Huobi Announces Support for Russian Rubles
- To promote the new fiat on-ramp option, most service fees have been lowered.
- Huobi was already popular in Russia before the partnership, as 10% of its trading volume was being performed by Russian citizens.
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Huobi, the exchange with the second highest daily volume (after Binance) has just announced a major step in their global expansion – users can now directly send and receive rubles to the exchange. As per the press release, the new feature “enables users to purchase popular cryptocurrencies like BTC, ETH, LTC, USDT, EOS, BCH, ETC, BSV, DASH, HT and HPT with ruble, and works in collaboration with AdvCash — a leading fiat and crypto payment solutions provider”.
The partnership makes sense for both parties, as AdvCash is already servicing the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world – Binance, while for Huobi, Russian residents make up 10% of all spot trading volume.
As expected, KYC requirements are strict. Still, the on-ramping is straightforward – the only additional step is the creation of an AdvCash account, with website redirections being integrated in a user-friendly way. To encourage users to take advantage of the new feature, some fees will be lowered, and others – removed entirely for a period of time.
The Russian market has been of strategical importance to Huobi for years, and many events have lead up to today’s news. The exchange has an active Russian-speaking telegram group, as well as a newsletter in Russian.
Based on official data from http://www.cbr.ru/, the current monetary supply of Russian rubles is just above 56 trillion, meaning that at the time of writing, Bitcoin and the Russian ruble have near identical “market capitalisations” – with rubles leading with less than 6%.
- The popular crypto exchange has decided to sell its business in Russia to CommEX, a crypto exchange business that was officially launched on Tuesday.
- Binance noted that it will fully exit the Russian market, and have no ongoing revenue split or any option to buy back shares in the business.
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- The Securities Commission Malaysia ordered Huobi Global to stop all of its activities in the country as it was not registered with the regulator, and was operating illegally.
- The exchange was also directed to disable its website and mobile applications, as well as cease all advertising of its products and services in the country.
- The crypto exchange no longer accepts USD deposits via wire transfers, including SWIFT, but users can still fund purchases through their credit and debit cards.
- USD deposits can still be made through the Advcash Wallet, and Bybit is currently working on making USD withdrawals available through it as well.