A Review of the History of Chinese Cryptocurrency Exchanges: The Rise of the Grassroots, Offshore Migration, and Compliance Restructuring

Author: Black Mario

01 The Wild Frontier Begins

In the rainy season of 2011 in Shanghai, the humidity and heat were suffocating. In a less than 20 square meter residential building in Jing'an District, there wasn't even a decent sign. Two chipped computer desks and a second-hand printer were all that constituted the possessions of China's earliest cryptocurrency exchange.

Yang Linke, smoking a cigarette, stared at the characters dancing on the screen, while Huang Xiaoyu typed the last line of matching code. Two young men, struggling on the fringes of the internet, had no idea that they were opening a door to a wild frontier that would sweep across the globe.

At that time in China, no one took Bitcoin seriously as a business. This string of virtual code from overseas was hidden in the corners of geek forums. The story of China's cryptocurrency exchanges quietly began with these two young men, who were completely different in identity and personality.

Yang Linke was a native of Wenzhou, born in 1985. He never followed the usual path of education. He dropped out of school as a teenager and wandered around, working as a network administrator in internet cafes in Wenzhou and Shanghai, surrounded by the smell of smoke, fixing machines, troubleshooting, and watching players game—this was his most authentic youth. Later, he dabbled in virtual items and built small websites; he didn't make a lot of money but developed an eye for niche demands.

He didn't understand cryptography and had never been in touch with the overseas geek circle. When he first saw "Bitcoin" in a tech forum in 2010, he keenly realized that it was a virtual token that could be transferred online without anyone controlling it. A simple thought popped into his mind: if someone plays, someone will want to buy and sell; if there is buying and selling, there must be a place to facilitate it.

At that time, there were hardly any over-the-counter Bitcoin transactions in China. Buyers and sellers posted on forums, transferred money privately, and manually transferred coins, which was cumbersome and dangerous, resembling the way people would trade vegetables on the roadside before there were markets. Yang Linke saw this untouched gap, but he had no technology, no team; the only thing he could do was find someone who could write code to partner with.

The person he found was Huang Xiaoyu.

Unlike the grassroots Yang Linke, Huang Xiaoyu was a well-known tech geek in the circle, having delved into programming for many years, specializing in website development and backend construction. He was among the first in China to understand the underlying logic of Bitcoin. He was introverted, not fond of being in the limelight, and was obsessed with code and decentralized technology. When Yang Linke found him on the forum and bluntly said, "I'll handle operations, you write code, let's create a Bitcoin trading website together," Huang Xiaoyu agreed without hesitation.

Perhaps it was not for the sake of making big money, but for the geek's obsession that such a pioneering thing needed a trading platform of its own in China.

The two pooled together several tens of thousands of yuan in startup capital, rented this residential office, had no investors, no formal employees, and no compliance procedures. During the day, they wrote code and adjusted the pages, and at night, they went to forums to attract traffic. When hungry, they made instant noodles; when tired, they slept on the desk. In June 2011, Bitcoin China (BTCC) officially went online, becoming China's first cryptocurrency exchange and one of the earliest trading platforms in the world.

The early BTCC website was extremely rudimentary, with only the simplest buy and sell orders and price curves, and there were no candlestick charts; it could only trade Bitcoin. Deposits and withdrawals relied entirely on manual processes. Users transferred money to Yang Linke's personal bank account, and he manually verified before adding coins for users. Withdrawals required users to submit requests, and Huang Xiaoyu manually transferred coins one by one.

The first batch of users numbered only a few hundred, all programmers, geeks, and overseas students, with daily trading volumes of just a few tens of thousands. Yang Linke later recalled that at that time, he never thought about making money; he just felt he was doing something very cool, like building the first small road in a no-man's land.

Two ordinary people, one daring to dream and the other daring to act, set up the first tent of China's exchange in the wilderness.

However, this grassroots geek site remained lukewarm for two whole years after going online, never breaking out of its small circle. Until 2013, when an elite from overseas entered the scene and completely changed the fate of BTCC—his name was Li Qiyuan.

Li Qiyuan's life was a completely different world from that of Yang Linke and Huang Xiaoyu.

He studied in the United States in his early years, graduated from Stanford University, and worked in Silicon Valley tech companies and Wall Street institutions. He was familiar with overseas financial markets, media operations, and business strategies, and he was a staunch believer in Bitcoin, being one of the first to introduce Bitcoin into the Chinese business circle.

In 2013, the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed from $13 at the beginning of the year to $1,100 by the end of the year. The first wave of bull market swept in, and the demand in the Chinese market exploded. BTCC's grassroots model could no longer support the influx of users. Li Qiyuan quickly recognized BTCC's first-mover advantage and decisively joined to lead operations, using three key strategies to turn this geek site into an industry benchmark.

He first ended the residential workshop model, registered a formal company, and built a complete team for technology, operations, and customer service. He also engaged with domestic and foreign financial media to bring Bitcoin and BTCC into the public eye, striving to make ordinary people aware of Bitcoin and Bitcoin trading. At the same time, he optimized the deposit and withdrawal processes, improved system stability, and initially built a security mechanism to accommodate the explosive growth of users.

In 2013, BTCC reached its peak, with daily trading volumes exceeding 100 million yuan, and the user base surged, becoming the most influential exchange in China and even globally. The original iron triangle of Yang Linke, Huang Xiaoyu, and Li Qiyuan firmly established their position as pioneers of Chinese exchanges.

That period was the absolute wild era of Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges. There were no regulatory policies, no industry standards, no risk control requirements, and no formal payment channels. User assets were all in the founders' private accounts.

These wild years completed the industry's most core primitive accumulation:

BTCC proved that the early business model of matching RMB + Bitcoin was feasible, expanding users from the geek circle to ordinary investors, and provided the most intuitive entrepreneurial model for future entrants.

Of course, the wild revelry eventually welcomed the first warning bell.

In December 2013, the central bank and five ministries jointly issued a notice on preventing Bitcoin risks, clearly defining that Bitcoin is not currency but a virtual commodity, and drawing a red line prohibiting financial institutions and payment institutions from participating in related businesses, directly pointing out the fatal risks of exchanges: unregistered, poor security, vulnerable to attacks, and operators may abscond with funds.

Although this notice did not shut down exchanges, it put the first reins on the wildly growing industry.

Yang Linke understood in his heart that the days relying on grassroots workshops and gray areas were coming to an end. What he didn't know was that a battle for industry supremacy was already on the horizon.

