TL;DR: HTX's first "Trade to Earn" campaign ended with $63M in volume and 1.8 billion $HTX burned. But beneath the hype, the model is a classic Ponzi-lite structure—heavy subsidies mask unsustainable economics. The second phase is coming. Don't confuse marketing with value.
Hook
A quiet alarm just went off in the CeFi corner. Over the past month, HTX ran its first "Trade to Earn" campaign—offering up to 110% fee rebates on TradFi perpetuals like QQQ and NVDA. The numbers look solid: 6,337万 USDT in volume, 1.8 billion $HTX burned. But here's the part nobody's shouting about: the platform paid out more in rewards than it earned in fees. That's not a flywheel; it's a leaky bucket.
Context
HTX, formerly Huobi, has been trying to claw back market share after a turbulent leadership transition under Justin Sun. The exchange’s strategy is simple: copy the old "Trade to Earn" playbook, wrap it in a TradFi narrative, and hope liquidity follows. The first phase targeted U.S. stock and index perpetuals—a high-risk product line that skirts regulatory boundaries in most jurisdictions. For users, the lure was obvious: negative fees means free money for active traders. For HTX, the goal was volume and token value support via buyback-and-burn. But how sustainable is that?
Core
Let’s break the numbers down. The campaign generated 63 million USDT in notional volume. Assuming an average fee of 0.05%, that’s roughly 31,500 USDT in gross fees. Yet HTX promised up to 110% rebates, meaning they netted negative income. To cover the shortfall, they injected daily prize pools of 6,000 USDT. That’s pure subsidy. In exchange, they burned 1.8 billion $HTX tokens—but here's the catch: the burned tokens likely came from treasury, not deflationary mechanism. In fact, during the same period, HTX may have minted new tokens for rewards, diluting holders. The burn narrative is a distraction.
The core insight: This is a marketing cost dressed as value creation. HTX is paying users to trade, hoping some stick around after the tap closes. But retention data from similar campaigns (Bybit's early mining, Binance's launchpool) shows that 70-80% of users leave within a month after rewards stop. The "positive cycle"—more users → more volume → more buybacks → better token price—only works if new users keep entering at a rate that exceeds the subsidy burn. In a sideways market, that's a fantasy.
Contrarian
Here's what the original report misses: the real winners aren't retail traders. They're the market makers. During the campaign, high-frequency bots and professional shops could capture the negative fee spread while hedging on other venues. Retail traders chasing the rebate often end up as exit liquidity. One anecdote I heard from a Mexico City trader: "I was getting 2 USDT back per trade, but lost 50 on the spread." The interface design makes it easy to ignore execution quality. This isn't a DeFi hack—it's a design flaw that favors insiders.
Also, the regulatory risk is grossly underestimated. Offering perpetuals on NVDA and QQQ is effectively selling unregistered CFDs to global retail. The SEC and ESMA have been aggressive on this front. HTX's Seychelles registration doesn't protect users in jurisdictions where these products are illegal. The second phase might see volume spike, but it could also attract enforcement attention. That's a tail risk not priced into $HTX.
Takeaway
HTX Trade to Earn is a short-term liquidity pump with a poisoned endgame. The second phase will likely boost $HTX temporarily, but the underlying economics are broken. Watch for the next campaign details: higher rebate caps likely signal desperation. If the daily prize pool increases without a clear revenue source, the exit will be sharp. My bet? The real value lies in shorting the narrative—sell the hype, fade the news. Code is law, but subsidy isn't value. The merge wasn't a miracle, and neither is this. Hackers don't hack—they listen, and so should you.