Huobi Technology Holdings Limited (the “Huobi Tech”), a limited company listed on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (stock code: 01611.HK), today announced the licensing of “Huobi Trust Company”, a Nevada state-chartered retail trust company and an indirectly wholly-owned subsidiary of Huobi Tech. The announcement is a key step forward in the company's ambitious plans to expand its recognized brand and products to a global audience, as well as its ongoing initiative to establish a suite of regulated financial products and services in the blockchain space. Huobi Trust Company's charter has been approved by the Nevada Financial Institutions Division, and its license will enable it to begin providing custodial and certain compliance services in early 2021.

Huobi Trust Company is led by a team of highly qualified individuals based in Las Vegas, Nevada. The team is led by its Chief Trust Officer, Simon Collier, with three decades of leadership experience in the global finance industry, which includes holding executive positions at a number of global banks, most recently at HSBC in Hong Kong. Collier specializes in the delivery of custody, trust and fiduciary products and has had direct responsibility for leading large scale globally distributed custody and fiduciary operations worldwide.

“Our whole team at Huobi Trust Company is delighted to move forward with this exciting initiative,” Said Collier. “Backed by Huobi Tech's expertise in distributed ledger technology, we expect to develop a range of innovative new products in the years ahead (subject of course, to regulatory approval). Huobi Tech's investments will benefit the state of Nevada as well as more broadly the users of our products and services.”

The team is also joined by the Chief Compliance Officer, Aja Heise, who was formerly the Chief Compliance Officer at a local competitor and now responsible for the growth and development of Huobi Trust Company's compliance program. She brings to the team multiple years of expertise in BSA and AML compliance, as well as hands-on experience in designing BSA programs to fit the emerging business verticals of digital asset custody and blockchain technologies.

“I am thrilled to be joining the Huobi Trust Company team and spearheading the growth and development of the compliance program,” Said Heise. “Our vision is to create the 'gold standard' of compliance programs by hiring the most qualified specialists while providing first-class customer experience. The program will be tailored around our business verticals as well as emerging regulations relating to blockchain and virtual currency.”

Huobi Tech has made a substantial investment into the Huobi Trust Company and foresees future plans to participate in Nevada's growing opportunities surrounding FinTech using its market-leading knowledge base and infrastructure for blockchain and distributed-ledger technologies. In addition to developing the trust company's products and services, education and strategic partnerships aimed toward the development and expansion of local knowledge and expertise surrounding blockchain technology are also at the forefront of Huobi Tech's plans in Nevada. In light of the state's detailed regulatory requirements for financial technology businesses, Huobi Tech aims to work closely with and appreciates the cooperation of the Nevada state agencies toward these goals.

The state of Nevada has long been a leader in gaming and innovation and has recently emerged as a hub for the development of blockchain and financial technologies. In 2017, Nevada laid the foundation for a blockchain-friendly legislation, becoming the first state to ban local governments from taxing blockchain use. More recently in 2019, Nevada built on that foundation by passing a series of regulatory sandbox legislation aimed at growing blockchain investment and adoption as a matter of state policy.