At the moment of the bull market, re-evaluating $HTX: The equity token for global assets entering the Crypto world

Introduction: The Bull Market is Back, but What Really Deserves Our Attention is the Change in Capital Structure

The bull is back. Over the past week, global risk assets have strengthened simultaneously, and the crypto market has returned to a path of significant upward movement. Most people's attention is focused on how much more BTC and ETH can rise, but as researchers, we are more concerned with a deeper change behind this round of market activity: the capital entering the crypto world is no longer just speculative funds and retail investors native to crypto, but a large amount of compliant capital and traditional financial funds from around the globe; what they want to buy is no longer just BTC and ETH, but stocks, gold, foreign exchange, Pre-IPO shares, RWA------the entire global asset spectrum.

This leads us to the core judgment of this article: the role of $HTX is undergoing a fundamental change. It is the governance token of HTX DAO and the only designated cooperative token of Huobi HTX, to some extent playing the role of a platform token, whose valuation has historically been anchored to the trading volume of crypto spot and derivatives; in the future, it should be reinterpreted as "the equity token for global assets entering the Crypto world"------when global funds cross the gateway to the Crypto world, holding $HTX means holding a part of that gateway. To substantiate this judgment, this article will provide a complete quantitative deduction beyond the narrative: how large the global traditional financial market is, how big crypto is now, and based on Huobi HTX's market share, even if only a small portion of global funds flows in, combined with this year's incremental growth rate in the TradFi sector, where the market capitalization of $HTX should be five years from now.

1. Narrative Shift: Valuation Logic is Completely Opened Up

First, let's clarify the concept. What is the valuation logic of "exchange platform tokens"? It's simple: the market cap ceiling of a platform token = crypto trading volume × fee rate × revenue distribution ratio. Since $HTX plays the role of a platform token to some extent, it has long been compared within the same framework as Binance's BNB and OKX's OKB------whoever has a larger crypto trading volume and stronger buyback efforts has a more valuable platform token. This framework was effective from 2020 to 2024 because it reflected the reality that the revenue of crypto exchanges almost entirely comes from the trading of crypto assets.

But now this framework is becoming ineffective. When an exchange's trading targets expand from BTC and ETH to perpetual contracts for stocks of Nvidia and Apple, to gold, silver, crude oil, the S&P 500 index, and further extend to foreign exchange, Pre-IPO shares, and RWA, its revenue base switches from "crypto market transaction volume" to "global financial market transaction volume." The scale difference between these two markets is an order of magnitude: the total market cap of the entire crypto market is about $2.3 trillion, while a single global asset class can easily be measured in trillions or tens of trillions of dollars.

What does this mean? If $HTX is still viewed merely as a "platform token," its valuation ceiling is locked within crypto trading volume; but if $HTX is re-priced as "the equity token for global assets entering the Crypto world"------every dollar of global asset transaction flow passing through Huobi HTX's channel, with a portion being solidified as value for $HTX holders through a buyback and burn mechanism------then its valuation ceiling is directly lifted. This is not a price increase logic; this is a paradigm shift.

2. The Ocean of Global Financial Assets, and Crypto as a "Droplet"

The premise for being bullish on $HTX is not how much crypto itself rises, but what proportion of global assets enters crypto. First, let's clarify this denominator.

Table 1: The Scale of Global Financial Assets and the Position of Crypto (Data is approximate based on public market standards)

Putting these two numbers together, the conclusion is very intuitive: the total market cap of crypto is about $2.3 trillion, which is only 0.5% of global wealth and 1.9% of global stock market value. In other words, if just 1% of global wealth enters the crypto ecosystem in any form, that corresponds to an incremental $4.5 trillion------close to twice the current total market cap of crypto. This is not a fantasy: institutional predictions for asset tokenization fall within this range------Citigroup estimates the tokenized securities market will reach about $4-5 trillion by 2030, 21.co estimates about $10 trillion, and BCG estimates tokenized assets could reach $16 trillion. Even if only the lower limit of these predictions is realized, it would be a significant injection into the crypto industry.

What Huobi HTX is doing is building the channel for "how this 1% comes in and where it trades after entering" right to its doorstep. This is the fact to be discussed in the next section.

