Huobi, a cryptocurrency exchange, is rebranding from “Huobi” to “HTX,” potentially imitating the defunct exchange FTX, as part of a contentious marketing strategy to honor its tenth anniversary.

On Sept. 13, Huobi made the renaming announcement . The letter “H” stands for Huobi, the letter “T” for Justin Sun’s blockchain initiative Tron, and the letter “X” for the exchange.

Huobi did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Forging Pathways in New Markets and Embracing Metaverse

According to the announcement, the cryptocurrency exchange disclosed plans to grow its operations internationally by entering new marketplaces in various nations and regions.

Creating a port without the metaverse is still a major priority for HTX and the exchange has declared that it will deliberately collaborate with public chains like Tron, cross-chain protocols in the TRX ecosystem like BitTorrent Chain, and stablecoin initiatives like TrueUSD.

“After the rebranding, HTX’s listing strategy will start a new phase by expanding its ecosystem with new assets listings.

We will select premium and popular assets from around the world by introducing all-star projects that come with volume, popularity, and new trends. Additionally, HTX will deepen collaborations with mainstream ecosystems, including but not limited to public chain, Layer 2, and memecoins,” the exchange stated .

Another explanation is that “HT” stands for the Huobi Token (HT), which is the native token of the exchange, and “X” is the Roman numeral for 10, which honors the company’s tenth anniversary.

X is, however, very popular nowadays. Even Elon Musk rebranded  his social network Twitter to ‘X’ in July this year. Be it as it may, the new tagline for Huobi is “HTX, Just Trade It,” – Nike reference hasn’t been mentioned though.

Huobi updated their social media accounts to reflect the new name before formally announcing the announcement.

The exchange now goes by the name HTX_Global on X (formerly Twitter), and its official Telegram group is “HTXglobalofficial.” At the time of writing, the website’s domain still uses the original Huobi name.

Social media users soon questioned Huobi’s new moniker due to its resemblance to the now-defunct exchange FTX, whose creator, Sam Bankman-Fried, faces 13 fraud-related charges.

“Why did Huobi change its name to HTX? I feel like it’s from FTX,” one cryptocurrency analyst on X remarked .

“Is this a joke, or what? HTX to FTX? Another X user commented , “That’s the first thing everyone will think,” questioning why a company would have chosen such a moniker following the demise of FTX in 2022.

Huobi is not the first business, though, to appear to have taken inspiration for part of its name from the failed FTX.

The founders of the defunct cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital revealed a proposal to raise $25 million for the intended GTX cryptocurrency exchange in January 2023. The moniker “because G comes after F” is a play on FTX’s bankruptcy, according to its pitch deck.

Some experts on cryptocurrencies have also claimed that Huobi changed its name “after running into legal issues.” What legal difficulties were suggested are unclear because the exchange has consistently denied having any problems. Early in August, it refuted rumors that it was on the verge of bankruptcy  and that Chinese police had detained some of its top executives.

Prior to this, in May 2023, Malaysia’s securities regulator took enforcement action against Huobi Global and ordered it to cease business there.