Written by: Sleepy, Kaori, Peggy
'I have been having conference calls until two a.m. every day recently.'
The person saying this is a veteran financier who has been in the traditional brokerage industry for more than a decade. When he said this, he was flipping his phone upside down on the coffee table. The corners of his eyes were slightly red, but his tone remained very understated.
His office in Beijing is located in a siheyuan in Xicheng District, with two large doors already slightly peeling. The afternoon light slants into the courtyard, and some dust floats in the beam. He sits at an old wooden table, dealing with issues related to regulation, business cooperation, and project scheduling.
Having started in the financial industry more than a decade ago, he experienced the last financial crisis and has navigated the global market, managing funds, developing products, and leading teams, almost traversing all continents. It wasn't until these years that he began to turn toward a direction that the entire traditional finance industry initially thought was 'uncertain'—virtual assets.
The traditional financial industry's attention to Web3 did not begin in 2025. If we trace back to the starting point, many people will mention Robinhood.
This platform, which rose to fame with 'zero-commission stock trading', launched Bitcoin and Ethereum trading features back in 2018. Initially, it was just a product line supplement, allowing users to buy coins like buying Tesla stocks, without needing a wallet or understanding blockchain. This feature was not heavily promoted at the time but became a breakout point years later.
In the fourth quarter of last year, cryptocurrency contributed more than 35% of Robinhood's total net income, with trading volume surging by 455%, driving trading revenue up 733% year-on-year, reaching $358 million, making cryptocurrency the largest source of revenue for Robinhood that quarter. In the first quarter of 2025, cryptocurrency contributed more than 27% of total revenue, with trading revenue doubling year-on-year to $252 million.
Robinhood's quarterly cryptocurrency asset trends, source: IO.FUND
What drives this change is not technology, but the clicks of thousands of users. Robinhood did not narrate the Web3 story, but simply adapted to users' trading habits, only to find that cryptocurrency trading is no longer a marginal business, but has instead become the core engine of the company's growth.
After that, Robinhood gradually transformed from a centralized brokerage to a digital asset trading platform.
With the example set by Robinhood, traditional finance finally decided to collectively enter the cryptocurrency industry in 2025, no longer just observing. They are not here to experience Web3 or to invest in projects; 'traditional finance will take over the cryptocurrency industry within ten years.'
This reshuffle of traditional brokerages against cryptocurrency natives is something we are already part of.
In March 2025, one of the world's largest retail brokerages, Charles Schwab, with assets under management exceeding $10 trillion, announced that it would open spot Bitcoin trading services within a year.
In May 2025, Morgan Stanley, one of Wall Street's most influential investment banks, announced plans to officially integrate BTC and ETH into its trading platform E*Trade, providing retail users with a direct trading channel.
In May 2025, JPMorgan, the largest bank by assets in the U.S. and long critical of cryptocurrency, announced that it would allow clients to purchase Bitcoin.
In July 2025, Standard Chartered, a long-established British bank focusing on Asian, Middle Eastern, and African markets, announced that it would open Bitcoin and Ethereum spot trading services to institutional clients.
They are the behemoths that dominate the global financial system's operation, controlling the channels for capital flow, clearing networks, and fiat payment systems globally, holding assets worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. In contrast, the current total market value of the cryptocurrency market is only 4 trillion.
Mainstream asset market capitalization rankings, source: Steemit Community
They are gradually completing their layout in the cryptocurrency field based on traditional financial compliance frameworks. When an institution possesses both compliance trust and user flow along with clearing and settlement capabilities, it has all the elements necessary to build a cryptocurrency trading network.
In the traditional financial system, whoever controls the account opening authority can control the flow of funds, client relationships, and even the ultimate pricing power. For a long time, cryptocurrency trading platforms relied on listing coins to define narratives and used deposits to control liquidity, but now, the 'asset entry' role that CEX has snatched away for nearly a decade is gradually being reclaimed by traditional finance.
'It is time for those cryptocurrency trading platforms to feel anxious.'
His tone remains restrained, without a hint of schadenfreude. The root of anxiety may not only stem from the entry of a certain institution or the introduction of a certain policy, but also a kind of industry awareness that cryptocurrency trading platforms may no longer be the only ones at the table who can deal the cards.
Methods left on the table
An insider from a cryptocurrency trading platform told us that he has recently been replying to messages at five in the morning. He talks about cooperation during the day, monitors progress at night, and checks user community feedback late into the night, hardly getting any sleep.
'We can only seek survival in anxiety.'
The anxiety he describes is the competition between platforms, the survival state of having to compete for users, products, and traffic every day upon waking.
The root of the struggle for existing shares is that there is little growth space left in the industry, and also due to the overwhelming external pressure.
