Organized by: Tong, PANews

After nearly eight years of collaboration with European regulators, OKX has finally officially entered the European market this year. Recently, OKX founder Star was interviewed by European trader "That's My Quant". In the interview, he recalled that he got into the industry in 2011 while watching "The Good Wife", using servers to mine BTC and trading on Mt. Gox; he missed the opportunity to get Ethereum, but he pushed for unified trading accounts and multi-chain wallets to become industry standards. Now, 90% of OKX's simple programming has been completed by AI. He discussed products, trading principles and the vision of AI, as well as the three fundamental aspects of starting a business: luck, resilience, and a wise understanding of the world.

PANews has selected and edited the interview dialogue as follows:

Formally entering the European market after eight years of compliance

Host: What made you want to communicate with the European community today?

Star: Actually, we entered Europe around 2017-2018. However, our company culture has always been to work closely with regulatory agencies, avoiding rule violations. So, I think we have been cooperating with European regulators since about 2018.

The difficulty was that we were initially a technology-focused company. When we first entered the crypto industry and met with regulators, we told them: "We have great technology, excellent products, and good marketing methods." But they asked: "Who are you? I want to understand your corporate governance and compliance."

So, we went through several tough years. By around 2023-2024, we learned these lessons from difficult experiences and worked hard to improve fundamentally. Now, I can proudly say that we are a fintech company.

Fintech includes both finance and technology. Finance means governance and compliance; technology means that we still need good products and efficient technology to reduce barriers to use and provide customers with the best products and experience.

Since last year, we have gradually obtained MiCA licenses, MiFID licenses, and payment licenses. This has been a long process of careful scrutiny. Regulators require a lot of documents, policies, and even third-party audits. In fact, they also conduct on-site inspections at our office every six months.

We prepared everything to obtain these licenses. A few months ago, as the deadlines related to MiCA approached, we saw many clients transitioning from offshore platforms to regulated platforms within Europe, and we are one of them.

So, now is the time for us to officially voice ourselves to European customers. Although we have been operating here for a long time and have a large customer base, visibility was not as high in the past. Now we are ready, confident, and subject to rigorous audits and regulatory scrutiny.

We hope to be closer to the community, listen to your feedback and expectations, and design better products and services for you. We also want everyone to understand our business and governance approach, to know who we are and where our capabilities lie. If you have any concerns, we are equally willing to listen and improve.

Entering the industry through a TV show, mining BTC with servers in 2011

Host: OKX is obviously growing rapidly in Europe. However, take me back to the day you first bought cryptocurrency: where were you? What did you buy? What happened to that wallet or that transaction later?

Star: It's a long story, and I've shared it in many places. It was around 2011, while I was watching an American series "The Good Wife". Someone in it said: "Bitcoin is the future." I thought, what is Bitcoin? So I went to search on Google.

I discovered a person named Satoshi Nakamoto, who wrote a white paper about a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. I continued to research and came across a company called Mt. Gox, so I opened an account.

At that time, I could also install mining software on my computer. My background is as a technology manager, overseeing hundreds of servers, so I tested with some servers. Of course, this method is not allowed today and violates company policy; but back then we were just experimenting. I mined Bitcoin and traded on Mt. Gox.

By the way, Mt. Gox was operated by a Frenchman living in Japan, and we had contact. He even wanted to sell some assets to me. For example, he owned a domain called Bitcoin.com. Initially, he wanted to sell that domain to me.

That time was very joyful because we didn't treat Bitcoin as money, but as a fun game where everyone mined and traded. When I bought Bitcoin for the first time, the price was about ten dollars. After starting my business, I don't want to say how much I made from it. People who held cryptocurrency early generally held a lot.

Around 2012-2013, there was an online gaming company called Just Dice, which is now closed. It could be said to be an online gambling site, but at the time we didn't understand it that way. There was a mechanism that attracted me: you rolled dice and bet against the platform at certain odds. The platform itself had a fund pool, and you could also invest in that pool.

This is somewhat similar to today's automated market makers, or AMMs, like Uniswap. But at that time, there was only one pool where you could put Bitcoin.

Host: I understand, you put in funds and then get some return from the betting results.

Star: Yes. Plus, they made the algorithm completely public. The platform had a 51% win rate, while the users had 49%, and they proved this mathematically using blockchain. We would bet there, and we once bet five hundred bitcoins in a single bet.

Host: That's a lot of money, really a lot of money.

Star: Later, I wrote an algorithm to market make there, which means investing in the fund pool. At that time, the random seed used by Just Dice was fairly simple, so I wrote a program to predict. Even though it was random, after observing for a few days or months, I felt I could still find some trends. When I thought the platform was likely to flip a loss, I started to invest; when it had won a lot of money, I withdrew my investments. At that time, I made about ten thousand bitcoins.

From the first million to the first billion

Host: From your first million to your first billion, what changes occurred? I mean in daily life. With so much Bitcoin wealth, what is the most fun and interesting thing you bought?

Star: I don't know. I'm not the type to say "I'm rich, I'm wealthy" outwardly; that's completely not my style.

But I do have an experience that is very important to me. After graduating from college and starting work, I earned more in my fifth year than in the first four years combined. By the tenth year, that year’s earnings greatly surpassed the total of the previous nine years.

So I believe everyone needs to believe in something, focus on a direction, and continue to grow. Previously, I focused on personal skills; when running a startup, I had to learn about fundraising, recruiting, and building teams; when applying for licenses, I had to learn about laws, corporate governance, and compliance.

When you believe in something, decide to focus on that area, and consistently maintain resilience to overcome challenges, eventually making your first million or billion will feel like a natural process.

