The three major exchanges in the coin circle, OK, Huobi, and Binance, have all protected their rights. However, unlike Xu Xingxing and Zhao Changpeng, Li Lin is rarely named by users.
This may have something to do with his personality.
Founder of Huobi: Li Lin
Li Lin was born in Hengyang, Hunan Province, 3 years older than Xu Xingxing, but he really can't see it by looking at the photos. In 2001, Li Lin was admitted to Tongji University, and in 2005, he was admitted to the graduate school of the Department of Automation of Tsinghua University.
After graduation, from joining the Oracle Bone Company to founding the "Friendship Network" social networking site, from the establishment of the "Renren Fold" group buying website, Li Lin has experienced failure and successfully earned tens of millions of assets. But he did not like to be dominated, he once again took the initiative to change his direction, experienced three transformations, and finally created the Huobi network.
Deeply aware of the problems of the Experience of China's Bitcoin Exchange at that time, on May 15, 2013, Li Lin purchased the official domain name "Huobiwang" and named the company "Huobi Network" in order to avoid the harmonic "currency network".
Learning the lessons of the first venture, the entrepreneurial team this time is also relatively mature, he first pulled less than 10 people to come and do it together, and later developed to thirty or forty people. On September 1, 2013, Huobi was officially launched, positioning itself as the most professional bitcoin trading platform in China, and announced that it would permanently waive the handling fee (and resumed the fee in 2017).
"Just like 360's original antivirus free, some undertakings always have to innovate. Compared with transaction fees, we value the value-added services provided to users. "The free measures have brought great shock to the industry, and huobi has suddenly become the most popular bitcoin trading platform for users."
In November 2013, Huobi received a joint investment from Zhen Fund and angel investor Dai Zhikang, and Wang Qiang, co-founder of Zhen Fund, even enthusiastically praised Huobi.com; in April 2014, Huobi.com received tens of millions of yuan of investment from Sequoia Capital A.
At its peak, Huobi once occupied more than 50% of the global bitcoin trading market, becoming the world's largest bitcoin trading platform. ”
In the next few years, Li Lin walked in a frightening way. Domestic policy on digital currency has been unclear, and on his head, there has been a sword of supervision for illegal fund-raising and financial fraud. During the time of the barbaric growth of the entire exchange market, Li Lin walked on thin ice.
In the summer of 2017, Li Lin gradually left most of the daily management affairs of Huobi due to physical reasons. According to insiders, Li Lin's mental condition during that time has not been very good, and he suffered from neurasthenia. Li Lin even planned to sell the company and stop doing it.
It is reported that the acquirer of due diligence at that time was a wealth group and a well-known angel investor, with a valuation of $150 million. However, for various reasons, in the process of closing, the transaction was finally rejected and could not be reached.
In September 2017, the regulatory "cutter" finally fell. On September 4, the central bank and other 7 ministries and commissions issued the "Announcement on Preventing the Risk of Token Issuance and Financing", calling off ICOs.
Huobi stopped trading all digital assets against the renminbi on October 31. At the same time, Li Lin and other core executives of the exchange were restricted from leaving Beijing.
In this storm, Huobi chose to avoid Singapore and established the Huobi Global Station. Later, Huobi Global Station became the core of Huobi Group's exchange business, contributing most of the traffic and revenue in Huobi Exchange business.
At the beginning of 2018, Huobi experienced a round of rapid expansion: the team size changed from more than 300 people at the beginning of the year to more than 1300 people in the second half of the year, and the business changed from the original only exchange to the globalization of horizontal trading business, with Huobi Global Station, South Korea Station, Japan Station; vertical whole industry chain layout, including wallets, mining pools, capital, research institutes, Fire News, Fire News, Public Chain and other aspects of the industry.
Li Lin was absent from the period of rapid expansion of Huobi, and Zhu Jiawei, who was coo at the time, was the main trader in this period.
But under the crazy expansion, there are various problems and risks hidden in Huobi. Li Lin had to come back.
In June 2018, Li Lin published an open letter as the founder of Huobi Group and began to officially return to the daily management of Huobi. At this time, Li Lin had been out of the specific management of Huobi for more than half a year.
In August, Weng Xiaoqi joined the company as VP, responsible for marketing work, and reported to COO Zhu Jiawei. Three months later, Weng Xiaoqi was appointed CEO of Huobi Global. At the same time, the hidden diseases brought about by the rapid expansion of the group began to erupt.
In July, September 12, September 26 and October 15, Huobi experienced very serious downtime, such as the inability to withdraw orders, the lack of transactions, and the freezing of assets after operation. A large number of users believe that the downtime of Huobi is highly overlapping with market shocks. As soon as there is an up and down, Huobi will appear in this situation, and there is a suspicion of malicious operation.
Extreme markets pull up network lines, launch garbage projects, and become a channel for criminals to launder money, and Huobi has become an exchange that everyone shouts and fights in China. In the second half of 2018, Huobi was on the verge of extinction, with tight cash flow, power struggles, illegal layoffs, internal corruption, and failure to go to sea and other events being exposed during this period, which greatly overdrawn the trust of users. Some media commented: "Huobi may be dead, but the body is still hot."
In addition, with the exception of the Singapore station, which has always assumed the name of headquarters, the four strategic fortresses envisioned by Li Lin have made slow progress. Among them, the US station has developed for more than a year, but it has been difficult to land; the Japanese station has acquired a high local compliance exchange, but the transaction volume is dismal. Subject to Japan's relevant policies, it is difficult to expand operations, and it has to rely on group subsidies to survive; the number of personnel at South Korea stations has shrunk by nearly half; and the Australian stations have been closed and merged. And the rest of the sub-stations or follow in the footsteps of the Australian station or difficult operation.