In the winter of 2013, BTCC moved out of the residential building and into a formal office building. At the moment the logo lit up, the three pioneers stood by the window, their eyes filled with light.

They transformed from internet café administrators, tech geeks, and overseas elites into the first generation of founders of Chinese exchanges, taking the most straightforward steps from 0 to 1. But they didn't anticipate that soon two more radical entrepreneurs would break the pattern they had established and push Chinese exchanges to the pinnacle of the global stage.

Li Lin and Xu Mingxing were already sharpening their claws not far away.

02 The Rise of the Three Giants and the Dominance of Chinese Power in the World

In the same year of 2013, the lights in the entrepreneurial café of Zhongguancun, Beijing, shone bright into the late night.

Li Lin stared at the Bitcoin candlestick chart on his computer, having just emerged from a failed group buying venture, he sensed an unprecedented opportunity. Meanwhile, a few streets away, Xu Mingxing was typing code non-stop, this tech geek proficient in high-frequency trading systems was building his own trading engine.

Two young men with completely different backgrounds, ideas, and strategies focused on the Bitcoin trading track in the same year. They did not replicate BTCC's grassroots pioneering path; instead, they used mature internet strategies to break the initial pattern established by Yang Linke and Li Qiyuan, pushing Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges from a geek circle to the throne of global dominance.

Li Lin was from Shaoyang, Hunan, born in 1986, a standard veteran of internet products. He was a top student in computer science during his school years and after graduation, he worked at major companies like Renren and Oracle, mastering product design and user operations. In 2010, he hit the group buying trend and founded Mengmai.com, which once ranked among the top ten in the country, but ultimately fell in the smoke of the group buying war.

This failure made him realize: small entrepreneurs can only break through by relying on vertical tracks, urgent needs, and light asset operations.

In 2013, Bitcoin surged from $13 to $1,000, and domestic trading demand exploded. Li Lin immediately went to use BTCC, only to be left speechless by the poor experience: the page lagged, the deposit process was cumbersome, and he couldn't find customer service. He instantly grasped the industry's Achilles' heel: China lacked not people speculating on coins, but a good, fast, and reliable trading platform.

At that time, BTCC had established a foothold with its first-mover advantage but still bore the roughness of a geek website. In September 2013, Li Lin announced the launch of Huobi, relying on "user-friendly, free, and fast" features, breaking a million in trading volume within three months and starting to challenge BTC China's first-mover advantage.

Li Lin's breakthrough strategy was user experience: instant deposits and withdrawals, 24-hour customer service, and smooth pages, plus the killer feature of free trading, directly penetrating the initial platforms that made money from fees.

While Li Lin was frantically capturing the market with user experience, Xu Mingxing, who also wanted to make money in this track, took a completely opposite path.

Born in 1985, Xu Mingxing was a tech geek from Suzhou, Jiangsu. A graduate of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, he mastered distributed systems and high-concurrency architecture during college. After graduation, he joined Yahoo China, participating in the development of world-class trading systems, and later became the technical director at Douyin, gaining a clear understanding of the stability of a platform with millions of users.

After coming into contact with Bitcoin, he didn't care about the retail experience at all; he focused on the core barriers of trading systems. At that time, all domestic platforms' matching engines couldn't support massive trading and high-frequency quantification, leaving institutional users with nowhere to land. Xu Mingxing's goal was to create the most stable and fastest exchange in China, specifically serving institutions.

In October 2013, OKCoin officially launched, branding itself as "top-notch technology, professional trading," competing directly with Huobi.

He personally led the team to write matching code, creating a system capable of millisecond-level transactions and tens of thousands of concurrent connections, directly crushing BTCC's outdated architecture. Similarly focusing on quantitative and high-frequency trading, he firmly captured professional investors and institutional teams, forming a stark contrast to Li Lin's retail route.

One understood users and targeted retail; the other understood technology and catered to institutions.

Li Lin and Xu Mingxing, in the same year and on the same track, carved out two complementary yet opposing paths to rise.

By the end of 2013, both Huobi and OKCoin had risen, completely breaking BTCC's monopoly, and the three-legged pattern of Chinese exchanges was officially formed.

At that time, BTCC held onto the golden signboard of the initial pioneers, relying on overseas resources and established reputation to retain old users; Huobi, with its extreme experience and aggressive operations, became the platform with the largest user base; OKCoin monopolized the institutional and quantitative market with top-notch technology.

The three did not engage in vicious competition but instead worked together to expand the industry. With the opening of the RMB entry channel and the standardization of trading processes, it became easier for more people to enter the crypto space, transforming exchanges from a marginal business into one of the most lucrative entrepreneurial tracks at the time.

The global influence of Chinese exchanges began to emerge, and a sudden global black swan event allowed them to take over the world.

In February 2014, the global crypto industry erupted. The Japanese Mt. Gox exchange, which once accounted for over 70% of global Bitcoin trading volume, declared bankruptcy after being hacked and losing 850,000 Bitcoins. The global cryptocurrency trading system collapsed instantly, causing panic among users, liquidity to dry up, and prices to plummet, leading to the complete failure of European and American exchanges and creating a massive vacuum in the market.

The three major Chinese platforms seized the opportunity to rewrite history: the RMB trading system was mature, the user base was large, and liquidity was abundant. Huobi and OKCoin's systems were sufficient to accommodate the global overflow of traffic, while BTCC connected with international users through overseas resources.

In just three months, the core of global Bitcoin trading shifted from Tokyo to Beijing and Shanghai.

From 2014 to 2016, BTCC, Huobi, and OKCoin firmly occupied over 80% of global Bitcoin trading volume, peaking at over 90%. The RMB became the core currency for Bitcoin pricing, and China's trading hours, policy direction, and user sentiment directly influenced global Bitcoin prices.

Huobi's customer service was still processing orders in the early morning in Beijing, BTCC's matching system was running at high speed late at night in Shanghai, and Shenzhen's quantitative team was monitoring high-frequency trading on OKCoin, while China became the absolute center of global cryptocurrency at that time.

These were the most glorious three years for Chinese exchanges, with no high-pressure regulation, no vicious internal competition, and no catastrophic explosions. The three giants ruled the world together, making a fortune. Li Lin, Xu Mingxing, and Li Qiyuan stood at the pinnacle of the industry, becoming well-known faces in the global crypto circle.

