Author: Climber, Golden Finance
The renewed prosperity of the Bitcoin ecosystem allows us to see the fruits of institutional layout. 2023 is already the prologue, and 2024 is the new battlefield.
The most obvious example is that OKX built the infrastructure for Inscription in the first half of this year, and finally ushered in the harvest at the end of the year. The early bird catches the worm. As the new year is approaching, we might as well take a look at what the top players in the encryption industry have prepared for next year.
Some organizations have not clearly listed their comprehensive plans for the New Year, but we can still find their plans for next year from clues in the past.
In order to maintain market competitiveness, mainstream CEXs are actively improving their products and services, while continuing to expand their global business and build a brand ecosystem. However, these CEXs increasingly need to think about regulatory compliance issues.
1. OKX
In May this year, OKX was founded People Star said that OKX and its partner UniSat Wallet are committed to building infrastructure for BRC-20 and ORC-20, including wallets, markets, liquidity exchanges and browsers. It can be said that it is ahead of other exchanges in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Made a comprehensive layout.
In the second half of the year, the Bitcoin ecosystem will usher in a full-scale explosion. In particular, the Inscription track has ignited the enthusiasm for projects in major public chains, and discussions such as popularity, funds, traffic, etc. Keywords are full. And OKX also made a lot of money in this inscription feast, which shows that the bear market reconstruction is a golden saying.
As 2024 approaches, OKX still has not stopped advancing the platform.
OKX In order to meet the diversified needs of the growing number of crypto users around the world, OKX has launched 14 advanced strategies including contract martingale.
In November, OKX launched over-the-counter derivatives trading, but without the counterparty risk associated with assets held on the platform. In addition, OKX and Polygon jointly launched the zKEVM Layer2 network X1 and officially launched the test network. This network was upgraded by OKBC.
X1 is a high-performance, high-security Ethereum Layer2 network built on Polygon CDK, and uses ZK zero-knowledge proof technology to help users achieve lower transaction costs , OKB will serve as its native token.
It is reported that X1 will become a bridge linking OKX’s more than 50 million global users with the Polygon and Ethereum ecosystem, allowing developers to seamlessly and securely deploy based on EVM's DApp and connects more smart contracts, wallets and tools.
In addition, OKX’s new structured product Haiou was officially launched on November 8 and opened for subscription. In addition to Seaou, OKX has also launched diversified structured products such as shark fin and double currency win.
In order to better develop global business, OKCoin CEO Fang Hong announced his decision to rename Okcoin globally in the next few months to OKX.
Fang Hong said: "We have recently canceled the "Okcoin" brand and products in several regions (Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Hong Kong, etc.) - We will be renaming "Okcoin" to "OKX" sequentially over the next few months, starting in Singapore, then the European Union, and finally in the United States, our headquarters."
From this we cannot see OKX’s future areas of development, and the encryption projects in these areas are naturally worthy of attention.
Among them, the development of Web3 in Hong Kong is a clear trend, and OKX will naturally not miss this opportunity. OKX Global Chief Commercial Officer Jimmy Lai said that preparations for OKX HK’s compliance license application in Hong Kong have entered the final stage. He hopes to obtain the license in June next year and may attract 100,000 to 200,000 Hong Kong retail investors in the first year after that. .
In August, OKX Hong Kong announced that it would launch a Bitcoin reward program for local users.
In terms of international business, OKX Chief Marketing Officer Haider Rafique said that the company is planning to enter the Indian market and recruit local employees to explore potential Web3 use cases.
OKX does not have a global headquarters, but it has regional centers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and the Bahamas. Rafique said the company plans to expand its wallet services “exponentially” by leveraging India’s high-profile developer community. Currently, OKX has around 200,000 wallet users in India, accounting for only 5% of the country’s Web3 users.
In June, OKX Middle East Branch has obtained the MVP preparatory license issued by Dubai Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), and OKX Middle East has settled in the Dubai World Trade Center. new office and said it plans to increase its headcount to 30 people, with a focus on local hires and senior managers.
OKX stated that once the minimum viable product (MVP) license is fully operational, OKX Middle East will provide spot, derivatives and fiat currency services, including US dollars and UAE di RAM (AED) deposits, withdrawals and spot pair trading.