Host: Indeed, that sounds great.

Refused Ethereum listing nine years ago, leading industry standards with products

Host: You used to be a technical lead, and now everyone thinks you are someone who understands products well. Which feature did you strongly promote that is now most favored by users? The one that best reflects your vision.

Star: First of all, I am a person who really believes in new things. When I started my business in 2013, mainstream trading platforms basically only listed Bitcoin. By the way, I am also a super fan of Bitcoin, even a fanatic.

We were the first company to list Litecoin, attracting a lot of traffic. But by 2017-2018, although listing Litecoin was very successful, I made a mistake in 2017: I became conservative.

When Ethereum started to become popular, Vitalik approached me and asked, "Star, are you considering listing Ethereum?" I said, "That’s a garbage coin."

Host: Wow, well. That really differs a lot. When was that, about ten years ago?

Star: Yes, it was 2017. In 2016-2017, many people already believed in Ethereum. However, listing coins is actually just a small part of crypto companies' businesses. Today, I believe we have many excellent products.

For example, we might be one of the earliest companies to launch unified trading accounts. A unified trading account means you can trade different products in the same account, including spot, perpetual contracts, delivery contracts, and options.

With this account, you can run many trading algorithms while maintaining high capital efficiency. For example, you can go long on the spot, short on perpetual contracts, which is a common basis trading method. Gains and losses can automatically offset each other, and you don't need to place so much collateral in different places.

We launched unified trading around 2020-2021 and were one of the earliest companies to do so. FTX also did something similar around the same time.

Today, unified trading accounts have become a standard in the crypto industry, and all professional users look forward to having such features.

Host: Great.

You can also see that traditional finance is moving in this direction. The U.S. SEC is updating many rules to allow the use of digital assets as trading collateral. I believe some things we started doing have now become industry standards.

Star: Another example is the multi-chain Web3 wallet. When we developed the wallet, I thought: with the increasing number of chains, many wallets like MetaMask would first ask which chain you want to use, Bitcoin or Ethereum. I told the team, "Customers don’t care about this; what they want is a smooth experience."

Star: So we launched a multi-chain wallet, but we encountered several challenges. The initial product was not good enough and had many technical issues. The team began to ask why users didn't come. Some colleagues said: "Star, other wallets all ask for a chain first; we are a multi-chain wallet, so maybe users are not used to it."

Star: Later we did a lot of research and found that the actual reason was that the transaction failure rate was too high and the support for different chains was not smooth enough. After resolving these issues, everyone accepted the multi-chain wallet. Today it has also become an industry standard.

Defining your core holdings

Host: I like this vision. I appreciate that you talked a lot about blockchain, not just cryptocurrencies; that’s great. You have a broad perspective, interact with many traders and investors, and run one of the largest trading platforms in the world. I am also a trader. What common traits do you think successful people have? Any advice for us?

Star: We operate an exchange and see all kinds of customers. In technical terms, we also see the microstructure of liquidity: high-frequency traders, liquidity providers, takers, speculators, experienced traders, and retail investors.

Each type of customer requires completely different trading capabilities. But today we should mainly be talking about retail investors and professional traders, right? Then let me first tell a story outside of trading.

I have many friends who run various trading firms or investment funds. They raise billions or tens of billions of dollars, investing in various portfolios and funds. But not a single fund has beaten Bitcoin. Not one.

Host: Understood.

Star: Here's a second story. Many years ago, we had a client from mainland China who had been our customer since around 2013-2014. Later, he encountered some unfortunate events and was imprisoned for five or six years.

Host: Wow, that’s like being forced to hold for a long time.

Star: Later, the assets in his account were worth about fifteen million dollars. He said to me, "Star, thank you so much for protecting my funds over the past six years. I want to give you a Ferrari." I said, "Please, I don’t need a Ferrari. I’m just happy you're out."

Host: Then you should enjoy that Ferrari yourself.

Star: This is actually very important. If you want to invest in the crypto industry and believe that cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, and the entire industry have great potential—for example, the stablecoin's market cap might grow from 300 billion to 3 trillion, RWA is just starting, and there is still a gap between Bitcoin and gold—then these are opportunities.

If you believe in these trends, whether you are trading in the crypto industry, working as an employee, or starting your own business, what is your connection to this industry and blockchain? I would advise most people that this connection should be Bitcoin.

I believe that most traders should categorize their investment portfolios. The first category is your core investment: What is your fundamental connection to this industry? I would suggest Bitcoin. Some choose Ethereum or other assets, which is also fine, but you must define your core holdings.

The second part is professional trading. We see many speculators come in, make ten times their investment, and then go back to zero. Some people genuinely enjoy that feeling. Our product has a feature called a cooling-off period. After positions are forcibly liquidated, there may be seven days, sometimes thirty days, during which no new positions can be opened. These users call in: "Quick, open my account." We say: "This is the rule." They say: "Star, we just like the feeling of trading." This is one type of customer.

So for professional traders, the most important thing is to be able to control themselves, understand themselves, and know their risk profile.

Host: Yes, you need to know how to manage risk.

Star: Many people originally had set principles, but after investing too much money, they begin to change their principles. I believe principles are the most important for professional traders.

Your trading skills may exceed mine. I am not a specialized short-term trader. Although we provide many features like stop-loss orders, limit orders, grid trading, and dollar-cost averaging, you are much more professional than I am in utilizing these tools.

The first thing I want to emphasize is core investments and your connection to the industry; the second thing is understanding your risk profile and always having principles set for yourself. This industry still has a long way to grow.

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