While the giants dominated, small and medium platforms sprang up like mushrooms after rain, and the industry entered a prosperous period of a hundred schools of thought contending. Chinese Bitcoin focused on low fees to capture the sinking market, Bitcoin Trading Network delved into spot trading, and Bter took the lead in niche coins. By 2016, the number of formal exchanges in China exceeded 30, and Bitcoin traders began to take shape from first-tier cities to small towns.

This stage only involved pure spot trading, and everyone thought the golden age would last forever.

But beneath the surface of prosperity, undercurrents had already begun to stir.

The competition for users among the three giants became increasingly fierce, and pure spot trading could not satisfy their expansion ambitions; small and medium platforms began to focus on futures, leverage, and altcoins, seeking new profit points; regulatory scrutiny shifted from "defining virtual goods" to the rapidly expanding financial risks.

In 2016, Bitcoin prices steadily rose amidst fluctuations. The three major exchanges sat atop the global trading volume throne, enjoying the benefits of pioneers.

But they did not anticipate that the next stage would see a fierce internal competition surrounding futures, altcoins, and high leverage, and that the regulatory blade hanging over the industry was quietly descending.

03 The Frenzied Game of Futures, Altcoins, and Leverage

In the deep winter of 2016, the Huobi office was lit all night, and the Bitcoin candlestick chart on the screen fluctuated violently due to leverage and hot money. In the corner of a 24-hour convenience store downstairs, traders with bloodshot eyes were either joyfully shouting, having just made back a year's salary by doubling their investment in an altcoin, or crouching on the ground, covering their faces and silently crying after being liquidated by high leverage just minutes earlier, losing all their savings.

This was the most frenzied time for Chinese cryptocurrency exchanges. The profits from the spot trading track had nearly dried up, and the three giants—Huobi, OKCoin, and BTCC—tore off their mild masks and engaged in close combat. New players exploited the blind spots in the rules and took risks.

Futures leverage, altcoin ICOs, and off-exchange financing acted like three wildfires, transforming the entire industry. Air coins ran rampant, financing sucked blood, trading volume was faked, and dark box operations flourished, with all the evils and chaos of financial markets erupting in these two years.

It was the high-leverage futures that first tore open the industry's bottom line.

Back during the spot trading frenzy, a group of traders who had long been immersed in overseas contract markets sensed survival opportunities in the bear market. They didn't understand the technology of big firms or engage in refined operations, but they understood retail investors' gambling nature: only doing spot trading meant they could only profit from rising prices, and in a bear market, they could only wait to die; with leverage and short selling, they could make money whether prices went up or down.

In June 2013, the first domestic Bitcoin futures platform, 796, went online, bearing the label of high risk and offering a maximum leverage of 10 times, directly opening up a new battlefield.

The "3.21 LTC Crash" in 2014 shocked the industry and propelled 796 to fame.

On the night of March 21, the price of Litecoin on the Huobi platform unexpectedly halved, crashing from 180 yuan to 90 yuan. There were no warnings, no circuit breakers, and no risk controls, leading to millions of spot users being directly "killed," with their account funds evaporating instantly.

The platform's customer service was overwhelmed, and the office was packed with retail investors demanding their rights. Some shouted angrily, while others sat down and cried. This incident made retail investors see the soft underbelly of spot trading and caused 796 to explode in popularity overnight.

In just a month, 796's trading volume surged tenfold, becoming the only winner in the bear market.

Xu Mingxing and Li Lin could no longer sit still; they knew that derivatives were the real profit machines. Huobi quickly launched BitVC futures, OKCoin introduced a contract section overnight, and together with BTCC, they ignited a ruthless futures war.

Trading fees were slashed from 0.1% to 0.03%, nearly free to grab users; leverage was increased from 5 times to 20 times, and privately, 30 times was opened for large clients; platforms quietly "inserted needles," delayed transactions, and targeted liquidations, silently eating away at retail investors' margins.

In May 2014, the five major platforms jointly announced a suspension of leverage business, but within a month, high leverage was fully restarted. In the face of high profits, no one was willing to hit the brakes.

796 became the first victim of this internal competition.

On the night of November 3, 2014, 796 suddenly crashed across the platform, unable to log in, place orders, or withdraw funds, with user assets locked tightly within the platform. The founding team rushed to repair it overnight but to no avail. Three days later, when it reopened, trading volume was zero, and trust collapsed. The once-leading futures platform vanished in just a few weeks. The death of 796 was the most straightforward warning: uncontrolled high leverage was a black hole for money, but by this time, the market had already been swept up in gambling nature, and no one paid attention to this warning.

While the futures battlefield was bloody, the altcoin and ICO track stirred up an even crazier bubble of wealth, breeding the worst chaos.

Bitcoin and Litecoin had long been firmly monopolized by the three giants, and small platforms had no chance to break through. Former Alibaba security engineer Zhang Shousong quickly found his path—relaxing coin listing reviews and focusing on long-tail altcoins. As long as project parties paid a listing fee, JuCoin would let them all through.

In 2017, the ICO craze hit, and JuCoin went completely wild. Hundreds of altcoins flooded onto the platform, with project parties and platforms sharing profits, launching with skyrocketing prices, attracting retail investors to chase high, and then quietly dumping to cash out, leaving a mess behind. Retail investors never read white papers, only listened to so-called insider information, and even dared to invest all their wealth in worthless junk coins.

JuCoin relied on this model to briefly top the global trading volume in 2017, serving 23 million users and becoming a wealth factory in the altcoin track, also becoming a notorious base for harvesting retail investors.

At the same time, Yunbi took the "opinion leader harvesting" to the extreme. Early Bitcoin evangelist Li Xiaolai held a 25% stake, bringing in millions of followers. Yunbi not only became the first platform in China to list Ethereum but also the preferred platform for ICO projects. In 2017, one ICO project after another launched on Yunbi, skyrocketing upon opening, with myths of hundredfold and thousandfold coins spreading across the internet.

With JuCoin and Yunbi leading the frenzy, platforms like Yuanbao, Bitcoin Times, and others followed suit, with platform coins, altcoins, and ICO tokens flooding the market. The entire market turned into a casino, with bad coins driving out good ones, and projects that genuinely focused on technology were drowned out.

The madness of futures and altcoins completely skewed the entire industry. From the three giants to small platforms, all the unspoken rules were laid bare, and the chaos was shocking.

