Huobi.com will launch an over-the-counter Bitcoin trading platform, and the domestic "cryptocurrency speculation" continues to be crazy

Domestic Bitcoin transactions are booming.

Recently, there is news that Huobi.Pro, a professional website under Huobi Global, will soon launch over-the-counter point-to-point trading services, supporting the exchange of global fiat currencies against digital assets.

In this regard, All Weather Technology confirmed with the public relations director of Huobi.com, who said that there is indeed such a plan.

What is peer-to-peer trading service? Huobi.com’s public relations director told All-Weather Technology:

“People who want to buy or sell coins go to the platform and post a message, then bargain for themselves.”

Over-the-counter (OTC) trading is also known as "over-the-counter trading" or "counter trading". This concept has a long history. Previously, some unlisted or listed securities were not traded on the exchange, but were traded in the over-the-counter market, and transactions were concluded privately at a price higher or lower than the price stipulated by the exchange or with other conditions, such as matching inferior goods or bartering.

Over-the-counter trading is a way for Bitcoin traders to cope with strong regulation.

On September 15, the national regulatory authorities issued an order to ban Bitcoin trading. All domestic digital currency exchanges proactively stopped the RMB recharge channels, and most of them stopped all domestic operations at the end of September. Huobi and OKCoin, which are still in operation, will also shut down all trading operations on October 31.

The public relations director of Huobi.com said: The detailed operations and layout of over-the-counter peer-to-peer transactions will be further announced in the near future.

In addition, OKCoin suddenly published an article on its official Weibo and official blog a few days ago, titled "This may be the safest, simplest and fastest way to trade cryptocurrencies after October 31st." Soon, OKCoin deleted the original text. Many users speculated that after October 31st, OKCoin had plans to launch over-the-counter trading.

Huobi, OKCoin and Bitcoin China are the three exchanges with the largest trading volume in China. After the regulatory ban was introduced, they launched overseas versions of their websites, and a large number of users flocked to the overseas websites for trading. Now, the decision of Huobi and OKCoin to open over-the-counter trading will have a huge impact on the market.

Recently, the National Internet Finance Committee released the "Bitcoin OTC Trading Monitoring Report" (hereinafter referred to as the "Report"), which investigated and counted the Bitcoin OTC trading methods, OTC trading platforms, OTC trading scale, trends and distribution.

The report explains: Since the major domestic trading platforms opened withdrawals in June 2017, the scale of transactions has decreased significantly. With the cleanup of domestic ICO and Bitcoin transactions in early September, the scale of OTC transactions has once again prospered. In the past two weeks, the total Bitcoin transaction volume of the three overseas OTC trading platforms LocalBitcoins, Paxful, and CoinCola reached 680 million yuan.

Since September, some WeChat groups for over-the-counter Bitcoin transactions have been extremely popular. These groups have more than a hundred users, and the daily trading volume easily reaches hundreds of thousands of RMB. The WeChat group owners even guarantee the over-the-counter transactions and charge guarantee fees.

However, OTC trading also has risks.

The cost of over-the-counter matching transactions is very high. It is a private agreement between the two parties to the transaction. The process is opaque and lacks a trusted intermediary. It also faces problems such as fund security and virtual currency security.

"Over-the-counter transactions lack the supervision of a neutral third party, and investors' risk of being defrauded will increase. There are solutions to this problem. First, investors must have basic investment skills and be able to perform necessary operations. Second, they must confirm receipt of bitcoins before making payment," Wu Weiming, a lawyer at AllBright Law Offices, told All Weather Technology.