Traditional finance is gradually encroaching on the core capabilities that cryptocurrency trading platforms rely on for survival—from fiat currency deposits to asset custody, from user account openings to spot matching. They come with regulatory permits and millions of users, advancing aggressively, seemingly not intending to coexist with crypto-native platforms.
Almost all cryptocurrency trading platforms immediately launched coin stock products. Buying Apple with USDT, leveraging Nvidia, trading Tesla through on-chain contracts. These traditional asset on-chain solutions have been successively launched on multiple platforms, becoming a coincidental industry action.
Bybit is the first to take the plunge. They completed the research and development and launch of the U.S. stock token product in just two months, from internal project initiation to contacting the XStocks team and finally launching it, at an extremely fast pace.
In Bybit's view, the core advantages of centralized trading platforms still exist. The real users, strong liquidity, and trading depth accumulated over many years are resources that external brokerages cannot replicate overnight.
The launch of U.S. stock tokens was driven by a clear demand gap, such as trading needs during market closure or users facing geographical and compliance restrictions to access traditional stock markets. The 7×24 nature of Crypto has opened new liquidity spaces for traditional assets.
Of course, this does not mean it is a guaranteed victory. Bybit's spot trading head, Emily, admitted that U.S. stock tokens are still in the early stages, with participation and enthusiasm far less than that of newly launched high-traffic coins.
But she is still optimistic about this direction because it represents that Crypto is expanding its gameplay into the world of TradFi. DeFi, synthetic assets, on-chain staking—these new derivative scenarios of traditional assets on-chain may be where the true value of this path lies.
However, these features seem to be actively exploring new markets, but to many, they look more like a form of passive defense.
When trading platforms no longer have the dominant power of 'asset entry', they begin to try to make themselves appear still connected to the world. Thus, coin stocks became the most common defensive move in this phase.
Coin stocks are actually not a new concept.
Time rewinds to 2020, when FTX proposed the coin stock model. They introduced trading pairs like TSLA/BTC, AAPL/USDT, seen as an attempt to challenge traditional financial pricing logic.
That was a time when the cryptocurrency circle still had an aggressive era. What FTX wanted to do was to rewrite the trading methods of traditional finance with cryptocurrency finance and to price Nasdaq with cryptocurrency finance.
Perhaps he had already seen that the biggest future competitor for cryptocurrency trading platforms would be brokerages, so he took the initiative. Looking back now, this model has been picked up by the industry again, but it has already changed in flavor. After the collapse of FTX, coin stocks became a tourniquet rather than a battering ram.
Data also corroborates this.
After the launch of the coin stock model, there was indeed an initial wave of community attention, but the activity quickly fell back, and the attempts by various platforms failed to create much of a splash.
On the other hand, in contrast, the meme coin market on Solana during the same period shows a completely different trend. A tweet from Musk can quickly send the market capitalization of related meme coins into the hundreds of millions, with daily trading volumes in the tens of millions of dollars, much higher than the weekly trading volumes of many coin stock trading pairs.
Above: XStocks trading volume, source: Dune; below: meme coin Ani trading volume, source: gmgn
New features, no new users.
At this stage, what features CEX launches is no longer important. What matters is why they are launching these features and whether these features can bring back the role they are losing.
This wave of coin stock enthusiasm is not due to industry progress, but because no one dares to do nothing.
Kant said: 'Freedom is not being able to do whatever you want, but being able to not do what you don't want to do.'
Compliance is just an illusion.
During this time, almost all cryptocurrency trading platforms have been talking about compliance. Each is striving to apply for licenses, adjust their business structures, and bring in executives with traditional financial backgrounds, trying to prove that they have emerged from the grassroots era and become more like a financial institution that can be accepted by regulators.
This is a kind of industry consensus, as well as a collective anxiety.
But in the eyes of traditional finance people, this understanding of compliance is still too thin.
'Many trading platforms obtain licenses from small countries to prove compliance, but licenses from small countries do not really count as licenses; such licenses cannot be taken seriously.' He said, his tone not sharp, more like stating an industry common sense.
What he refers to as 'getting on the table' is not about whether you have a business license, but whether you can connect to the real financial system—whether you have a way to open an account with a mainstream bank, can use the clearing network, and whether you can gain the trust of regulators to truly engage in business cooperation with them.
This implies a reality that, in the view of traditional finance, the cryptocurrency world has never been treated equally.
The traditional financial system is built on a chain of responsibility and a trust loop, emphasizing a penetrating customer structure, risk control, audit capabilities, and the explainability of capital paths. In contrast, cryptocurrency platforms have largely grown in institutional gaps, maintaining high profits and growth through gray areas, but they rarely have the ability to construct these compliance foundations.
