One week after NEAR's own trading system got hacked for $3.8 million, its co-founder says you don't need crypto exchanges anymore.

Illia Polosukhin told The Block at the Digital Asset Summit in Singapore: "I think for a lot of things now, you don't need it." His near.com already packs cross-chain spot trading, perpetual futures, tokenized stocks and yield products into one screen — bank withdrawals and tax records are next on the roadmap.

And he has a personal reason to believe it: a centralized exchange once deleted his own account, even though he knew the CEO. "You log in, and it says this account doesn't exist."

My take: the hack is the elephant in the room. NEAR Intents was drained on October 1 — patched and repaid in full, but it shows onchain is not safer by default. Bold claim, shaky timing.

Will your next trade happen onchain — or do exchanges still win?

$NEAR

#NEAR #CryptoNews #Onchain

DYOR