3. The Channel is Already Built: The Explosion of the TradFi Sector is Not a Concept, It's Happening in Revenue

No matter how beautiful the narrative, it must be supported by data. And Huobi HTX's TradFi (traditional finance) sector is precisely the most powerful business in 2026. According to Huobi HTX's official monthly report for July, the TradFi section added 56 new contract varieties that month, of which 51 were stock contracts covering tech giants, AI chips, storage, commodities, and precious metals; the average daily trading volume at the end of the month set a historical high, increasing more than tenfold compared to June, with a cumulative volume reaching about $2.5 billion. It is worth noting that this was achieved in a month when the overall crypto spot market was sluggish and industry trading volumes were generally shrinking------traditional financial assets are becoming a new engine for platform growth.

More critically is the customer acquisition and stickiness mechanism. On August 5, Huobi HTX launched the second phase of the TradFi "Trade to Earn" campaign: selecting 28 high-liquidity perpetual contracts covering stocks (NVDA, AAPL, GOOGL, MSFT, TSLA, etc.), indices (SPX500, QQQ), commodities (WTI crude oil, Brent crude oil), and precious metals (XAU, XAG, PAXG, XAUT). Users placing orders can receive 110% of the transaction fee back, and those taking orders can receive 105% back------this is "negative fee trading": the more you trade, the more you earn. The first phase of the campaign generated over 63 million USDT in trading volume within ten days on designated trading pairs; the prize pool for the second phase was directly expanded to $80,000.

Please pay attention to the most important part of this design: during the campaign, all transaction fee income generated by users on all designated TradFi contracts will be used to buy back $HTX from the market, and the buyback will be incorporated into the quarterly burn mechanism for unified destruction. In other words, every transaction fee from users trading US stock contracts or gold contracts is turning into buying pressure and destruction volume for $HTX. For the first time, the trading volume of global assets is being directly converted into value capture for $HTX in a systematic way.

Looking ahead along this path: stock perpetual contracts have already been implemented, indices, commodities, and precious metals are all in place, and the next logical steps are foreign exchange, Pre-IPO shares, and RWA. When global core assets can be traded 24/7 with stablecoin margins, without needing to open brokerage accounts, wait for market openings, or exchange currencies across borders, traditional funds will no longer need the ritual of "first buying BTC"------they will directly trade familiar assets with USD stablecoins in on-chain infrastructure. And Huobi HTX is becoming that very channel.

4. Compliance and Traditional Funds: The Entry Tickets They Want, Huobi HTX is Issuing One by One

Traditional financial funds have a characteristic that crypto-native funds do not have: they are not short of money, but lack compliant entry points. Whether institutional funds can enter the market depends on three things------are there tradable assets, is there a compliant license, and is there credible custody and reserve proof. Huobi HTX has delivered answers to all three of these in the first half of 2026.

On the asset side, it is the aforementioned TradFi sector; on the trust side, Huobi HTX has publicly disclosed its Merkle tree proof of reserves (PoR) for 46 consecutive months, with the reserve ratios of major assets like BTC, ETH, TRX, USDs, $HTX, XRP, DOGE, SOL consistently maintained above 100%, with a strict 1:1 reserve ratio. This is one of the earliest and most persistent regular reserve disclosures in the industry------for institutions, this is more persuasive than any marketing. On the compliance side, Huobi HTX has advanced its VASP license application after obtaining a no-objection letter from Pakistan's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) in the first half of the year, and continues to align with Dubai's VARA regulatory framework. Dubai, Central Asia, South Asia------the global licensing map is being pieced together bit by bit.

When looking at these three things together, you will find a complete layout: the assets that traditional funds need (TradFi sector), the channels they need (global licensing network), and the trust they need (46 months of PoR), all have been prepared by Huobi HTX. In the first half of the year, the platform's total trading volume approached $900 billion, and in April it topped the global centralized exchange net inflow list; in July, new registered users increased by 15% month-on-month------funds are already voting with their feet. And Huobi HTX's market share itself is the best endorsement: CoinDesk's April 2026 trading platform report shows that Huobi HTX's spot market share has reached 3.79% (among the top four Chinese CEXs), with a derivatives share of 1.98%, and a single-month spot share increase of 0.88 percentage points, ranking third globally in growth rate. Share is increasing, growth rate is leading, this is the starting point for the next section's deduction.

