China’s Huobi has onboarded rival OKEx’s former CEO Chris Lee, who joins the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency Exchange to take on the newly-created role of its Board Secretary and Vice President of Global Business Development.
The trading venue, previously operating in China, has shifted most of its business operations to Huobi.pro, which is headquartered in Singapore.
It was only last week when Mr. Lee announced his resignation from OKEx, formerly known as OKCoin, leaving the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange just as it became the world’s largest by reported turnover. He didn’t elaborate on the reasons for his departure.
In his new role, Chris will lead Huobi Group's global M&A strategy and oversee the development of international teams.
Huobi handled more than $1 billion of virtual currency trades during the past 24 hours, making it the world’s third most active fee-charging crypto exchange, according to Coinmarketcap.com, which aggregates trading statistics reported by exchanges.
Meanwhile, OKEx has been climbing in the global ranking over the past few weeks, recently overtaking Binance as the biggest by turnover.
Commenting on his appointment, Lee said: "I am a big believer in Blockchain technology and view exchanges as the heart of the industry. Huobi Group has built a strong foundation, from the popularity of its exchange to the investments the company has made in the global blockchain ecosystem. The combination of the team's technical expertise with industry-leading marketing and operational abilities positions it to become the Goldman Sachs of this new era in finance. If done properly, Huobi may even be bigger than Goldman one day."
Leon Li, founder, and CEO of Huobi Group, added: "This year, we're making major investments in growing the global blockchain and digital asset ecosystem, and I am confident in Chris's passion and ability to help us capture this opportunity."
"Licenses and guidelines will lead to more product diversification and participation," said Chris. "We will likely see growth in both utility and security tokens, digital asset-related financial derivatives, and the digitization of physical assets. These are all massive markets that we want to capture to maintain our first-mover advantage."
