Following in the footsteps of the world’s largest exchange cryptocurrency, Binance Coin (BNB), another exchange coin, Huobi Token (HT), is flashing a more than 100 percent price increase in 2019.

Used as an alternative to trading fees on their respective exchanges, exchange cryptocurrencies are also commonly paired with other cryptocurrencies to form new markets and increase overall liquidity.

Recently, however, Binance created a new demand driver for its token by requiring participants of its token sale platform Binance Launchpad to make purchases either with bitcoin (BTC) or BNB.

While that is likely not the only cause for BNB’s near 200 percent surge this year, the cryptocurrency’s growth may have been too much for competing exchanges to ignore.

Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, Huobi, is following in Binance’s footsteps by creating a token sale platform of its own called “Huobi Prime.” Not only will Huobi Prime enable purchases via its native token HT, the platform will take things one step further by allowing purchased tokens to be instantly tradeable in HT markets.

Set to go live on March 26 for the sale of Top Network (TOP), the new demand drivers for HT have seemingly revved up investor interest, at one point having increased nearly 40 percent in price over the past two days alone.

That said, HT’s market began to take a bullish turn well before Huobi Prime was announced, a trend similarly seen on the price charts of other native exchange tokens.

As can be seen above, some of the largest exchange coins in the cryptocurrency market have posted notable gains so far this year and have outperformed the usual market trendsetter bitcoin (BTC/USD).

At press time, BNB is still the best performer or the group now up 145 percent year date, but HT is quickly becoming a contender while boasting a 123 percent price increase. The performance of Kucoin Shares (KCS), the cryptocurrency native the KuCoin exchange is also reporting notable year-to-date growth of 69 percent.

A recent surge in HT trading volumes also makes the newfound interest in the exchange coin apparent. In the last 24 hours alone more than $170 million worth of HT has traded hands – a value close to $50 million more than its entire market capitalization of $125 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

If Huobi Prime attracts interest comparable to the Binance Launchpad, which managed to sell out of the offered tokens in just minutes for each of its sales this year, more token sale platforms backed by cryptocurrency exchanges may be a trend to watch out for in 2019.

Disclosure: The author holds several cryptocurrencies, please see Sam’s author profile here for more information.

Huobi image via Shutterstock; Charts from by TradingView