5. Value Capture Closed Loop: The Larger the Global Asset Trading Volume, the Scarcer $HTX Becomes

The previous section demonstrated the value of the "gateway," now let's demonstrate the value of the holders------how does the global asset flow end up in the hands of $HTX holders? The answer is a closed loop that has been running for over two years and has been repeatedly validated: 50% of platform revenue is used for quarterly buybacks and burns.

Looking at the data: In the first quarter of 2026, despite a significant 27% quarter-on-quarter decline in crypto market transaction volume, HTX DAO still completed the destruction of 10.83 trillion $HTX, valued at about $19.22 million; since the destruction began in 2024, a cumulative total of 110.32 trillion has been destroyed and donated, accounting for over 11% of the total issuance, with an annual deflation rate of about 5.5%. Please note the significance of this 5.5%: among mainstream governance tokens, this is one of the very few tokens that has achieved a "transparent, large-scale, long-term publicly executed" destruction strategy, with its annual deflation rate significantly leading most mainstream crypto assets. Even in a bear market, the destruction in a bull market will only be more intense.

The demand side is also tightening. Since April 1, $HTX has become the only fee deduction token for the Huobi HTX exchange, deeply embedded in the core trading scenario; the $HTX staking feature launched by HTX DAO offers up to 10% annualized returns along with governance rights; all rewards from the two phases of the TradFi Trade to Earn campaign are distributed in $HTX. On one side is the revenue-driven continuous destruction (supply contraction), and on the other side is the demand expansion from the three scenarios of deduction, staking, and rewards------both supply and demand sides are tightening, which is the source of $HTX's scarcity.

Now let's connect the entire closed loop: global assets (stocks, gold, foreign exchange, Pre-IPO, RWA) go online in the TradFi sector → global compliant funds enter to trade → platform fee revenue grows → 50% of revenue buys back and destroys $HTX → circulating supply continues to contract → holder rights are enhanced. In this closed loop, $HTX is essentially a bullish option on "global asset trading volume." Next, we will calculate the exercise space of this option with numbers.

6. Five-Year Deduction: How Much Global Capital Comes In, and How Large Can $HTX's Market Cap Reach

This section is the focal point of the entire text. We will break down the deduction into four steps: the first step is to determine the denominator (the penetration rate of global wealth entering crypto), the second step is to determine the share (Huobi HTX's share of global crypto trading volume), the third step is to determine revenue (transaction volume × fee rate), and the fourth step is to determine valuation (revenue × valuation multiple). Each step will provide conservative, neutral, and optimistic scenarios, aiming to lay out the assumptions clearly so that readers can verify them themselves.

The first step is the penetration rate. The current total market cap of crypto is about $2.3 trillion, accounting for 0.5% of global wealth (about $450 trillion). By 2030, if the penetration rate rises to 1% / 2% / 3%, the corresponding total market cap of crypto would be about $4.5 / 9 / 13.5 trillion------this aligns closely with the prediction ranges for tokenized assets from Citigroup, 21.co, and BCG (4-16 trillion dollars), representing a "neutral value within the institutional prediction range," and not an aggressive assumption.

The second step is the share. Huobi HTX currently has a spot share of 3.79% and a derivatives share of 1.98%, with a combined share of about 2.5%-3%. Considering two additional points------Huobi HTX is one of the few exchanges in the industry that has turned the "global asset channel" into a product matrix (leading in the TradFi sector), and its monthly share growth rate ranks third globally------by 2030, the combined share could rise to 4% / 5.5% / 8%.

The third step is transaction and revenue. The annual turnover rate of the crypto market (combined spot + derivatives) is currently around 20 times. As the market cap grows and the institutional proportion increases, the turnover rate typically declines, so we project it at 20 / 16 / 12 times; Huobi HTX's annual transaction volume = total crypto market cap × turnover rate × share. The comprehensive fee rate is estimated at 0.05% / 0.06% / 0.07% (the negative fee marketing activities may have phased dilution, but the overall fee structure for TradFi and derivatives remains stable). The fourth step is valuation. Referring to the valuation center of comparable exchange assets, P/S is estimated at 3 / 5 / 8 times------the conservative scenario is close to traditional brokerage valuations, while the optimistic scenario includes a revaluation premium for "equity token + global asset channel."