In fact, everyone in the circle understands these issues. But previously, no one cared because no one was competing for this territory. Now that traditional financial institutions have entered the scene, they operate according to their own rules, and the 'industry practices' of the cryptocurrency sector suddenly become hard injuries.
Some platforms are indeed making adjustments, introducing compliance audits, establishing overseas trust structures, splitting businesses, and striving to make themselves appear more legitimate.
However, many countries' regulatory bodies do not buy into it at all. They may superficially cooperate with you on processes, but deep down, they never intended to treat you as part of the formal financial system. No matter how much you mimic, it just looks like it; it doesn’t mean they will really keep you.
However, not all trading platforms are just going through the motions. Bybit is one of the few platforms that has truly broken through the regulatory shell. This year, they became one of the first centralized trading platforms to obtain the European MiCA license and established their European headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
Bybit does not deny that this process is difficult, nor do they shy away from the regulatory doubts about the industry. But as Emily said, regulation is no longer the same as it was five years ago when they did not understand cryptocurrency. Now, regulatory bodies are beginning to truly understand the business logic and technical structure of this industry. Their understanding is deepening from technology, models to market promotion, and the basis for cooperation is becoming more solid.
In addition, Bitget's Chinese head, Xie Jiayin, told us that Bitget has currently obtained virtual asset licenses in multiple countries and has established local compliance frameworks according to regulatory requirements in various regions. He revealed that the team is also actively pushing for the MiCA license application, hoping to establish a more stable business channel in the European market and lay the foundation for multinational operations under a unified regulatory framework in the future.
But even so, such cases remain the minority. For most platforms, they neither have the licenses, networks, and trust endorsements within the traditional financial system, nor are they losing the high-growth dividends brought by the original institutional vacuum. They find that the threshold for compliance transformation is too high; when they want to turn back to being crypto-native, they discover another group of competitors lurking.
Thus, everyone can only continue to align with regulators, continue talking about compliance, applying for licenses, and going through processes. Often, these actions are not strategic choices but a sense of anxiety being pushed forward.
The mid-point of the game
In the community at five a.m., Xie Jiayin is still replying to users' questions one by one. Some ask how to trade coin stocks, others ask about the platform's recent compliance progress, and some inquire about what PUMP subscriptions are and how they plan to handle it. He said he and his colleagues often stay up late; an all-nighter is nothing.
On a hot afternoon in Beijing, an executive from a Hong Kong brokerage is having tea and discussing cooperation with several executives from listed companies in a siheyuan. The meeting room is separated by a carved wooden door, with a courtyard paved with blue bricks outside, and the sound of insects chirping in the shade of the trees.
Looking further ahead, in Vienna, Austria, Bybit's new European headquarters has just completed its ribbon-cutting ceremony and is officially opening for business, established as their European outpost after obtaining the MiCA license. They became one of the first centralized trading platforms to complete the crossing, while also being aware that the vast majority of their peers are still feeling their way across the river.
They are in different places, different emotions, and different rhythms, but their words resonate subtly: all mention 'changes too fast', all talk about 'take it slow', and all ponder how the industry should continue moving forward.
The premise of moving forward is already different from a few years ago.
Cryptocurrency trading platforms may no longer be the most central role in this world, no longer the starting point for all traffic and narratives. They are standing on the edge of a new order, slowly being pushed out of the core by an invisible set of rules.
More complex systems and larger capital are gradually replacing the original narratives and structures.
Cryptocurrency trading platforms are still here, new product features are being launched as usual, announcements come one after another. Their expression methods are changing, the rhythm of their voices is changing, the context they want to integrate into is also changing; everything is changing.
Some changes are actively chosen, some are passively accepted, but more often, they are just trying to retain a sense of presence without being eliminated by the times.
However, not everyone is pessimistic. Xie Jiayin and Emily both believe that the impact of Crypto on traditional finance is greater than the latter's squeeze on CEX. They are optimistic about the trend of traditional financial institutions entering the market, as every round of evolution in the industry requires new players and participants. Centralized trading platforms have been continuously expanding their institutional client base and starting to engage in wealth management, asset allocation, etc. The businesses of both sides are intersecting and merging, 'the two financial worlds resonate with each other, it's a romantic moment.'
But at the same time, everyone is also aware that this advantage itself does not exempt them from anxiety.
Many questions will not have clear answers. For example, will regulators really allow these cryptocurrency trading platforms, and whether traditional finance is genuinely willing to co-build rather than replace.
And also, before the next round of industry themes arrives, whether they still have another opportunity to define themselves.
No one dares to speak too confidently about these issues. Everyone is dealing with their part of the work, attending meetings, modifying products, applying for licenses, waiting for feedback, maintaining the status quo while waiting for opportunities to regain the initiative.
While waiting for the tide of industry reshuffling.
