小小的躺赢

ETF re-flows → falling expectations of a Fed rate hike → the Ministry of Finance expands long-term bond repo operations → easing pressure on U.S. Treasuries → BTC breaks above 65.6K → shorts rush to stop out → $1B+ short liquidations → BTC instantly surges to 69K.

If BTC can continue breaking above 70,000, it may reach around 71,500, completing a concentrated cleanup of the major high-leverage existing short positions from the prior phase.

It’s becoming very difficult for future mid-sized and small platforms to directly challenge the big players:
Binance / OKX / Bybit / Bitget / Gate.

So we can no longer pursue:
“Having everything.”

Instead, we should become:
“In one specific area, I deliver something that others cannot replace.”

For example:
A certain region;
A certain type of trading users;
A certain asset class;
A specific arbitrage ecosystem;
A particular on-chain gateway;
A specialized trading tool.
First build a local moat, then expand outward.
This is more realistic than trying to burn money across the board.

In past bull markets, smaller and mid-sized platforms could conceal operational problems by adding large numbers of new users. Even if some customers were restricted by risk controls and profits were deducted, as long as the platform could keep acquiring new users, the cost of customer attrition was not very noticeable. In some cases, even “just returning the principal” might be seen by the platform as a form of benevolence.

But in a prolonged bear market, incremental growth disappears and customers begin comparing the actual returns across different platforms. If a platform merely limits customer profits through risk controls—so customers can generate trading volume but cannot take profits out smoothly—then, in essence, it is consuming the customers’ time cost, and converting that cost into negative brand impact over time.

Therefore, what platforms truly need to improve in the future is not endlessly increasing the precision of risk controls, but strengthening their market making, hedging, liquidity management, and risk-absorption capabilities.

A truly mature exchange should not view “customers making money” as a risk. Instead, it should be able to enable customers to make money, while continuously generating profit through market making, fees, hedging, and liquidity management.

In the past, it was “risk-controlling customers.” Going forward, it should be “managing risk.”
The former filters out customers; the latter improves the platform’s ability to accommodate customers.

In the past, CEXs selected customers through risk controls; in the future, CEXs will rely on market making and risk management to accommodate customers.
Real competition is not about who can identify customers more precisely—it’s about who can enable customers to make money and take their profits, while the platform can still earn money as well.

Last time I said BTC might go up to 67,000, but it still hasn’t reached that level yet. No matter whether it goes up or not, in the future it will most likely keep dropping. It’s safer to wait for it to move downward first. Just wait patiently and don’t be in a hurry.

Recently, Bitget has seen situations with bidirectional pinning, which has caused retail traders to get liquidated (blown up). This reflects that in a prolonged bearish market over the long term, a platform’s experience and risk-management will become increasingly difficult. In the past bull market, it was possible to list a large number of coins; while charging listing fees, the platform could also attract new capital and require projects to make markets, thereby increasing the overall trading volume of the platform. However, as bearish-market capital gradually exits, the trading volumes of altcoins decline and market-making willingness drops. Many projects then enter a “zombie state.” Their market caps may remain, but real liquidity has disappeared.

In a bear market, altcoin liquidity declines and many low-quality assets are gradually pushed to the margins. Some capital may use low-liquidity, high-leverage markets to create extreme volatility, which leads to retail traders getting liquidated. This, in turn, triggers risks to user trust, regulatory risks, and business-model risks. Going forward, exchange competition will no longer be just about who can list more coins and offer higher leverage, but rather about who has stronger asset-selection capabilities, liquidity management capabilities, and risk-control capabilities.

CEX will increasingly resemble traditional financial institutions. In the past, “the bigger the casino, the more profitable it is.” In the future, “the stronger the risk-management ability, the more likely it is to become a long-term entry point.”

BitMEX and BitMart represent two completely different kinds of exchange risk.

BitMEX’s exit, at its core, means that the first generation of derivatives platforms lost their competitive edge and were replaced by ecosystem-style exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX.

BitMart is different. After the platform announced an orderly shutdown, many users reported that withdrawals were delayed. Founder Sheldon Xia responded publicly today in a rare move, but he still hasn’t provided a clear timeline for when withdrawals will resume or detailed information about asset arrangements.

BitMEX and BitMart both appearing in succession actually reflects two trends:
1) Platforms without ecosystems are becoming increasingly hard to survive.
2) Transparency has become the lifeline during the exit phase.

BitMEX was once a pioneer of the crypto derivatives era, but it ultimately exited—not because its cash flow collapsed, but because its business model was outcompeted by the times.

