Signal Spotlight · Asia-Pacific crypto and fintech, counterparty risk and compliance
What happened
Bybit co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou told Cointelegraph that “the era of the pure crypto exchange is ending,” accompanying the launch of “Make Your Move,” a global campaign repositioning Bybit as a broader financial platform rather than a venue focused primarily on digital assets. “The people who trade crypto also want stocks, gold, forex, indices, and derivatives,” Zhou said. “They want to pay, save, and grow their wealth in the same place.” Bybit already offers stock, gold, and forex derivatives, this is a repositioning of an existing product set through a marketing campaign, not a new operational pivot. The company reports more than 80 million registered users across 181 countries, with over 442 spot assets and 235 traditional-market instruments through its TradFi and RWA offerings.
The timing carries real weight beyond Bybit’s own framing. In the same window, BitMEX ended trading entirely after 11 years in operation. CoinEx announced a wind-down, explicitly citing declining trading volumes and rising compliance costs. BitMart, having announced closure plans in July, is exploring restructuring. Three named exchanges retreating from the pure-trading model in the same period Bybit is publicly expanding gives Zhou’s claim concrete, verifiable support beyond marketing language.
Separately, and worth stating plainly given its relevance to counterparty risk: Bybit suffered the largest cryptocurrency theft on record in February 2025, when $1.5 billion in assets was stolen in a hack linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
Why it matters
The practical question for Philippine operators isn’t really about Bybit’s marketing campaign, it’s about what Bybit has actually become as a counterparty, and whether internal risk documentation reflects that accurately. A platform offering crypto, equity derivatives, and commodity derivatives, serving tens of millions of users across nearly 200 countries, sits in a materially different risk category than a narrow crypto on-ramp. If an operator’s AML and third-party risk documentation was built around Bybit as a simple crypto gateway, that documentation no longer accurately describes the platform it’s actually referencing.
The February 2025 hack deserves equal weight in that same risk conversation, arguably more concrete weight than the classification question alone. A $1.5 billion theft, the largest in crypto history, tied to a state-linked threat actor, is a direct, material fact about counterparty security history, not a regulatory classification nuance. Any operator treating Bybit as a treasury or settlement rail should have that incident documented in the same risk file as the platform’s expanding product scope, evaluated together, not as two separate and unrelated considerations.
Neither BSP nor PAGCOR has issued specific guidance on how licensed operators should classify or treat counterparties blending crypto and traditional financial derivatives under one platform. That’s a real gap, and it’s the kind of gap regulators tend to close after an incident forces the question, not proactively. Philippine operators updating their own documentation now, rather than waiting for a circular or an examination to raise it, are the ones positioned to demonstrate a defensible compliance posture if either regulator does turn attention here.
What to watch
BSP and PAGCOR guidance addressing multi-asset platforms specifically. Watch for any updated AML or third-party risk circular that speaks to counterparties spanning crypto and traditional derivatives under a single platform, closing the current classification gap.
Bybit’s licensing activity across Southeast Asia. As the platform repositions toward regulated financial products, new license applications or regulatory engagements in the Philippines or neighboring markets would be a leading indicator of how it intends to operate locally under this expanded scope.
Whether other major exchanges follow Bybit’s repositioning, or instead follow BitMEX, CoinEx, and BitMart toward wind-down or restructuring. The direction the broader market takes over the next year will clarify whether multi-asset expansion or consolidation is the dominant industry response to current pressure.
What this means for exchanges and platforms
Bybit’s repositioning sets a competitive reference point across the region. Platforms remaining crypto-only will increasingly need to justify that narrower scope to institutional and operator clients who may now expect broader capability as a baseline. Any platform following Bybit into traditional asset classes needs to independently verify its licensing actually covers the expanded product set in each specific jurisdiction it serves, expanding product scope faster than licensing coverage is exactly the kind of gap regulators look for first.
What this means for compliance
Review internal documentation classifying Bybit, or any comparable platform, as a crypto-only counterparty now, not at the next scheduled review cycle. Document both the platform’s actual current product scope and its security incident history, including the February 2025 hack, as part of the same counterparty risk assessment, treating expanding product complexity and past security failure as related risk factors rather than separate line items.
What this means for industry bodies
This is a concrete example of a real regulatory classification gap worth raising proactively with BSP and PAGCOR, existing frameworks for crypto exchanges don’t clearly address platforms that also offer traditional financial derivatives under the same account structure. Industry bodies advocating for updated guidance before this becomes standard practice across the sector have real opportunity to shape how the eventual rules get written, rather than responding to a framework set unilaterally after an incident forces the issue.