, trading opportunities are found which, due to their complexity, require execution by an automated system. One of the clear benefits of quant trading is that emotion is removed from the trading process.
Lester Li, Director of Huobi Exchange, commented: “The launch of Huobi Group’s office in London is in response to the high demand we have seen in Europe, which was perfectly illustrated this month with huge turnouts at our Amsterdam and London quant trading summits. Our OTC and Quant Trading services are significant enhancements to the Huobi product suite and we look forward to rolling out other services to improve the trading experience for Huobi customers in the future.”