At that time, Huobi and OKCoin fully opened financing and coin borrowing, allowing users to borrow 5 to 10 times their principal to trade coins, which was essentially official financing, with astonishingly high interest rates; third-party off-exchange financing companies offered up to 50 times leverage, with daily interest rates of 1%. Borrowing 100,000 yuan would incur a daily interest of 1,000 yuan, leading countless retail investors to borrow at high interest to trade coins, and when the market reversed, they were instantly burdened with debt.

To seize the title of "global trading volume leader," all platforms were frantically inflating their trading volumes.

Bots were used for wash trading, with real trading volumes of 100 million being inflated to 10 billion; all orders on the order book were fake, creating a false impression of ample liquidity, and the trading volume data reported by the media was so inflated that it was of no reference value. The open secret in the industry was that the real trading volume of Chinese exchanges was only one percent of what they claimed.

At that time, all exchanges had no third-party fund custody, and users' RMB and cryptocurrencies were all stored in the founders' private bank accounts and wallets. Platforms freely misappropriated user funds for trading, investment, and extravagance. Small platforms could run away at any time, and from 2016 to 2017, over a hundred small exchanges suddenly shut down, with founders going missing and user assets disappearing. Without regulation and insurance, the safety of user assets relied entirely on the conscience of the founders.

Similarly, at that time, exchanges did not have real-name authentication, and deposits relied entirely on private transfers, allowing gambling funds, dirty money, and illicit funds to be quickly laundered through exchanges. Underground banks used cryptocurrencies for cross-border fund transfers to evade foreign exchange regulations. Hacker attacks were frequent, with Bter losing 7,170 Bitcoins from its cold wallet, and the platform barely covered the losses; small platforms that were hacked often ran away, leaving users to bear the losses, with cases of chaotic private key management and internal employees stealing from users being common.

In the first half of 2017, the madness of Chinese exchanges reached its peak: over 90% of global Bitcoin trading volume came from China, ICO projects raised hundreds of millions overnight, and discussions about getting rich from trading coins were everywhere.

In June 2017, the summer in Beijing was suffocatingly hot. The atmosphere in the exchanges' offices was still one of all-night revelry, with volume-inflating bots running non-stop, ICO project listing applications lining up, and the sounds of liquidation from futures being drowned out by the noise of the bull market.

No one wanted to believe that this four-year-long wild growth was about to come to an end.

On September 4, 2017, an announcement from seven ministries would abruptly halt all the madness and bring the golden age of domestic exchanges to a complete end.

04 The September 4 Regulation and the First Separation from Domestic Trading

In early 2017, the Beijing branch of the central bank and the Shanghai headquarters first summoned the heads of the three major platforms—Huobi, OKCoin, and BTCC—to reiterate the core red line of the document Yinfai [2013] No. 289: Bitcoin is merely a virtual commodity and absolutely not legal currency; financial institutions must not engage in related businesses.

Five days later, a joint inspection team composed of the central bank and local financial bureaus officially entered the three major platforms for on-site inspections. They retrieved backend trading data, checked fund flows transaction by transaction, and combed through every user agreement: conducting financial business without a license, violating financing and coin borrowing regulations, having a completely blank anti-money laundering system, and failing to have user funds under third-party custody…

On January 18, the central bank officially announced the inspection results and issued mandatory rectification orders: immediately halt all financing and coin borrowing businesses, cancel zero-fee trading and restore trading fees, establish real-name authentication and anti-money laundering systems, implement third-party custody for user funds within a deadline, and eliminate fake volume inflation.

This cut caused the industry to bleed instantly.

Previously, the daily trading volume of Bitcoin, built on "zero fees + leverage + volume inflation," plummeted from an astronomical figure of 13.6 million coins to just 120,000 coins in a month, a drop of over 99%.

Li Lin stood in front of Huobi's big data screen, watching the line plummet vertically, chain smoking as his fingertips grew warm; Xu Mingxing held an emergency technical meeting overnight, ordering the shutdown of all leverage interfaces, and the team worked through the night to modify system codes; far away in Shanghai, Li Qiyuan quickly adjusted BTCC's business according to the policy, shrinking all high-risk modules. For the first time, the entire industry felt that the regulatory knife was really about to fall.

However, on the other side of the industry at the same time, ICO project listing applications were still lining up, the hype around altcoins showed no signs of waning, and underground financing companies changed their names to continue attracting clients.

Until 3 PM on September 4, 2017, an official announcement flooded the internet, causing the entire crypto circle to explode.

The central bank, the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, the China Banking Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission jointly issued a notice titled "Notice on Preventing Risks of Token Issuance and Financing," which delivered a death sentence to domestic cryptocurrency trading.

Source: People's Bank of China website

Token issuance and financing are essentially unauthorized illegal public financing, suspected of illegal fundraising, financial fraud, and pyramid schemes, and must be halted immediately; any trading platform must not engage in any related services such as fiat and cryptocurrency exchanges, token exchanges, pricing, or information intermediary services; banks and payment institutions must completely cut off funding channels, and non-compliant platforms will have their websites shut down, apps removed, and licenses revoked; projects that have raised funds must refund within a specified period.

This legally and factually ended the business of domestic exchanges.

The moment the news broke, the entire industry fell into silence, followed by overwhelming panic.

Messages in industry groups flooded in, with cries of "It's over" and "What will happen to our money?" filling the screen; Bitcoin and altcoins plummeted across the board, with declines exceeding 30% within minutes; the customer service systems of exchanges were instantly overwhelmed, with phone lines and online consultations flooded with requests for withdrawals and refunds, the noise almost lifting the roof off.

Li Lin printed out the full text of the announcement, reading it word for word, crumpling the paper in his fingers, and after half an hour of silence, he only told his team, "Execute, strictly execute everything."

Xu Mingxing repeatedly checked the scope of the prohibitions on "fiat exchanges" and "information intermediaries" in the announcement, his expression grave, and immediately ordered the shutdown of all fiat trading channels and initiated user asset refunds;

Li Qiyuan held a global meeting overnight, making it clear that BTCC must first halt domestic operations, using the credibility of the established platform to protect the last line of defense for users.

The week following the September 4 announcement was the darkest moment for all exchanges.

An unprecedented wave of user withdrawals erupted, more terrifying than any hacker attack or market crash.

