On September 26 Huobi, the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, has released the beta version of “Huobi Chat,” its new social media platform. It has already invited over 1200 users and hopes it will be a cryptocurrency social network that can create connections within the cryptocurrency community between investors, teams, and consumers.
Huobi Chat’s Features
The platform offers several features for its users to help lure them in. These include chain-split groups, which can help the creation of subgroups, as well as the HCT, or Huobi Chat Token, an incentive for users to promote the platform and attract more users, to foster a sense of community.
In order to compete with existing social media platforms, it also incorporates many other standard features. Specifically, the platform will ultimately support barter, payments, market information, news, entertainment services, and more. There have been other cryptocurrency projects that have involved social media, such as the Kin token, which attempts to leverage Kik’s millions of users in order to build value for its project.
It appears Huobi is taking a different approach – where it is seeking to leverage its credibility in the cryptocurrency community, to build a legitimate social media platform. It specifically refers to the idea of “socializing is mining” in the announcement, suggesting that it believes users will be incentivized to use the platform thanks to the Huobi Chat Token.
The company also hopes the security and incentivization of the platform will lead to its success. Given the fact that the exchange consistently trades hundreds of millions of dollars a day – it appears the company is hoping the cryptocurrency community views this as an opportunity to network and communicate securely.
Social Media Craze
This shouldn’t be too surprising, considering some of the world’s largest companies are social media platforms. One of the most obvious examples of the exponential growth in the social media sector is Facebook, the American online social media and networking company that boasts a market capitalization of over 470 billion dollars.
The company has grown exponentially over the past decade. Specifically, in the third quarter of 2008 – the company was already one of the most popular websites in the world, with around 100 monthly active users. In 2018, Facebook surpassed 2 billion monthly active users.
Presumably, Huobi hopes to capitalize on the interest in cryptocurrencies by allowing the community a platform to communicate, network, and share ideas.
