From "13 Years" to "Resilience Meets the Future": Huobi HTX Brand Director Donny on the Long-Termism Behind Navigating Market Cycles

The "VIP Guardian Program" is a series of interview columns launched by Huobi HTX, focusing on key account customer service practices. Every Tuesday, it invites frontline service teams from the platform to share real service experiences, market observations, and customer need insights, conveying a long-termist service philosophy and showcasing Huobi HTX's professional and stable customer service capabilities.

Recently, Donny, Head of Brand at Huobi HTX, appeared on the "VIP Guardian Program" to systematically break down the thinking behind the 13th-anniversary theme "Resilience for the Future" from a brand perspective for the first time, sharing insights on user service, anniversary events, security, and market confidence.

Crossing Bull and Bear Cycles, “Resilience” Is the Most Authentic Testament to 13 Years

In the cryptocurrency industry, what does 13 years actually mean? From 2013 to the present, the crypto market has gone through several bull and bear cycles, industry narratives have constantly evolved, and countless projects and platforms have emerged and gradually faded from view. In such a rapidly changing industry, Huobi HTX’s ability to operate continuously for 13 years itself transcends mere chronological significance.

When discussing the origin of this year’s 13th-anniversary theme "Resilience for the Future," Donny stated that "resilience" was almost the keyword that the team agreed upon from the very beginning.

The reasoning is straightforward.

Since its establishment in 2013, Huobi HTX has navigated multiple bull and bear cycles across the crypto industry and experienced varying stages of market shifts and external challenges. In Donny’s view, making it to where we are today is inherently a reflection of an established trading platform’s resilience.

However, "Resilience for the Future" is not merely a summary of the past.

“We not only needed resilience in the past and present, but we must maintain this state when looking toward the future.”

From a broader industry perspective, the crypto sector itself is undergoing a crucial phase of transitioning from niche innovation into the global financial system. Market cycles continue to shift, regulatory frameworks are gradually taking shape, and new assets, products, and user demands emerge continuously. For a platform, what truly matters is not how fast it runs during a specific phase, but its ability to continuously adapt and build amid change.

Thus, in Donny’s eyes, “resilience” is both an experience accumulated over Huobi HTX’s past 13 years and a deliberate choice for facing the future.

“Users First”: The Starting Point of Event Design

If resilience explains why Huobi HTX has been able to last 13 years, then users are the other keyword Donny repeatedly emphasizes.

“Our core purpose is to serve users; everything must start with them.”

According to Donny, whether for brand campaigns or specific business initiatives, Huobi HTX continuously gathers user feedback from social media, communities, and daily operations. When users express desires for more benefits, lower fees, richer product offerings, or better user experiences, this feedback is integrated into the platform’s event and product design processes.

This year’s 13th-anniversary campaign is a concentrated manifestation of this approach.

Centered around “Resilience for the Future,” Huobi HTX designed 13 growth tasks that incorporate diverse business scenarios such as community engagement, spot trading, futures, Earn, TradFi integration, and deposits. Rather than deliberately setting high barriers, this year’s focus is on allowing users to complete tasks naturally through daily platform usage, unlocking corresponding rewards progressively based on their progress.

Upon completing 3, 6, 9, 11, or even all 13 tasks, users can obtain annual rights and benefits at different tiers.

Meanwhile, the platform has also tailored corresponding events around different trading habits such as futures, spot, and Earn, enabling users of various types to choose participation methods that best suit their preferences.

“Why does Huobi HTX place such strong emphasis on users? Because many users have genuinely accompanied us for a long time,” Donny admitted. “From those who entered the crypto market early to those who have weathered different bull and bear cycles, some users have remained with Huobi HTX throughout, while others left and later returned. The connection between the platform and its users has thus evolved beyond mere transactions, becoming a shared memory of navigating industry cycles together.”

Facing Market Volatility, True Confidence Comes from Continuous Action

Another unavoidable topic during the live broadcast was “confidence.”

The crypto market is inherently characterized by high volatility, high information density, and rapidly shifting market sentiment. Especially when unexpected incidents occur within a platform or the industry, users care less about marketing slogans and more about whether the platform operates normally, whether their assets are safe, and whether there will be timely responses after issues arise.

During the live session, one user directly asked about recent reports of an attack on the platform.

In response, Donny clarified that the incident was caused by a DDoS attack resulting in temporary impact. The Huobi HTX technical team handled it swiftly, and user funds remained unaffected.

In Donny’s view, for a trading platform, security has never been an abstract concept, but rather a comprehensive manifestation of long-term technological investment, risk prevention and control, and emergency response capabilities.

At a longer temporal dimension, the 13 years themselves also constitute a special answer. “In such a rapidly changing industry, time itself is the answer.”

Over the past decade-plus, the crypto industry has experienced rapid expansion as well as severe clearing cycles. Being able to continuously maintain platform operations, product iterations, and user services across multiple cycles represents another form of certainty for a trading platform.

Therefore, rather than repeatedly responding to every voice in the market, Donny prefers that users focus on what the platform has consistently done.

Whether products continue to be optimized in response to user feedback; whether businesses continue to develop amid market changes; whether the team can respond promptly to sudden issues.

Trust ultimately does not stem from a single explanation, but from the continuous accumulation of long-term actions.

From Platform Resilience to Team Resilience: Behind 13 Years Stands a Group of Long-Term Builders

Why has Huobi HTX been able to reach its 13th year?

Donny attributes this to three things: team resilience, users first, and sincerity.

First is the team.

For a platform to navigate through cycles, it ultimately relies on organizational capability. From product, technology, and R&D to operations, branding, and customer service, sustained collaboration among different teams during market peaks and valleys forms the foundation of the platform’s long-term operation.

Secondly, it is continuously placing users in a pivotal position.

Providing richer trading opportunities during bullish markets, promptly addressing user inquiries during periods of volatility, and continually gathering suggestions to feed back into products and services in daily operations. In Donny’s opinion, these seemingly minor actions ultimately compose a trading platform’s true long-term competitiveness.

Third is sincerity.

In the Web3 industry, where information spreads at lightning speed, brands and users increasingly find it difficult to establish trust relying solely on one-way communication. Willingness to step forward to communicate, explain facts, and take continuous action when problems arise has instead become a crucial component of building long-term platform relationships.

“What we want to tell our users is that we have always been here, and we are continuously building.”

Complete live replay: VIP Guardian Program — Donny