HTX has quietly turned a $3.3 trillion trading year and a long string of proving reserves into its main argument for staying relevant in the post-FTX CEX era.
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- HTX finished 2025 with a trading volume of $3.3 trillion and 55 million registered users.
- The exchange has been recognized by Forbes magazine as one of the “World’s Most Trustworthy Cryptocurrency Exchanges” for 2025.
- HTX says it has maintained full underlying asset backing for 38 consecutive months by proving Merkle Tree reserves.
In a crowded sector with more than 500 trading venues, HTX stands out as one of the few centralized exchanges that has been operating continuously since 2013 while expanding into a multi-trillion-dollar platform.
According to reports, by the end of 2025, Huobi HTX reported nearly $3.3 trillion in annual cumulative trading volume and more than 55 million registered users worldwide, a 39% year-on-year increase in volume underscoring the depth of liquidity and stability of its user base.
Spot markets accounted for more than $1.9 trillion in volume, with Bitcoin and Ethereum trading remaining the backbone of activity, while futures and perpetual contracts generated about $1.4 trillion, nearly 50% higher than the previous year, according to the company’s inaugural 2026 report. This combination of volume and derivatives penetration has helped HTX consistently rank among the largest exchanges in terms of daily trading volume, placing it alongside competitors like Binance and OKX KuCoin is in the low-fee, high-liquidity market segment.
Founded as a spot-only trading venue, HTX has evolved into what it describes as a complete ecosystem that includes spot, futures, yield products, OTC services, and token launch programs. In 2025 alone, the exchange listed between 166 and 218 new spot assets depending on the methodology, while the derivatives desk added more than 80 futures assets, nearly 70 of which generated returns in excess of 200%, a listing strategy that leans toward early-stage narratives and MME-driven flows.
On the security side, Cooperative It emphasizes a multi-layered architecture with separate hot and cold wallet and institutional custody integrations, and claims to have maintained a record of “zero security incidents” throughout 2025 despite industry-wide hacks that pushed cryptocurrency theft to an estimated $3.4 billion that year, according to Chainalysis. The exchange has also pivoted to transparency, saying it has maintained a 100% reserve ratio for underlying assets for 38 consecutive months through the Merkle Tree Proof of Reserves, and continues to publicly publish proof of performance data for user verification.
This transparency streak has now extended to 41-42 months of continuous proof-of-performance disclosures as of early 2026, with reserve ratios for key assets such as Bitcoin, USD-denominated “USD” and other large currencies remaining at 100% or more, according to recent HTX and third-party filings. “Proof of reserves plays a vital role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem,” the exchange states on its PoR portal, arguing that on-chain certificates provide users with a way to independently verify overall support without revealing individual balances.
The confession followed this position. In February 2025, the business magazine Forbes reported Cooperative One of the “most trustworthy cryptocurrency exchanges in the world,” noting that based on its data, the platform ranked sixth globally in terms of spot market share and demonstrated “exceptional performance” in BTC and ETH holdings and breadth of products. BeInCrypto went further, awarding HTX with the “Best Centralized Exchange” award at the 2024 Excellence Awards, beating out finalists including Binance, Bybit, OKX and Bitget.
Global Consultant for HTX Justin Sunwho also founded the TRON Network, was featured on the March 2025 cover of Forbes’ Digital Assets magazine, where the magazine highlighted how the exchange was “post-FTX” reorienting around compliance and proof of monthly reserves. “Under Sun’s leadership, HTX has championed compliance, security and user experience,” the PR announcement read, positioning the platform as a benchmark for the convergence of traditional finance standards and cryptocurrency innovation.
However, the path was not without controversy. After a series of hacks in 2023 led to more than $100 million in losses across HTX, Heco Bridge, and Poloniex, users withdrew nearly $258 million from the exchange in the weeks following a $30 million exploit in November of that year, according to coverage citing DeFiLlama data. These events amplified industry-wide concerns about centralized custody, but also accelerated the current race among exchanges to tighten key management practices and adopt independent proof-of-performance disclosures, a trend that publications such as Forbes and Chainalysis have pointed to as a defining feature of market structure post-2022.
Looking forward, Cooperative It says it will continue to rely on a strategy of “global expansion, thriving ecosystem, wealth influence, security and compliance,” targeting further growth in user assets and international licenses while maintaining a reserve ratio above 100%. If it can maintain this trajectory — while avoiding the operational missteps that have brought down other central players — HTX will likely remain a go-to place for both aggressive derivatives traders and just long-time investors looking for a liquid, feature-rich platform for BTC, $ETH, stablecoins, and the next wave of emerging tokens.
