Li Lin: Founder of Huobi and the rise of China’s trading-exchange era

Introduction

In the history of crypto exchanges, few founders have shaped an entire era as decisively as Li Lin, the founder of Huobi. From the frenetic rise of onshore trading in China to the global shift toward regulated, institution‑friendly platforms, his trajectory illuminates how exchanges evolved from scrappy marketplaces into complex financial infrastructures. As 2025 brings new regulatory baselines and mainstream capital, the lessons from Huobi’s journey—product innovation, risk management, and leadership transitions—remain crucial for both builders and users.

From Beijing to a Global Order Book

Huobi launched in 2013, in the early period when spot trading and fiat on‑ramps were still forming. Its growth mirrored the rapid acceleration of crypto interest in China, with deep liquidity and a relentless focus on product operations. After China intensified restrictions on domestic crypto trading in 2017, Huobi pivoted and expanded offshore while maintaining competitive volumes and listings. A concise overview of Huobi’s early history and international expansion is captured on the Huobi page on Wikipedia, which charts the exchange’s rise, reorganization, and global footprint (see the background on Huobi).

Huobi innovated on exchange token models and market structure while competing with global peers for liquidity and listings. Over time, the business matured with stronger compliance operations, diversified revenue, and a more sophisticated approach to risk.

Leadership Transition and Rebrand

In 2022, Li Lin sold his controlling stake to About Capital, marking a pivotal governance transition for the platform (see coverage on Reuters). The exchange subsequently rebranded to HTX in 2023, signaling both strategic repositioning and a refreshed brand identity amidst a changing market landscape (see the rebrand announcement covered by CoinDesk).

Like the broader industry, HTX faced real-world adversities that tested operational resilience. In September 2023, HTX suffered an $8 million exploit and moved to address losses and enhance defenses (incident details via CoinDesk). Weeks later, a cross‑chain security incident affected the Heco Bridge and other Sun‑linked entities, underscoring the systemic risk of multi‑chain venues and external integrations (context via CoinDesk).

For founders and operators, these events reinforce a core lesson: exchange security is now as much about dependency management, key governance, and real‑time monitoring across chains as it is about cold storage architecture.

The 2025 Exchange Landscape: Regulation, Liquidity, and Proofs

The macro setting for exchanges has shifted profoundly. In the United States, the approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in January 2024 catalyzed mainstream access and improved liquidity quality across venues (see coverage by Reuters). By mid‑2024, spot ether ETFs were also approved and later began trading in July, expanding institutional rails to a second major asset (details via Reuters).

In Europe, MiCA has introduced a harmonized regulatory framework for crypto‑assets, with phased implementations through 2024 that set clear obligations around custody, market abuse, and disclosure—raising the compliance bar for all centralized platforms (overview via the European Commission’s page on crypto‑assets regulation (MiCA)).

Concurrently, exchanges have been evolving their transparency tooling. After the failures of 2022 spotlighted solvency risk, proof‑of‑reserves became table stakes. The community’s thinking has moved toward cryptographic soundness and privacy‑preserving audits using zero‑knowledge proofs—a direction articulated by Vitalik Buterin’s essay on proofs of solvency and reserves. In 2025, the exchanges that win will not only meet regulatory thresholds but also demonstrate verifiable asset backing, minimized rehypothecation, and robust cross‑chain risk controls.

Li Lin’s Enduring Influence

Li Lin’s imprint on the exchange model is twofold. First, he showed that disciplined product operations—liquidity engineering, premium listings, and execution reliability—can build durable network effects even in the face of regulatory migration. Second, his transition out of direct control in 2022 highlights that governance evolution is part of institutionalization: as exchanges grow, diversified boards, compliance leadership, and professionalized risk functions become essential.

That institutional arc aligns with where crypto is heading in 2025: an industry where retail and institutions coexist, where liquidity is sometimes warehoused via ETFs or ETPs, and where centralized venues must interoperate responsibly with decentralized rails.

Conclusion

Li Lin’s journey—from founding Huobi to stewarding it through regulatory waters and eventually transferring control—mirrors the maturation of centralized crypto markets. As 2025 brings clearer rules, better transparency, and deeper integration with traditional finance, the exchanges that thrive will combine strong operational discipline with verifiable solvency and resilient security architectures.