Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
On March 17, OKX officially announced news stating, "DEX aggregator trading services are suspended, while other services of the Web3 wallet remain operational. User funds are not affected." Upon the release of this news, many in the market expressed their dismay: "The OKX wallet experience is excellent, but it has been restricted due to the Bybit hacking money laundering case, which is very unfair." On one side are the aggressive centralized government and regulatory agencies; on the other side is the inherent anonymity of decentralized trading, leaving OKX in a somewhat difficult position.
Meanwhile, Binance recently announced the launch of Binance Alpha 2.0, facilitating liquidity purchases of Binance Alpha-related on-chain tokens on the main Binance platform, further bridging the trading gap between CEX and DEX.
In a daze, the liquidity battle between CEX and DEX has quietly begun, and the future direction of the industry is starting to take shape. Odaily Planet Daily will discuss the suspension of OKX's DEX aggregator trading services, the new development path of CEX, and the potential of a new "CDEX" in this article for readers' reference.
OKX DEX Development Faces Regulatory Risks: Is the Aggregator Service Suspension Due to Bybit's Complaint? No!
In February this year, OKX announced that it officially became one of the first (and only two, the other being Crypto.com) cryptocurrency exchanges to obtain a European MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) license, providing compliant and localized cryptocurrency services to over 400 million users across 28 countries in the European Economic Area (EEA). Notably, major exchanges including Binance, Bybit, and Kraken are still in the application process.
Unexpectedly, the benefits of obtaining a compliant license have not yet been realized; instead, regulatory pressure has arrived first.
On March 11, Bloomberg reported that during a meeting hosted by the European Securities and Markets Authority's Digital Finance Standing Committee on March 6, OKX's Web3 services were under review for allegedly providing a money laundering channel for Bybit's hacked funds. Additionally, Bloomberg pointed out that the trigger for this was likely Bybit's claim that "hackers laundered approximately $100 million in stolen cryptocurrency through the OKX Web3 platform."
In response to this false information, the CEO, President, and CMO of OKX each made statements regarding the matter:
OKX CEO Star stated, "OKX DEX is a DEX aggregator, and Bloomberg's previous report is incorrect and misleading. In fact, Bybit built its own Web3 wallet and DEX infrastructure using OKX's wallet/DEX API. After the Bybit hacking incident, OKX's law enforcement response team and legal team communicated directly with Bybit's legal team and provided a series of assistance, including freezing and tracking funds."
OKX President Hong's statement expressed disappointment, believing that the OKX team provided help but was defamed due to false information, with some attempting to create panic.
OKX CMO Haider emphasized, "We froze the funds flowing to our CEX and launched new features to detect/block hacker addresses from using our DEX or wallet services."
As market users were left confused, unsure whether "Bybit reported OKX to European regulators" or "OKX's goodwill was mistaken for malice," Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou officially responded to OKX CEO Star's statement—
He emphasized that, "Clearly, there are many misunderstandings here." Bybit did not provide any statements to Bloomberg, and what Bloomberg referred to as "according to Bybit's statement" was likely sourced from Bybit's dedicated white hat bounty website for the theft case (http://Lazarusbounty.com), which displayed all cross-chain bridges used by the hackers for money laundering. When funds flowed to the OKX Web3 agent, OKX's Web3 wallet team responded quickly and assisted in tracking the funds.
Thus, the truth is revealed—Bloomberg merely cited the on-chain data from Bybit's bounty website unilaterally, without investigating the actual flow of the stolen funds, and did not realize that OKX was actually a righteous partner helping Bybit track the stolen funds. This point was also detailed in our previous article, “Black Swan of the Bull Market: Bybit Stolen Over $1.5 Billion in Assets, 514,000 ETH Dumped on the Market?”.
On March 17, OKX officially released a statement, reiterating its stance against financial crime. At the same time, after consulting with regulatory agencies, OKX proactively decided to temporarily suspend DEX aggregator services to implement additional upgrades and prevent further abuse of platform functions. Furthermore, OKX is also closely collaborating with blockchain explorers to correct incomplete labels. Our goal is to ensure that explorers accurately highlight actual DEX transaction processing, rather than mistakenly identifying our aggregator as a trading point.
On March 19, according to official announcements, OKX Web3 wallet announced the official activation of the new domain web3.okx.com, serving as the entry point for users to participate in OKX Web3-related products and decentralized services (including OKX DEX, search for earning coins, discovery section, OKX market, and developer center, etc.) on the web. Industry insiders believe this move may be a necessary action to further separate OKX's exchange from its Web3 business.
Combining OKX CEO Star's earlier comments that "OKX DEX aggregator does not touch or store user private keys, nor does it hold user funds. OKX's Web3 business plays a role in the blockchain industry similar to that of Chrome and Google in the internet industry, focusing on providing software and services," it is clear that OKX aims to firmly implement the dual development paths of "compliance regulation" and "on-chain entry."
So, the next question arises: What are the main directions for the future development of CEX?
New Paths for CEX Development: Either Become a Casino or an On-Chain Entry
In my view, there are only two new paths for CEX development:
One is to create a "blockchain casino" that is wilder and less regulated than the Web2 domain, focusing on listing tokens, contracts, high liquidity, and rapid response mechanisms. This path's business model will gradually approach that of DEX, relying on "transaction fees" to establish a foothold and attract gamblers and prospectors. This is also the route taken by Hyperliquid, which aims to be the "on-chain Binance" with its L1 public chain.
