HTX DAO (HTX) Plunge

The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has intensified enforcement against crypto exchange HTX, accusing it of illegally promoting crypto services to British consumers. The regulator has requested major app stores and social media platforms to block HTX’s access in the UK, alleging repeated breaches of financial marketing rules. The FCA also claims HTX operates through an opaque corporate structure and has ignored its attempts to engage. Although HTX has restricted new UK user registrations, the FCA says these measures are insufficient and not guaranteed to be permanent. This marks the FCA’s first enforcement action against a crypto firm for illegal marketing. HTX remains on the FCA’s Warning List, meaning users lack access to consumer protections.

Huobi HTX February Review: User Growth Up 16%, Identifying Three Potential "Catch-Up Sectors" in the Post-Holiday Crypto Market Following the Spring Festival, the crypto market entered a new trading cycle. Capital began rotating from single hot sectors to multiple areas, with AI, privacy computing, DeFi, and stablecoin yields remaining active. Huobi HTX saw a 16% month-on-month increase in new registrations and ranked second in the industry for net monthly capital inflows. Its "Clean Assets" reserve climbed to a historic sixth place globally. The platform highlighted three key sectors with potential for growth: 1. **AI Meme Sector:** Projects combining AI narratives with meme culture, like those in the OpenClaw ecosystem, gained traction due to strong community appeal. Huobi HTX listed 14 new assets in February, including popular Base ecosystem AI Meme tokens like CLAWD, MOLT, and CLAWDCH. 2. **Privacy Computing & Tech Infrastructure:** Technical projects like the ZK protocol ZAMA and privacy infrastructure ESP (which saw an 80% surge post-listing) were launched. Other performers included Base DeFi project UP (+60%) and automation token ROBO (+92%). 3. **Stablecoin Yields:** As a hedge against market fluctuations, stablecoin earnings products gained popularity. Huobi Earn platform offered subsidized annual yields of up to 15% on assets like USDT and USDC, with its USDe product exceeding $100 million in holdings. Product upgrades included a new TradFi section offering derivatives for gold, silver, and crude oil, and the public release of its index price composition data for greater transparency. Globally, HTX Ventures participated in major conferences, and the platform advanced its expansion into markets like Pakistan following regulatory approval there. A large-scale trading competition with a $1.5 million prize pool also boosted user engagement. Concluding, Huobi HTX continues to expand its trading ecosystem through diversified assets, product optimization, and global布局 (layout), capitalizing on the market's recovery.

Huobi HTX has launched a revolutionary AI trading protocol, "HTX AI Skills," enabling users to execute trades using natural language commands. This system bridges AI models with Huobi HTX's trading engine, allowing both spot and futures trading—including market/limit orders, opening/closing positions, and setting stop-loss/take-profit—simply by chatting with an AI. Key features include zero coding requirements, compatibility with popular AI development tools (like Claude Code and Cursor), and a user-friendly three-step setup. The protocol is designed as an open, expandable infrastructure for future AI trading ecosystems. To showcase its capabilities, Huobi HTX will host the "Lobster Trading Competition" from March 23-26, where AI traders will compete in live events. Participants can watch, guess winners, and even copy top AI strategies. This innovation marks a shift toward an "Agent Era" in crypto trading, making advanced trading accessible through conversational AI. Huobi HTX, established in 2013, continues to expand as a comprehensive Web3 ecosystem.

HTX Research, the analytical arm of Huobi HTX, has released a report titled "From the Rise of OpenClaw: How AI Begins to Compete for the True Work Interface." The report analyzes the emerging trend of AI evolving from a conversational tool into an execution layer, using the rapid growth of the open-source project OpenClaw as a key example. OpenClaw is a personal AI assistant that operates on a user's local device. It receives tasks through messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, and others, and can execute actions by integrating with files, browsers, calendars, email, and terminals. This signifies a major shift: AI is moving beyond answering questions to actively performing tasks, competing for the "execution interface" of the digital age. The report identifies five converging trends enabling this shift: sufficient model capability for multi-step tasks, the high frequency of messaging apps as a natural interface, open-source distribution, self-hosted models addressing data privacy, and a strong market need for small teams to achieve more with fewer resources. It highlights a particular fit in the Chinese market, where many small and medium teams operate on message-driven platforms like WeCom and Feishu. Some Chinese cities have already begun offering support policies to foster an OpenClaw ecosystem. However, the report also outlines three major hurdles for such tools to become reliable infrastructure: security risks (noting recent malware incidents), the need for robust governance and auditing, and the necessity for industry-specific templates to move beyond early adopters. Complementing this analysis, the report details Huobi HTX's own AI strategy. Rather than building an execution layer, HTX is focusing on becoming a "platform service entrance and ecosystem connector." Its proprietary AINFT product aggregates major AI models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) into a single access point for users, with crypto-native features like TronLink wallet sign-ins and a pay-as-you-go model instead of subscriptions. HTX's competitive strategy is differentiated by its focus on integrating AI directly into its trading platform. Its "HTX AI Skills" currently cover spot and futures trading execution, with plans to expand into market analysis, intelligence, and a built-in assistant, aiming to create a closed loop for user experience. In conclusion, while the move of AI into the execution layer is still in its early stages with significant challenges ahead, the direction is clear. The next phase of AI competition will extend beyond model performance to encompass control of interfaces, permission governance, and skill ecosystems. Huobi HTX's early布局 in this area presents a notable case study for how crypto platforms can integrate AI as a core, operational asset.

In 2026, the tokenized equity market is transitioning from a fringe experiment to a mainstream segment, with its core driver being the explosive growth of perpetual contracts as an innovative product format. According to CoinLaw data, as of May 2026, the total on-chain market value of the tokenized equity market has surpassed $1.43 billion, with a 30-day growth rate of 25.83% and 267,000 holders—both metrics ranking as the highest growth rates among all RWA assets. Decentralized perpetual exchanges represented by Hyperliquid have surpassed Coinbase International in derivatives trading volume, signaling that on-chain equity derivatives are evolving into a structurally independent financial market with autonomous pricing capabilities and institutional-grade operating mechanisms. We will systematically review the evolutionary logic of the two major product architectures—fully collateralized spot markets and perpetual contracts—analyze the competitive landscape of leading participants such as Hyperliquid and Ondo Finance, empirically validate the overnight price discovery function through on-chain data of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix perpetual contracts, identify the core risks of this segment, and outline three investment themes: funding rate arbitrage, cross-exchange spread arbitrage, and market maker services.