Online, withdrawal requests increased by thousands every second, with servers nearing collapse, and technical staff went three days and nights without sleep, desperately maintaining uninterrupted channels;

Offline, large numbers of users gathered outside the platform's office building, holding their phones and demanding immediate withdrawals, creating a tense atmosphere;

Customer service staff were surrounded by users' accusations and complaints, apologizing with red eyes while manually reviewing each withdrawal request, their voices hoarse by the end of the day;

Financial personnel were constantly checking transfers against the wildly fluctuating bank statements, with large amounts of movement in personal accounts frequently triggering bank risk controls, making every step difficult.

From late September to early October, BTCC, Huobi, and OKCoin successively issued final announcements, each word closely adhering to the policy requirements of the September 4 announcement: effective immediately, all domestic RMB and cryptocurrency trading businesses would cease, and user asset refunds would be completed in an orderly manner.

At that moment, the core lifeline of domestic exchanges was completely severed.

From the first line of code in a Shanghai residential building in 2011 to dominating 90% of global trading volume in 2017, the golden age of China's cryptocurrency exchanges came to an abrupt end.

The clearing of domestic operations was not the end of the industry but a forced mass migration.

All platforms understood that staying domestic would lead to a dead end; going abroad might offer a glimmer of hope.

05 Offshore Growth, Madness and Disillusionment, and Ultimate Zeroing Out

In the third month after the September 4 announcement, domestic cryptocurrency trading was abruptly halted, but it seemed that none of the entrepreneurs who had emerged from the internet wilderness truly left the scene.

The September 4 announcement only shut down domestic RMB trading; it did not extinguish the addiction of Chinese people to trading coins. The first to react were still the old rivals Li Lin and Xu Mingxing.

Li Lin completely cut off Huobi's domestic business and immediately set up Huobi.Pro in Singapore. He had always sought stability in business; whether in group buying or exchanges, he took careful steps, and this time was no different—he avoided any illegal fiat channels and only dealt in USDT stablecoins, not actively blocking mainland users from accessing the platform, nor publicly recruiting them, like a shopkeeper guarding his stall, seeking to steadily maintain the overseas business. He watched as his team members changed to overseas work IDs, knowing that Huobi would never return to the golden era of Beijing's Wangjing SOHO.

In stark contrast to Li Lin's conservatism, Xu Mingxing had no intention of merely holding the fort. As soon as the September 4 document was released, he rebranded OKCoin to OKEx and dove headfirst into the futures and contracts business. Back in China, he had competed with Li Lin using technology and high-frequency trading; now, without the constraints of domestic regulation, he directly maxed out leverage and established the operations center in Malta, where regulations were more lenient. In his view, spot trading was no longer profitable; only contracts and leveraged derivatives could allow OKEx to surpass Huobi. The two had been rivals for five years, and now overseas, one was defensive while the other was aggressive, neither willing to yield.

While Li Lin steadily maintained his spot trading base and Xu Mingxing gambled everything on the futures track, a technical veteran who had left the core circle of OKCoin quietly laid out a comprehensive strategy that neither of the two giants had grasped.

This person was Zhao Changpeng.

In terms of background, Zhao Changpeng was a standard overseas tech expert, with a foundation far more solid than most grassroots entrepreneurs in the circle.

Born in Jiangsu in the 1970s, he immigrated to Canada with his family at a young age and received a rigorous Western engineering education. After graduation, he worked for many years on the underlying architecture of global top financial trading systems, serving in the core trading room of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and the Bloomberg cross-border trading system team, honing high-concurrency, zero-lag matching technology, and thoroughly understanding the core trading logic of traditional finance, unlike those who switched careers midway.

In 2014, as the crypto industry began to emerge, he recognized the opportunity and returned to China to enter the market. Through He Yi's connections, he officially joined the early leading platform OKCoin as CTO, holding the core technological power of the platform.

At that time, Xu Mingxing focused on overall strategy and capital control, Zhao Changpeng handled the full-stack trading system and asset security, and He Yi coordinated market public relations. The three were tightly bound together, forming the "OK Iron Triangle," which was the most valuable and effective team in the early crypto circle, successfully elevating OKCoin to a duopoly alongside Huobi.

After working together for several years, ideological rifts gradually fermented, internal power struggles and differences in direction intensified, and the iron triangle completely fell apart. Zhao Changpeng, feeling discontent, decided to withdraw and secretly harbored a fierce determination to reverse the situation and crush his former employer.

In 2017, as the crypto market became increasingly volatile and industry chaos began to emerge, regulatory tightening signals were released in advance. While most people in the circle were still blindly increasing their investments in domestic fiat trading and frantically harvesting short-term traffic, Zhao Changpeng accurately sensed the impending policy risks and decisively went all in, betting his entire fortune.

He directly sold his core properties in Shanghai, consolidated all cash flow, and without hesitation, set out to establish Binance.

Early photo of CZ founding Binance

From the very beginning, he deliberately avoided all the compliance red lines where everyone else was clustered, not touching any domestic RMB fiat exchange channels, and only conducting pure crypto-to-crypto exchange business. From the underlying architecture and business links to the entity's location, he perfectly circumvented the regulatory prohibitions of the subsequent September 4 announcement, positioning himself in a safe zone.

By the time the September 4 policy was implemented, Huobi and OKEx were hurriedly shutting down domestic channels and hastily refunding mainland users, busy cutting off business to stabilize their operations and respond to regulatory inspections, while Binance had already prepared overseas links and opened up all channels, quietly accommodating all the fleeing retail investors, funds, and traffic from the two giants.

Without past burdens, business entanglements, or compliance encumbrances, in just six months, Binance rode the wave of the times to leap forward, directly crushing Huobi and OKEx, which had been deeply entrenched in the industry for years, and becoming the new global leader in trading volume, transitioning from a former technical executive to the new industry overlord.

Li Lin watched as his former subordinate surpassed him, feeling uneasy; Li Lin could only continue to guard his own base while observing Binance's wild growth. The three old acquaintances returned to the old pattern of a three-way standoff on the overseas battlefield.

While the giants scrambled for territory overseas, two tech-focused individuals survived in the gaps left by the giants.

Gan Chun, a security expert from Ant Financial, knew he couldn't compete with Li Lin, Xu Mingxing, or Zhao Changpeng, so he simply avoided mainstream coins and focused on lesser-known altcoins, registering in Seychelles with a platform called KuCoin. He didn't advertise or seek headlines, relying on security and stability to quietly accumulate tens of millions of users.