The second is to serve as the on-chain entry point for the blockchain world, similar to the former "information superhighway" of the internet, using on-chain as a starting point to attract more new users through channels like Meme, PayFi, and RWA (RWAFi). As OKX CEO Star mentioned, it aims to gradually become an indispensable infrastructure in the crypto world, akin to Google, Amazon, Chrome, and other internet companies, cloud computing companies, and browser entry points.
The risk of the former lies in the increasingly tightening regulatory network, which is currently not focusing its main energy and experience here due to the relatively limited overall cryptocurrency market. However, in the future, governments and various independent regulatory agencies may view various exchanges as "fat meat," all wanting a piece of the pie.
The risk of the latter is that it needs to dance on the edge with compliance agencies while gradually validating whether its PMF can truly become a bridge between the crypto world and traditional financial markets, and whether it can meet the real needs of tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of real users, without being gradually squeezed out of this not-so-vacuum financial space like the internet bubble of the early 21st century.
Compared to the former, the latter is undoubtedly more challenging, but it has a higher ceiling and more substantial returns, though it heavily tests the development progress in areas like AI, meme coins, payment channels, and real-world asset tokenization. After all, infrastructure construction serves the ever-emerging real demand.
CDEX Prototype Emerges: It's Difficult to Compete with DEX Without On-Chain CEX
It is worth mentioning that the recent frequent appearances of CZ and He Yi have not only driven the Meme coin craze in the BSC ecosystem, attracting considerable attention and liquidity, but have also further exposed the development dilemmas of CEX to more people:
On one hand, the rise and fall of on-chain Meme coins (including all broadly defined tokens with no actual use cases, such as AI Agent, Desci, PolitiFi, and other conceptual tokens) have gradually become a major component of the cryptocurrency market, alongside ETFs, BTC, and mainstream coins including ETH. This has split liquidity into two parts: one on CEX and the other on DEX.
On the other hand, the liquidity of CEX is also experiencing a new round of circulation amid the industry's ups and downs. Older coins like EOS, XRP, and ADA are gradually becoming a "playground" for contract players, with liquidity increasingly tightening. Even with various expectations, positive news, and policy influences, it is an undeniable fact that fewer and fewer people are paying attention. New entrants, whether through Ethereum ecosystem Meme coins like PEPE and MOODENG or Solana ecosystem Meme coins like BOME and TRUMP, are gradually viewing CEX as a destination for liquidity exit. CEXs are forced to attract new players, retain old players, and convert contract players through waves of "new coin listings." To some extent, Meme coins on CEX are becoming a scythe cutting into their own lifeline. An increasing number of people have stopped using CEX exchanges and have turned to DEX to complete their "full lifecycle of cryptocurrency trading."
"Not knowing about the MetaMask wallet, and not using exchanges like Binance, OKX, or Bybit" may be becoming a significant industry trend.
In summary, the CDEX, which combines CEX liquidity pools and DEX trading efficiency, may become the next "version answer."
In contrast, the scale of the cryptocurrency population is also gradually reaching its peak.
According to research by Triple-A, the number of global cryptocurrency holders is expected to reach 562 million by 2024, accounting for 6.8% of the global population. Additionally, according to estimates from Crypto.com in June 2024, there are approximately 617 million global cryptocurrency holders, but according to a16z's previously released "2024 Cryptocurrency Development Report," the number of active cryptocurrency users globally each month is only around 30 to 60 million.
It is evident that the cryptocurrency market is entering the "second half" phase, much like China's mobile internet in 2018—remaining markets are either constrained by economic conditions, unable to cross various industry thresholds to enter the cryptocurrency market, or are restricted by regulatory limitations, cognitive constraints, and other subjective and objective conditions, showing no interest in participating in cryptocurrency trading.
As the industry enters deeper waters, it can only gradually improve penetration rates through painstaking efforts to achieve global expansion of cryptocurrency.
Behind this is the reality of liquidity assets and real estate worth tens of trillions.
Conclusion: Everything for Liquidity, Everything for Liquidity
Once upon a time, the emergence of BTC broke the authoritarian government's monopoly on currency issuance, for the first time delegating it to every ordinary individual. In my view, Satoshi Nakamoto resembles a Prometheus who stole fire and gifted it to mortals. As the cryptocurrency industry gradually developed, the US dollar, aided by various stablecoins, once again claimed the title of "industry anchor."
In the competitive development process of various public chain projects, infrastructure projects, protocol projects, and application projects, everything is a process of liquidity circulation and a result of transfer. Asset issuance is merely a different form of "wealth redistribution," and asset distribution is just a different form of "buy-sell transactions." Ultimately, all assets have only two destinations: one is the eternally unchanging, fixed quantity, and subdivisible "digital gold" BTC; the other includes various fiat currencies, guaranteed by the authoritative power of the US government.
As we find ourselves in 2025, perhaps we should start rethinking the original questions surrounding the emergence of BTC:
Who guarantees your monetary rights? Is it the blockchain key, or the laws of an authoritarian government? Is it the rules of commercial platforms, or the freedom directed by self-interest?
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