Huobi Exchange was acquired by Hong Kong Baiyu M&A Fund

In the early morning of October 8, Huobi officially completed the financial reconciliation and delivery signature, and was acquired by the M&A fund under Hong Kong Baiyu Capital, and Baiyu Capital became the largest shareholder and actual controller . The acquisition was mainly the shares of Huobi founder Li Lin. In order to finally complete this transaction, it is said that Huobi founder Li Lin has been sleepless for many consecutive nights. At present, the specific amount and the investor of the M&A fund have not been confirmed. Du Jun previously told Wu that he did not sell and was still a small shareholder.

Official information shows that HuobiGlobal's controlling shareholder company has transferred all of its HuobiGlobal shares to a fund under Baiyu Capital, and Baiyu Capital's M&A fund has become HuobiGlobal's largest shareholder and actual controller. This transaction only involves a change in the controlling shareholder and will not affect the existing core management and operation team.

According to the official website, About Capital Management is a Hong Kong asset management company founded in 2008 by Chen Yihua, who is also a partner of Greenwoods Asset Management. He holds an MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management and has won the three-year Overseas Golden Bull Private Equity Investment Manager (Equity Long-Short Strategy ) Award. About Capital Management is low-key and mysterious, and there is almost no "meaningful information" on its official website. There may be shareholders or actual controllers behind it.

Huobi was founded in 2013 and received investments from Sequoia Capital and ZhenFund. With the growth of the cryptocurrency market, Huobi Exchange's market share has gradually increased. After 2017, it became the exchange with the largest market share in the Chinese world. Its overall ecological layout is ahead of its competitor OK. Huobi University and Huobi Investment have a good reputation, with annual profits of up to billions of US dollars. Until 2020, Binance regarded Huobi as its biggest competitor. However, its founder Li Lin once faded out of front-line management due to physical and psychological factors.

The Shanxi incident in 2020 became a turning point, leading to Huobi's complete withdrawal of Chinese users in 2021 and Li Lin's final change in mentality .   Unlike Xu Mingxing, the founder of OKX, who chose to go abroad, Li Lin claimed that he stayed in China "for his family". After completely clearing out Chinese users in 2022, Huobi also encountered certain difficulties in operation and began to lay off employees. During this period, the coin-earning business suffered a large loss (although it recovered later), which strengthened Li Lin 's intention to sell more than 50% of his shares.

Huobi has more than 20 million users and holds compliance licenses in the United States, Hong Kong , South Korea, Japan and other places. It is still a good asset. It is rumored that the acquisition valuation is 3 billion US dollars. It is reported that in the early stages of the negotiations, Justin Sun, FTX/SBF, and even Binance were involved. In late August, Huobi changed the employee email address from Huobi.com to htx-inc.com, which triggered rumors of SBF acquisition (although it was just a false incident). People familiar with the matter revealed that due to political and regulatory factors, buyers in Hong Kong appear to be more suitable.

In addition to the Huobi Global Exchange , another important asset of Huobi is Huobi Technology, a Hong Kong-listed company. On September 21, Huobi Technology issued a circular from the board of directors, in which the board of directors recommended that the company be renamed "New Huo Technology Holdings Limited". The board of directors believes that changing the company name will give the company a new corporate image and identity, which will be beneficial to the group's future business development. The owner of Huobi Technology has not yet been determined.

After October, the transaction came to an end. On October 5, a huge amount of Bitcoin funds were transferred between Huobi wallet addresses in 4 transactions. In the end, about 15,000 BTC were transferred to a recently created address, and 4,000 BTC were transferred to another Huobi address. On September 22, about 43,000 Bitcoins circulated within Huobi and were mistakenly believed to be transferred to Binance. It is suspected to be a financial inventory and transfer at the end of the acquisition.

On October 6 , 2021 , Li Lin said in a WeChat group: "Without Huobi, everyone will have Binance and OK. If everyone is disappointed because of this, I am sorry."