Han Lin was even more low-key, a PhD in optics from Canada who was scammed when buying Bitcoin, and in anger, he created Bter, renaming it Gate.io after the September 4 announcement. He was one of the few genuine people in the circle; when his platform was hacked and lost over 7,000 Bitcoins, he personally compensated users, and this reputation allowed him to survive steadily in the gaps between the giants.

These four individuals—some maintaining their positions, some being aggressive, some speculative, and some pragmatic—thrived in the overseas exchange business. But no one expected that a technical person who had left Huobi would use an absurd model to turn the entire industry upside down.

This person was Zhang Jian.

Zhang Jian was the former CTO of Huobi and had written the first best-selling book on blockchain in China, recognized in the circle as a technical idealist. After leaving Huobi, he wanted to pursue true technological innovation and looked down on the model of exchanges making money from fees and harvesting retail investors. In 2018, when the bear market arrived, Zhang Jian devised a bold move—"Trading is Mining."

In simple terms, it meant that the trading fees users paid would be returned as platform tokens, and holding platform tokens would also yield dividends. It sounded like a benefit, but in essence, it was a Ponzi scheme. However, the industry had already gone mad, and FCoin's trading volume exceeded that of Huobi, OKEx, and Binance combined within just 12 days of launching.

Zhang Jian transformed from an industry role model into a "disruptor" overnight, but he knew this bubble would eventually burst.

Sure enough, within two years, FCoin collapsed. Over 7,000 Bitcoins could not be redeemed, and Zhang Jian disappeared overnight, leaving hundreds of thousands of users with nothing. The once-idealistic technologist became the biggest fraudster in the circle, and this farce became the most glaring scar in the four years of the gray industry.

FCoin collapsed, but the industry's madness showed no signs of abating.

In mainland China, related businesses did not completely disappear but gradually shifted to more concealed and decentralized gray areas.

Mining had formed a considerable scale in places like Sichuan, Yunnan, and Inner Mongolia, with many mining machines relying on cheap electricity to operate continuously, and China's computing power once occupied a significant share globally. However, behind the rapid expansion, issues such as energy consumption, local regulatory arbitrage, and compliance with electricity usage began to accumulate.

At the same time, off-exchange trading around USDT quietly spread among the public. WeChat, Alipay, and bank transfers became alternative channels for many users to enter and exit the crypto market. This maintained market liquidity to some extent but inevitably became a part of scams, gambling, and capital flight that were difficult to regulate.

2019 was a golden period for the development of exchanges in China.

After several rounds of bull and bear markets, the industry's discourse power was firmly held by the three major players, collectively referred to as the HBO Iron Triangle, with Huobi, Binance, and OKEx dividing over 80% of effective traffic in the Chinese-speaking world, crushing the spot and contract tracks in both directions, while second-tier platforms were unable to compete head-on, and third-tier small exchanges could only run alongside.

Binance pioneered the IEO model with Launchpad, with the initial release of BTT doubling in price, igniting a frenzy of new projects across the internet, and subsequent quality projects followed suit, steadily capturing the first round of traffic dividends; in July, it launched perpetual contracts, with spot and derivative products working in tandem, maintaining over 30% of global trading volume throughout the year, and emerging as a dark horse to claim the top spot.

Huobi quickly followed suit with Huobi Prime to synchronize with IEOs, maintaining a solid second position in the industry.

OKEx launched OK Jumpstart as a differentiated counterpart to IEOs, standing shoulder to shoulder with Huobi to secure the second tier's foundation. The three regularly copied each other's strategies, with new product launches, promotional activities, and product models being highly similar, leading Chinese retail investors to migrate back and forth across platforms.

IEOs were the absolute traffic password of 2019, becoming a universal tool for platforms to increase revenue, boost trading volumes, and attract new users. Project parties bypassed the cumbersome private fundraising processes and directly connected with leading exchanges for compliant listings, allowing users to participate in lotteries for new projects by staking platform tokens, while platforms steadily earned listing service fees and secondary market transaction fees, achieving a short-term win-win situation.

Amidst the heightened excitement, retail investors' FOMO emotions soared, and platform tokens collectively experienced price surges, leading to rising valuations across the industry. However, hidden dangers lurked behind the revelry, as many projects with no qualifications took the opportunity to raise funds, leading to market crashes and frequent collective rights protection efforts later on, with the chaotic speculation laying a solid foundation for subsequent global regulatory crackdowns.

The leading players clustered together to compete for core profits, while second- and third-tier platforms avoided direct confrontation, all opting for differentiated strategies to quietly profit.

Platforms like KuCoin, Gate.io, BitMax, ZB, LBank, Bibox, CoinEx, Bitforex, EXX, CoinBene, MXC, BiKi, Hotbit, BigONE, DigiFinex, BitZ, and IDAX also shared in the dividends, each playing their part to divide the remaining fragmented traffic.

Overall, 2019 was the last wild feast for cryptocurrency exchanges.

With clear hierarchies, vibrant play styles, abundant traffic, and frequent stories of sudden wealth, the three HBO giants monopolized the core profits, second-tier platforms developed quietly through differentiation, and third-tier small exchanges survived by following trends, with the entire industry relying on gray traffic from the mainland, the rebound from the bear market, and speculative IEO strategies to collectively become wealthy.

It was also during this stage that the image of the crypto industry in China began to rapidly diverge: on one side were the enormous business opportunities brought by mining, trading, and global liquidity; on the other side were the social risks brought by regulatory blind spots, gray funds, and the spread of scams. The industry was not denied overnight but gradually accumulated reasons for strong regulatory rectification amidst long-term disorder.

Everyone knew that these gray days would eventually come to an end.

First, regulatory authorities shut down off-exchange trading channels on Alipay and WeChat, then cleared out mining operations in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan, and finally cut off all channels for exchanges to bypass regulations.

Until September 24, 2021, a notification from ten departments came down, directly declaring: all cryptocurrency-related businesses in mainland China are illegal financial activities; providing services to mainland users from overseas platforms is also illegal.

Source: https://www.safe.gov.cn/safe/2021/0924/19915.html

This time, no one dared to take chances.

Li Lin's Huobi completely refunded mainland users; Xu Mingxing shut down OKEx's mainland IP, completely turning towards Europe; Zhao Changpeng cut off Binance's channels for bypassing regulations, giving up the largest hidden pool of traffic; Gan Chun and Han Lin also obediently restricted mainland users, bidding farewell to gray businesses. Meanwhile, the remaining mid-tier and long-tail small exchanges that relied on the Chinese market essentially disappeared in this round of strangulation.