Table 2: $HTX Market Cap Five-Year Deduction (2030, Three Scenarios)

Note: This is a scenario deduction rather than a prediction. The core logic is the transmission chain of "global asset penetration rate × Huobi HTX share → transaction → revenue → valuation"; any assumption significantly deviating from expectations will significantly change the results, but even in the most conservative scenario, the market cap of $HTX has more than three times the space away from the current level.

This deduction may seem to involve large numbers, but each link is within the range that current data can support. For cross-validation: the neutral scenario implies that Huobi HTX's annual transaction volume in 2030 is about $7.9 trillion, of which if the TradFi sector accounts for 30%, that would be about $2.4 trillion------while the annual transaction volume of the global stock market is in the range of $150-200 trillion, and the annual foreign exchange transaction volume is about $20 trillion, even achieving $2.4 trillion in Huobi HTX's TradFi would only be about 1.5% of the global stock market's transaction volume. In other words, the global asset inflow needed for $HTX to reach a market cap of $100 billion would not even be a ripple in the ocean of global finance; what is truly scarce is not the funds, but the channel------and this is exactly what Huobi HTX is building.

Adding the supply-side deflation effect for verification: with the current annual deflation rate of 5.5%, the circulating supply of $HTX will shrink by about 25% in five years; if the full buyback and destruction of TradFi fees continues to increase, and the destruction base doubles from now, the annual deflation rate could rise to 8%-10%, resulting in a 35%-40% reduction in circulating supply over five years. On the demand side, according to Table 2's deduction, and on the supply side, applying a 30%-40% reduction, the neutral scenario for $HTX's market cap will only be higher than what is shown in Table 2, not lower.

Finally, let's use two benchmarks to anchor perception. Same sector: BNB has a market cap of about $81 billion, which is 50 times that of $HTX (about $1.6 billion), while the difference in their spot shares is only about 10 times (Binance about 40% vs. HTX 3.79%)------part of this difference is ecological premium, and another part is the "narrative yet to be revalued" discount. Channel type: CME (global derivatives exchange) has a market cap of about $80 billion, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange has a market cap of about $50 billion------they are the pricing anchors for "global asset channels in the traditional world"; what $HTX aims to become is "the CME of the crypto world." From $1.6 billion to any of these anchor levels, there is a vast imaginative space for the equity token narrative.

Table 3: Benchmark Anchoring (Market cap is approximate public data for scale perception)

7. Why Now: The Narrative Revaluation in the Bull Market is the Biggest Alpha

Every bull market has two types of increases: one is Beta, where everything rises with the tide, BTC doubles, and most altcoins follow suit, only to fall back again; the other is Alpha, which comes from narrative revaluation------the market re-prices an asset using a new framework, and the valuation center moves up overall, making it hard to fall back down once it rises.

The reason BNB's performance in 2021 followed an independent curve is that the market revalued it from "a fee discount voucher" to "an ecological equity certificate"; today's $HTX stands at a grander revaluation starting point: revalued from "the cooperative token of crypto exchanges" to "the equity token for global assets entering the Crypto world." The former's ceiling is crypto trading volume, while the latter's ceiling is the global financial market. All the elements catalyzing this revaluation------the explosion of the TradFi sector, the negative fee mechanism attracting traffic, compliance licenses being established, an 11% cumulative destruction, the unique status as the only fee token, and the third-fastest growth rate------are all in place by the summer of 2026.

The bull is back. Funds will chase every asset that rises, but what is truly scarce is the ability to see the river's course change before the tide rises. The ocean of global financial assets is opening the gates to the Crypto world, and Huobi HTX has built the channel right to the gate, with $HTX being the equity of that channel itself. When global stocks, gold, foreign exchange, Pre-IPO, and RWA pass through the gateway to the Crypto world, $HTX is the very share of that door. This is the reason for being fully bullish on $HTX.

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Risk Warning: This article represents the research views of HTX Research and does not constitute any investment advice. The quantitative deductions in the text are based on a series of explicit assumptions (penetration rate, market share, turnover rate, fee rate, valuation multiples), and any significant deviation from these assumptions will significantly alter the results; the price volatility of crypto assets and traditional financial derivatives is severe, and there is uncertainty in regulatory policies, the sustainability of trading volume in the TradFi sector remains to be further validated. Readers should fully assess their own risk tolerance, view the market rationally, and make independent decisions.

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