Huobi buys self-made Singaporean businessman’s licensed crypto exchange

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Photo Credit: Eric Cheng

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Barely four months after acquiring Japanese-licensed cryptocurrency exchange BitTrade with his hard-earned money, Singaporean entrepreneur Eric Cheng is cashing in on his investment.

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Cheng today announced that global crypto giant Huobi has taken a controlling stake in BitTrade for an undisclosed sum.

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He believes the deal is the “right step as we look to continue our rapid growth.”

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Huobi’s chief financial officer Chris Lee says they plan to tap Cheng’s international network in their ongoing expansion.

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Cheng is an air steward-turned-real estate developer who began exploring crypto investments last year. In an earlier interview with Tech in Asia, he shared how he sold his multimillion-dollar house and luxury cars to help raise the US$50 million he needed to buy BitTrade. That made him the first foreign investor to own a full stake in a Japanese-licensed trading platform.

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Huobi is the world’s third-largest crypto exchange by trading volume. Launched in 2013, it moved its operations from Beijing to Singapore last year, following China’s crackdown on crypto trading.

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The deal with Cheng comes as no surprise. Huobi had aimed to set up two crypto exchanges in Japan this year through a tie-up with Japanese financial group SBI. That plan didn’t pan out, however, after SBI decided to go it alone.

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Tech in Asia has requested for the specifics of the deal, but the parties declined to divulge the information.