The mainland market, which once accounted for 90% of global trading volume, was completely zeroed out.

06 The Disintegration of Giants, Selling Off and Leaving the Market, and the New Global Compliance Landscape

With the arrival of the September 24, 2021 announcement, all cryptocurrency-related businesses were classified as non-compliant financial activities; overseas platforms were prohibited from directing mainland users to open accounts, and domestic merchants and individuals could no longer provide payment, community, or technical support to exchanges, with even mining computing power being completely cleared.

In an instant, the paths of the three giants began to diverge in three different directions.

Before the tightening of policies, Huobi had relied on its early entry and established reputation to maintain a steady spot trading market, with a continuous flow of retail investors and stable fee income, avoiding the risks of high-risk contracts and the chaos of listing obscure coins.

But after the new regulations took effect, its advantages were directly nullified, and troubles followed:

Licenses could not be obtained in Europe and America, Southeast Asian regulators frequently conducted interviews, and cross-border users were often limited in flow and IP. Renting overseas venues, hiring local teams, and employing compliance lawyers cost money like running water, while the platform's daily active users and trading volume continued to decline. Huobi's previously stable operational foundation suddenly became vulnerable, with compliance risks looming ahead and the reluctance to abandon years of established trading.

Li Lin saw through it all and understood the situation clearly. In the early years, with relaxed regulations, he could do business steadily relying on connections and flexible traffic.

After 2021, it was all about strict regulations: user fund custody, on-site office registration, fund traceability risk control, and compliance endorsements from executives—missing any one of these would not hold up.

He had enough local connections, but he lacked overseas compliance foundations and cross-border political and business resources. On one hand, there was increasingly strict regulatory pressure, and on the other, rising operational costs, along with the unclear risks of joint liability. After much thought, the optimal solution was clear: while the platform still had valuation, exit gracefully and avoid accompanying the industry through the ensuing storms.

In 2022, coinciding with a bear market, the entire industry's assets shrank, and exchange valuations fell, creating a window for stable handovers at low points. Li Lin discreetly connected with Hong Kong capital, following formal institutional acquisition processes, with the disclosed acquirer being Hong Kong's About Capital Management. Subsequently, Sun Yuchen joined the global advisory board and became one of the most critical public figures in terms of brand, operations, and ecosystem.

By October of that year, all the transfer procedures were completed. Li Lin cleared all his shares, resigned from all positions, and cleanly severed ties with Huobi. On the surface, it appeared as if the founding figure was stepping back after achieving success, but in reality, it was a precise timing to cash out and hedge against the bear market, securing his gains. From that moment on, the ironclad industry structure established by the old three giants cracked open, and the curtain on the industry's compliance reshuffle was officially raised.

Li Lin turned and left, no longer involved in any trivial matters of the platform, while laying the groundwork for the establishment of a new Huobi to handle compliance custodial business.

Sun Yuchen took over the operational authority entirely, not sticking to the old ways, but gradually adjusting the platform's original operational rhythm to align with the actual needs of the offshore circle, quietly rewriting the previously stable competitive ecology of Chinese exchanges.

After taking over, Sun Yuchen's first task was to adjust the brand's external name, reducing the local association traces to facilitate registration in various overseas locations.

First, it was temporarily renamed "Huobi," lowering the old platform's recognition in the mainland and adapting to the compliance standards of multiple countries; by September 2023, during the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore, when global industry figures gathered and traffic peaked, it was officially announced that the brand would be renamed HTX.

TOKEN2049 / HTX DAO x TRON Afterparty scene

While leveraging the user base accumulated by Huobi over the years, it also linked up with its own TRON ecosystem, smoothly transitioning through the platform's ten-year operational node, quietly completing the brand upgrade, and synchronously filling in the compliance disclosures for overseas operations.

After streamlining the brand, the platform adjusted its operational strategies to align with retail investors' actual trading preferences, increasing the variety of highly liquid trading products, moderately relaxing the trading tiers for derivatives, and introducing a batch of compliant small and unique coins to quickly boost trading volume and stabilize industry rankings. At the same time, it refined the operations of various communities, maintaining different needs of existing users, and inviting experienced industry veterans from overseas to form an external advisory team, ensuring that the external compliance facade was solid and effective.

Short-term trading data visibly warmed up, but the platform's underlying security risk control and full-chain fund custody systems had not yet been upgraded in sync, and there was still room for optimization in the management of existing fund flows and the control of real trading liquidity. Behind the bustling traffic lay hidden pressures for long-term operations.

In fact, some minor issues left over from the equity transfer began to surface.

In 2025, Li Lin and Sun Yuchen communicated publicly several rounds regarding the fund reconciliation, position transitions, and the transfer of ecosystem tokens before and after the transfer.

Both sides articulated their respective boundaries of responsibility, rationally sorting out the gaps in existing funds, the progress of margin replenishment, and the compliance flow of tokens, and properly handling all the residual matters from the transfer according to regulations.

Meanwhile, from 2023 to 2025, market fluctuations were significant, and some users reported issues such as system lags during extreme market conditions, price anomalies, and inconsistencies in order matching speeds. The platform had been continuously optimizing its backend operational capabilities. The flow of technical personnel in the industry was normal, and the efficiency of backend services was steadily iterated and adjusted. By 2026, HTX focused on deeply cultivating the old user base in the Chinese-speaking world, steadily maintaining its own segmented market and operating smoothly without incidents.

While HTX steadily adjusted its operational rhythm and refined its reputation in the circle, Xu Mingxing, who relied on contract technology to thrive, had already clearly understood the industry's trends.

He predicted that global regulation would only become stricter year by year, so he gradually reduced his public appearances, delegating the responsibilities of daily operations to a professional team, while quietly retreating to the background, only controlling core strategies and risk management.

After the full-scale exit in 2021, OKEx, relying on its well-developed contract trading system and long-term partnerships with leading quantitative institutions, steadily maintained its basic cash flow without experiencing operational turmoil or financial chain tension.

However, the overall environment never eased; cross-border leverage controls became increasingly detailed, and compliance checks on trading became more frequent. They received inquiries from overseas regulators every few days and had to address various user experience demands while cooperating with local inspections. While the apparent revenue looked stable, the pressure of compliance loomed overhead, with the constant fear that any misstep could lead to business restrictions or cross-border penalties.

