Leon Li

Founder of Huobi and Avenir Group, and chairman of Hong Kong-listed Bitfire Group.

Leon Li, also known as Li Lin, founded Huobi in 2013 and helped build a business around the growing demand for cryptocurrency trading. His career has since moved into investment and digital asset services. After selling his controlling stake in Huobi Global in 2022, he remained active in the industry through Avenir Group and the Hong Kong-listed company now known as Bitfire Group.

From engineering to building businesses

Li’s professional background began in technology. He studied automation at Tongji University before completing a master’s degree in control science and engineering at Tsinghua University. His early career included work at Oracle and businesses operating in search technology and e-commerce.

Those experiences preceded his move into cryptocurrency. By the time he founded Huobi in 2013, he had worked across both technical and commercial roles. His next business would bring those areas together around an emerging market: people looking for a way to buy and sell digital assets.

Building Huobi during crypto’s early growth

Huobi became the business most closely associated with Li’s name. Founded in China, it developed into a prominent cryptocurrency exchange during a period when access to Bitcoin was becoming a business opportunity in its own right.

An exchange’s contribution sits between the underlying technology and the people using it. Traders need a place to submit orders, find counterparties and manage their accounts. Huobi helped provide that access as cryptocurrency markets expanded.

The company’s direction also changed with its operating environment. In its 2022 ownership announcement, Li described Huobi’s departure from mainland China in late 2021 as the beginning of a broader push into international markets. That transition provides important context for the ownership change that followed.

The ownership change that ended his Huobi chapter

In October 2022, Huobi Global announced that its controlling shareholder had completed the sale of his entire shareholding to a buyout vehicle managed by About Capital Management.

For Li’s biography, this is a clear dividing point. He remains Huobi’s founder, but that historical connection should not be confused with a current operating role at the exchange.

Huobi adopted the HTX brand in September 2023, after the ownership change. References to Li as the founder of the business are therefore accurate; descriptions presenting him as HTX’s current chief executive are outdated.

Avenir and the move into investment

Li founded Avenir Group in 2023. The organization grew out of his family office and describes its work as spanning traditional finance and digital assets, with activities across investment, incubation and operations.

This represents a different way of participating in the industry. An exchange provides a venue for trading; an investment group allocates capital across assets, strategies and businesses. Avenir’s stated areas of interest include digital assets, financial platforms, payments infrastructure and real-world assets.

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds have also featured in Avenir’s public disclosures. In August 2025, the group reported Bitcoin ETF holdings exceeding $1 billion at the end of the second quarter. That figure describes a dated company disclosure, rather than Li’s personal wealth or a live portfolio valuation.

For broader context on this investment channel, Bitnxt’s analysis of Bitcoin ETF flows and institutional demand explains why market-wide flows and an individual manager’s reported holdings answer different questions.

His role at Bitfire Group

Li also serves as chairman of Bitfire Group Holdings Limited, the Hong Kong-listed company with stock code 1611. Previously called Sinohope Technology Holdings Limited, it adopted the Bitfire name in March 2026.

This listed company should be distinguished from the Huobi exchange. Similar historical branding can make the two easy to confuse, but a role at Bitfire does not mean Li has resumed running HTX.

His chairman position is also distinct from the chief executive role. Bitfire’s corporate disclosures identify Li as chairman and a non-executive director, while Weng Xiaoqi serves as chief executive.

Together, Avenir and Bitfire explain why Li’s career extends beyond Huobi. His association with the exchange remains central to his history, while his subsequent work places greater emphasis on investment and financial services around digital assets.