Since then, Li Lin and Weng Xiaoqi have said in a number of public occasions that although Huobi has laid out compliance teams in 12 countries or regions around the world, it has found that the local market is difficult to open or not mature enough.
In late 2018, Huobi's spending budget began to tighten. At the beginning of 2019, the various departments of Huobi Group began to bear their own profits and losses, and if they could not generate enough profits, they faced layoffs, downsizings or personnel splits and merged into other departments.
In March 2019, Huobi Singapore began subleasing offices and selling furniture on multiple public platforms due to excessive costs. In June, the company was deregistered. At this point, the global layout of Huobi can be described as a complete collapse.
After the comeback, Li Lin performed a major operation on Huobi: focusing on core business, strengthening the construction of the middle and back office, adjusting the marginal departments, and strengthening internal risk control. At the same time, he began to make his own efforts for Huobi compliance.
In August 2018, the major shareholders of Tongcheng Holdings, a company listed on the main board of Hong Kong stocks, transferred 73.73% and 6.8% of the equity to Li Lin, chairman of Huobi Group, and Teng Rongsong, chairman of Fission Capital, respectively, and after the completion of the transfer, Huobi Group became the actual controller of Tongcheng Holdings. In September of the same year, Huobi China announced its settlement in Hainan.
At the end of 2018, the American technology magazine Silicon Valley Review named the list of "Top 50 Most Respected Companies of the Year", and Huobi was selected for the list. In an interview with Silicon Valley Review, Li Lin, CEO of Huobi Group, also highlighted Huobi's values of "no evil" and "user first".
In addition, Huobi has also joined the blockchain industry associations and alliances led by official institutions. At the same time, seek a number of various official media interviews, which are exposed in a positive form. In 2019 and 2020, Huobi has obtained a large number of interview opportunities through public relations operations, and has been exposed many times on Xinhua Net and CCTV.
In November 2020, Li Lin, founder of Huobi Group, said at the "Fire Companion, Zunyi Journey" partner conference that after years of efforts, Huobi has obtained financial licenses from many countries, and in accordance with the requirements of the country's license issuance, it has built a localized professional team in Japan, South Korea and other places.
Huobi Partner: Du Jun
Everything seems to be getting better. But within a few days, Zhu Jiawei and Li Lin were taken away one after another for investigation.
In the absence of the first and second leaders, Du Jun, located in Singapore, "took the upper position" and undertook the daily operation and ecological chain HECO. Huobi HECO ecological chain as the main project during Du Jun's term of office, from a short period of popularity, to now a thousand holes, Huobi HECO chain on the earth dog project more and more, circle money running more and more serious, and involving more and more funds, after the emergence of various rights protection incidents, Du Jun kept his mouth shut, bluntly said "not V god nor CZ, can only be responsible for themselves", it is actually running away.
In the few months of Du Jun's shift, Huobi Ecological Chain was even revealed that its audit company was du Jun's own audit company. It is equivalent to whether a project can be on the Huobi ecological chain completely depends on Huobi itself, and there is no impartial audit agency at all. So it led to the complete collapse of the Huobi ecological chain in the end.
Until February 2021, Zhu Jiawei returned. On March 9, After four months of long disappearance, Huobi founder Li Lin finally returned to work and took over this bad card.
After a month, Huobi began to pay for coins normally.
Since 2021, domestic regulators have stepped up their crackdown on virtual currencies.
In order to cope with supervision, Huobi first suspended its mining machine mall to provide services to mainland customers, and Huobi Global Also stopped trading contracts for new users in China, while closing the Huobi Mining Pool Exchange and closing OTC bulk trading. Subsequently, Huobi Global also temporarily reduced the maximum allowable trading leverage of existing users from 125 times to 5 times.
On June 26, Huobi Global issued new rules prohibiting anyone located in Hong Kong, China from using the services provided by the website, and prohibiting anyone Chinese mainland or Taiwan from using the contract transaction services provided by the website.
On July 27, Huobi decided to dissolve the earliest domestic operating company of Huobi Network, Beijing Huobi Tianxia Network Technology Co., Ltd. Once again, the market was signaled to "embrace regulation". On August 4, the shareholder change of Hainan Huolian Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Huolian Technology") further divested the early enterprises of the Huobi system and once again reduced the association with the exchange.
At the same time, Huobi plans to move the main body and server overseas, and only set up a Chinese branch in China, laying out compliance business that is not related to the exchange. On 9 August, the Financial Supervisory Authority of Singapore (MAS) publicly stated that it had issued a notice to 89 companies applying for DPT, including Huobi. If the applicant takes the necessary steps to meet MAS's requirements for licensed operations, a license granted to the applicant by MAS will subsequently be received.
Recently, the coin market has gradually picked up, the market bearishness has gradually decreased, and the positive is increasing. It is reasonable to say that the extremely compliant Huobi should also improve, but in this wave of bloody market, Huobi HT is still like a pool of stagnant water, and Li Lin, as the leader of Huobi, said so:
For the value of HT, Li Lin chose the "Buddhist system", which can be seen from handing over HT to the market definition that he will not be responsible for the price of HT, and everything is predestined. But as a big guy commented: "Watching others make money lying on other exchanges, I'm afraid that the last bit of patience will gradually be worn away by Huobi." ”