Huobi liquidates its Australian subsidiary amid the bear market

• The cryptocurrency platform chooses to absorb its Australian platform.
• The company also announced a series of redundancies.

Huobi, the fifth largest cryptocurrency exchange with average daily trading volume of about $950M, decided to absorb its Australian subsidiary eight months after launch. The company sited bear market conditions as one of the reasons behind the decision.

“Please be informed that due to poor market conditions and associated recent staff redundancies here at Huobi Australia, all operations, including the management of our platform, social media channels and customer support will be managed by our team at Huobi Global headquarters starting 26th February 2019,” Huobi Australia wrote in its official Twitter account.

The company also ditched the plans to introduce fiat-to-crypto trading, which means that it won’t need to obtain a listens from the local regulator.

Australian platform was opened in July 2018. At that time the company believes that this move was a natural fit. However, dire market conditions forced it to perform restructuring.

Apart from that, Huobi reported a reduction of local personnel in an attempt to optimize its staff by firing underperforming personnel.

Hard market conditions force cryptocurrency-related businesses to cut costs – often by reducing the headcount. Thus, mining equipment manufacturer Bitmain, software developer ConsenSys and Payment solution provider ShapeShift announced the same move in recent months.

Meanwhile, the cryptocurrency market is a mixed picture of Tuesday, as Bitcoin and most altcoins are rangebound after a wild movement during the weekend. BTC/USD is changing hands at $3,770, ETH/USD is trading at $138.00, while XRP has settled at $0.3183  by the time of writing.