Xu Mingxing was well aware that the days of making wild profits from contracts were over. In the future, the industry would not compete on aggressive strategies but on compliance licenses, robust risk controls, and institutional connections. Continuing to stand in the spotlight would only increase personal liability risks.

To isolate risks and simplify governance, he proactively faded from the public eye, entrusting daily operations to a professional team while splitting multi-layered offshore operational entities, delegating the cumbersome and responsible tasks of compliance connections, user operations, and fund reconciliations.

On January 18, 2022, OKEx officially rebranded to OKX, laying out plans for a full Web3 ecosystem and expanding on-chain custodial services, breaking free from the single exchange framework while downplaying its early contract label and organizing its historical compliance records to reduce the risks of cross-border traceability.

The once fierce early warriors who fought alongside Li Lin quietly faded into the background, and OKX completely transformed into a professional compliance platform, becoming the second pillar of the old three giants, landing steadily.

After retreating to the background and delegating authority, OKX directly adopted a pragmatic approach, concentrating all manpower and resources on two main tasks: obtaining compliance licenses globally and focusing on serving large institutional clients.

Starting in 2023, OKX accelerated its global compliance transformation, establishing local teams and compliance qualifications in markets such as the Middle East and Southeast Asia, gradually transitioning from an early offshore trading platform to a globally licensed operator across multiple regions.

In 2025, OKX made significant progress in European compliance, obtaining a MiCA license in Malta in January and beginning to expand services to the European Economic Area through the passporting mechanism; in February of the same year, OKX reached a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding historical compliance issues, paying over $504 million in fines to address historical shortcomings in anti-money laundering, KYC, and cross-border operations.

Subsequently, OKX continued to strengthen its proof of reserves, fund transparency, and anti-money laundering risk control systems, with the platform's image gradually shifting from "contract technology exchange" to a mainstream trading platform emphasizing compliance, custody, institutional services, and global licenses.

By 2026, OKX received a minority equity investment from ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, with a corresponding valuation of approximately $25 billion. This not only indicated that traditional financial infrastructure was beginning to intervene more deeply in the crypto trading system but also further strengthened the signal of OKX's alignment with mainstream financial markets.

After three years of low-key development, OKX steadily captured the stable funds flowing out of Binance and the cautious users diverted from HTX, quietly securing the position of the global second, becoming a genuine invisible winner in the circle.

While some cashed out and exited, others remained behind the scenes to maintain order, and the industry landscape subtly shifted.

Only Zhao Changpeng, who had once raced to the top of the industry, faced the encirclement of global regulators, and the once-dominant scale of Binance returned to a normal development pace.

During the years when Binance was at its peak, it relied on a lightweight, distributed offshore operation without a fixed headquarters, absorbing global retail traffic without discrimination, consistently leading the industry in trading volume.

In the early years, when it was competing for market share, it prioritized spreading traffic across the network and expanding its global customer base, gradually completing its compliance system and localized risk controls to align with the early rough development pace of the industry. But regulatory agencies began to target Binance.

In November 2022, the liquidity crisis at FTX may have been one of the triggers.

Before the crisis escalated, CZ had already sensed the risks, reducing his stake in FTX for compliance reasons and subsequently disclosing plans for adjusting his holdings. Coincidentally, FTT itself had weak liquidity, leading to concentrated withdrawals from the market, which temporarily impacted FTX's financial base. Binance then expressed acquisition intentions and rationally terminated cooperation after a quick due diligence.

SBF was also identified as having stolen billions from customers due to FTX's inability to repay user funds, constituting a serious fraud crime, facing long-term imprisonment.

The collapse of FTX also drew global regulatory scrutiny towards compliance checks on major platforms.

As the aftershocks of FTX had not yet dissipated, in March 2023, several overseas crypto cooperative banks experienced liquidity adjustments: Silvergate orderly liquidated, Signature Bank was managed by local financial authorities, and Silicon Valley Bank slightly interacted with the crypto circle's capital flow. Traditional banks tightened their cooperation limits with crypto, and the entire industry's liquidity returned to rationality, with regulatory inspections intensifying and becoming routine.

With multiple historical compliance tasks piling up alongside industry fluctuations, in November 2023, Binance and Zhao Changpeng reached a compliance agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice: the platform paid $4.3 billion in compliance rectification funds, closing the loop on historical issues related to anti-money laundering, cross-border compliance, and local operations.

CZ was also sentenced to four months in prison for violating U.S. anti-money laundering regulations, personally paying a fine of $50 million. After his release, the former CEO CZ focused on the overall compliance strategy, returning to a stable state of decision-making authority in the industry.

Real scene of Zhao Changpeng outside the U.S. court in 2024

After the rectification, CZ completely reined in his expansion ambitions, no longer blindly racing to grab market share, but focusing on maintaining stability and deepening compliance. He orderly tightened high-risk derivatives businesses, optimized cross-border capital flow controls, and split multiple independent compliance entities, shedding assets with high public sentiment and compliance risks.

In 2025, with Trump taking office, the industry direction changed dramatically. The Trump family launched the WLFI crypto ecosystem, issuing a USD1 compliant stablecoin anchored to U.S. Treasury reserves; in May of the same year, the Abu Dhabi-based investment institution MGX used the WLFI USD1 stablecoin to complete a $2 billion investment arrangement with Binance, deepening the binding between Binance and Middle Eastern capital and the stablecoin ecosystem.

Moreover, in October 2025, compliance pardoned CZ for past compliance-related issues, signaling that the industry had officially entered a new stage of government-business collaboration.

As the three giants adjusted and stabilized, the compliance users and market shares that were freed up flowed to second-tier platforms that had long been low-key and compliant, and the new stable pattern was thus formed, closing the window for grassroots cross-border entry and overnight overtaking in the industry.

KuCoin, led by Gan Chun, had not engaged in the close battles of the giants for years, steadily focusing on overseas niche coins with real demand, and had successfully weathered several rounds of bull and bear cycles during adjustments and user risk diversions from leading platforms.

Gate.io, led by Han Lin, relied on its early reputation for fully compensating users for stolen Bitcoins to maintain stability, also surviving multiple rounds of bear market storms and fluctuations among small and medium platforms, firmly holding onto a group of stable high-net-worth users.

The chaotic wilderness had come to an end, and the era of wild fighting was over. The crypto industry officially entered a stable conclusion characterized by strong regulation, professionalism, and globalization, with all the stories of the early cryptocurrency entrepreneurs finally settling into dust.