In January 2026, macroeconomic uncertainties coupled with tightening market liquidity led to a downward trend in mainstream crypto assets, with risk appetite continuing to decline. In this severe downturn environment, "whether or not to find assets that are still appreciating" became a major challenge for all trading platforms and investors.
Huobi HTX adheres to a long-term perspective and professional selection as its core principles, responding quickly to real market demands while implementing a rigorous asset selection strategy. It selects high-quality projects with genuine attention, community consensus, and a compelling narrative across multiple sectors including Meme, AI, privacy, public chains, and DeFi. January platform data shows that many assets still achieved impressive gains despite the overall sluggish market, capturing alpha against the trend.
The challenges of a bear market: "Go for whatever's hot," carefully selecting assets to outperform the market average.
A market downturn doesn't mean opportunities have disappeared; rather, it means the difficulty of selection has increased exponentially. As Justin Sun, Global Advisor at Huobi HTX, stated, "Go for the hottest assets, go for whatever's hot." Among the various assets launched on Huobi HTX in January, it maintained its focus on long-term trends while also quickly responding to real market demands when short-term hot topics emerged, providing users with more choices under controllable risk and demonstrating a significant wealth effect. For example, the newly launched RIVER project, since its launch on January 16th, has seen a low of 17 USDT and a high of 88.8 USDT, representing a maximum increase of 422.4%; DUSK's price rose from 0.0375 USDT to 0.32 USDT, a monthly increase of 753.3%.
In a market environment where the overall economy is under pressure, it is rare for a new coin to achieve several times growth in a short period of time. Behind this is Huobi HTX's continuous tracking and rapid response to market sentiment, capital flows, and narrative pace.
Meme Sector: Structural Opportunities Amidst Emotional Game
The meme sector remained one of the most active areas in the market in January. In an environment of limited liquidity, projects with high consensus and buzzworthy appeal continued to attract concentrated investment.
PEPE once rose to 0.0000071 USDT, a monthly increase of 82.1%, becoming one of the leading assets in the current Meme market rebound. BONK (Bonk) , the first community-driven Dogecoin on the Solana blockchain, saw a monthly increase of 78.1%, demonstrating that established Meme projects still have the ability to absorb capital in a weak market. NEIRO (Neiro) saw a maximum increase of 66.3% after its launch, showing stable performance. BROCCOLI (CZ's Dog) , thanks to its strong topicality and community attention, saw its price rise from 0.0149 USDT to 0.043 USDT, a surge of 188.6%.
Furthermore, Huobi HTX's early deployment in the Chinese meme field is particularly noteworthy. Huobi HTX's initial listings of " Binance Life " and " I'm Here " saw monthly gains of 172.7% and 441.7% respectively, and were launched 83 days ahead of Binance.
AI and Cross-Chain: Deterministic Increments Driven by Narrative
AI and cross-chain technologies remain relatively stable sectors with strong medium- to long-term growth potential. VIRTUAL (Virtuals Protocol) is an AI role-based economy ecosystem protocol that allows developers to create autonomous, interactive, tradable, and evolving AI agents. With the explosive growth of the x402 ecosystem, its community and developer ecosystem have continued to expand, making it one of the representative assets in the AI sector, with a monthly increase of 90.3%, demonstrating independent performance amidst market volatility.
RIVER is building a chain-abstract stablecoin system that connects assets, liquidity, and yields across multiple blockchains. As one of the most outstanding assets in the cross-chain sector, River, with its clear technological positioning and capital backing, quickly gained market attention after its launch, with a maximum increase of over 422%, becoming one of the most representative Alpha projects in Huobi's January "Selected Projects".
Privacy and DeFi: An Undervalued Market Recovery
The privacy sector has maintained its popularity for an extended period, with significant rotation among major cryptocurrencies like ZEC and XMR, and smaller-cap stocks like DUSK. DUSK (Dusk Network) is a blockchain platform designed for regulation and decentralized finance (DeFi). As Europe's first blockchain-based stock exchange, it focuses on the issuance of digital securities. DUSK's price rose from 0.0375 USDT to 0.32 USDT, a monthly increase of 753.3%, indicating a return to focus on the long-term narrative of privacy. ZKP (zkPass) , an oracle network based on zkTLS, saw a monthly increase of 103.7%, demonstrating continued progress in zero-knowledge and privacy technologies at the infrastructure level. GWEI (ETHGas) is an Ethereum infrastructure protocol focused on reducing transaction latency. As a DeFi-related asset, GWEI saw a 157.9% increase in January, representing a structural opportunity within this niche sector.
Bear markets don't lack opportunities; they simply become scarcer. Huobi HTX will continue to leverage its professional, prudent, and forward-looking asset selection system to help users identify truly high-quality projects with alpha potential in a complex and volatile market environment. In the future, Huobi HTX will also continue to cover more new sectors and narratives, navigating market cycles together with users and welcoming the next market recovery.
Regarding Huobi HTX
Founded in 2013, Huobi HTX has evolved from a cryptocurrency exchange into a comprehensive blockchain business ecosystem after 12 years of development, covering digital asset trading, financial derivatives, research, investment, incubation and other businesses.
Huobi HTX, as a leading global Web3 portal, adheres to the development strategy of global expansion, ecosystem prosperity, wealth effect, and security and compliance, providing comprehensive, safe and reliable value and services to virtual currency enthusiasts around the world.
For more information about Huobi HTX, please visit https://www.htx.com/ or HTX Square , and follow us on X , Telegram , and Discord . For further inquiries, please contact glo-media@htx-inc.com .
