HTX Offers Negative Fees on TradFi Assets in Aggressive Market Move

HTX has launched the second phase of its TradFi Trade to Earn campaign, offering negative fees on 28 handpicked traditional finance assets. This is a new level of aggression in the exchange market, as HTX absorbs the cost to seed activity and attract volume.

The campaign's structure is designed to pull traders from broker platforms, letting them trade tokenized stocks, ETFs, and similar instruments with negative fees. By paying customers to provide liquidity on underperforming pairs, HTX is essentially flipping the standard exchange model.

Most exchanges responded to the last bear market by cutting fees to near zero. However, going negative on TradFi instruments marks a new level of aggression. The $80,000 prize pool for participants suggests that HTX is paying cash out of pocket to attract volume and lock in market share before competitors catch up.

The campaign signals that the next exchange battle is not about which coin to list, but who can offer the cheapest on-ramp to assets outside the crypto spot universe. Negative fees are an expensive way to make this point, but in a market starved for new narratives, they at least get attention.