BitMEX hoped to achieve a valuation of around $1 billion by leveraging the value of its “historic brand + pioneer of derivatives.” However, buyers cared more about current trading volume, profitability, and growth potential.

Coupled with the long-term brand impact from the 2020 regulatory incident, BitMEX gradually lost its advantages in competing with second-generation综合 exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX.

This event shows that in the future, exchange competition won’t be about who creates products, but about who controls traffic entry points, builds an ecosystem closed loop, demonstrates compliance capability, has strong capital strength, and earns user trust.

BitMEX’s exit as the leading king of first-generation crypto derivatives marks a turning point for the industry as it shifts from the “product innovation era” to the “ecosystem competition era.”

On February 21, 2025, Bybit suffered an incident in which approximately $1.5 billion worth of crypto assets were stolen. Recently, Bybit has initiated legal proceedings, pointing responsibility toward the North Korea-linked hacker group Lazarus Group and related entities.

The U.S. Senate did not move forward with a vote on the CLARITY Act before its August recess. It is expected to wait until after Congress reconvenes in mid-September.

If passed, the CLARITY Act would further clarify:
SEC and CFTC regulatory boundaries;
cryptocurrency asset classification;
the regulatory framework for trading platforms;
the legal framework for U.S. institutions to enter the crypto market.

The likelihood of rapid implementation in 2026 has clearly decreased.
The impact on BTC is relatively neutral, while the impact is greater for Coinbase, Circle, and U.S. crypto infrastructure companies.

U.S. July Non-Farm Payrolls decreased by 23,000 jobs, even though the market had originally expected an increase of about 80,000. On the surface, the unemployment rate fell from 4.2% to 4.1%, but this isn’t because the labor market is strengthening. Instead, about 264,000 people left the labor force, and the labor force participation rate dropped to 61.4%, the lowest level in about five and a half years.

This directly changes the logic of Federal Reserve market pricing. Before the Non-Farm Payrolls report, the market estimated the probability of a September rate hike at around 55%. After the data came out, it quickly fell to about 40%–44%. U.S. Treasury yields and the U.S. dollar dropped in tandem, and U.S. stocks rose.

In the near term, BTC is helped by the news. Weak buy-side demand allows BTC to break through short-term pressure and begin a rebound.

BTC ETF net inflows, cumulative over 4 days: +$763.6 million, including
August 3: +$170.1 million;
August 4: +$211.5 million;
August 5: +$244.4 million;
August 6: +$137.6 million.

Each time there is net inflow, BTC rebounds accordingly.

Haven't drawn in a long time. BTC will most likely go to 67,000 once more, and then it might continue to fall (we’ll see then). If you’re in cash, it’s fine. For those who went short, don’t use too much leverage and get wiped out before dawn.

On July 23, the BTC ETF saw net outflows of $225.1 million, mainly driven by withdrawals from IBIT. Seven consecutive days of inflows came to an end, and BTC then surged and pulled back.

After Robinhood Chain opened its mainnet in early July, its cumulative DEX trading volume quickly surpassed $1 billion and, at one point, exceeded Hyperliquid in daily DEX volume. Related statistics show that its early peak days saw trading volumes of about $430 million–$560 million, with rapid growth in both wallet numbers and transaction counts. However, some of the trading volume was driven by a small number of Meme tokens such as CASHCAT, so it cannot be directly explained as stable demand for U.S. stock tokenization having already formed.

Mid-July U.S. spot BTC ETF saw net inflows again; on July 17, net inflows were about $132.3 million. Over the past two weeks, cumulative net inflows were about $264.4 million, with Fidelity, ARK, and BlackRock products contributing more. Net inflows for July totaled about $200 million. Compared with the record $4.5 billion net outflow in June, this can only be seen as a repair, not a trend reversal.

Robinhood itself already has about 26.7 million users, and most of them are young retail traders. For the crypto space, this means Robinhood could become the first platform to truly bring tens of millions of traditional finance users onto the chain. Hyperliquid’s core is “moving contracts on-chain,” while what Robinhood wants to do is: move the entire Wall Street onto the chain.

At the beginning of the year, Hyperliquid's share of the global perpetual market was still below 5%; it is now up to 9%, and the pace at which it is taking market share from CEXs is accelerating. This could be due to European regulatory compliance, or because new assets such as crude oil, gold, and U.S. stocks are attracting a large number of traders who previously were not part of the crypto circle.