2. Binance
Binance’s year-end report has an overall impact on the platform A summary was made in 2023, which mentioned that Binance will welcome more than 40 million new users in 2023, an increase of almost 30%. In late 2023, Binance reached the milestone of 170 million registered users, offering 431 tradable assets across 1,785 trading pairs.
In addition, Binance has witnessed huge growth in crypto payments, peer-to-peer trading, and earning services. The number of people using Binance Pay or Card grew by 54%, with more than 3,500 new Pay merchants and partners globally accepting cryptocurrency exchange goods and services.
In addition, Binance continues to invest in its compliance technology, processes and talent, with spending reaching $213 million in 2023, a 35% increase from last year. By the end of the year, Binance held licenses, registrations, and authorizations in 18 jurisdictions around the world, more than ever before.
Especially after Binance reached a settlement with US regulators this year, the platform has focused on business compliance. However, given the advancements in its competitors’ products and services, Binance is also making efforts to compete with them.
On December 28, according to Binance employees, the next new version of Binance App will add an account switching function, that is, "allowing multiple accounts to be added to Binance App" , to easily switch between these accounts, the switching entrance is in the upper right corner of the account center."
He Yi, co-founder of Binance, also said in December that Binance plans to support Web3 entrepreneurs by incubating more projects. At the same time, she also said that the platform has a dedicated team responsible for iteration in product research and development, such as the issue of Web3 wallet that is often mentioned. In terms of project interaction and inscription market, Binance has not yet optimized the user experience and scenarios. In the future, there will be further iterations to make up for what is missing in CEX in the wallet field.
Binance's new CEO Richard Teng said that the platform has 166 million users and will continue to grow in the future. He looks forward to pushing this number even further and supporting the next billion.
In addition, they will continue to improve the platform’s compliance program and build a sustainable future as a user-led organization that meets all global compliance standards.
In terms of payment business, on November 30, Binance announced the successful execution of the world’s first pilot project for a tripartite arrangement for a cryptocurrency bank. This solution allows institutional investors to keep trading collateral in custody with third-party banking partners rather than within the trading platform.
I believe that in the next year, this project will spread from one point to more areas.
3. Bitget
By the end of this year, Bitget’s platform Coin BGB broke through all-time highs, reaching a maximum of $0.7. Judging from the intensity of the exchange’s announcement this year, it is believed that the platform has more ambitious goals.
The platform started with copy trading, so it attaches great importance to the user's trading experience.
In terms of products and services:
In November, Bitget announced the launch of the Tiandi Grid trading strategy . Currently, Bitget supports spot world grid and contract world grid, and also provides equal ratio/equal difference mode and forward/reverse trading mode to meet the needs of various trading scenarios. The Tiandi grid trading strategy utilizes the fluctuating market conditions to effectively obtain returns and is suitable for medium and long-term investments. In addition to this, users are provided with a comprehensive set of parameter descriptions to maximize their trading strategies.
In the previous month, the platform launched an innovative intelligent investment product "Contract Quantitative Robot", aiming to provide users with convenient and efficient investment strategies. Previously, Bitget has launched a variety of intelligent products, such as artificial intelligence martingale strategy, grid robot, intelligent investment robot, CTA-AI strategy, etc.
In addition, Bitget also launched the signal strategy (Signal Bot) trading function. The signal strategy is a multi-functional trading tool that allows users to conduct real-time transactions based on signals. In addition, Bitget launched “Snowball”, a principal-guaranteed structured product.
Business development:
In October, Bitget launched a spot market maker incentive plan. This plan provides partners with benefits such as Maker fee rebates, expansion of the number of sub-accounts, increase in API frequency limits, one-to-one technical support, subsidies, and monthly rewards.
In September, Bitget announced the launch of a VIP experience plan in the official Space, aiming to comprehensively improve user experience. Original VIP users, VIP users from other platforms, and users who invite friends, etc., and users who meet official regulations can enjoy multiple benefits such as a 31-day VIP trial period, interest rate coupons, trial funds, cold wallets, JD gift cards, etc.
In addition, Bitget has launched a currency recommendation officer program to encourage two-way empowerment between community users and high-quality projects.
Globalization layout:
Bitget participated in Dubai's "Future Blockchain Summit" , and announced the launch of the Bitget Card plan at the summit. It is a high-limit, U.S. dollar-denominated Visa credit card that will support use in 180 countries and regions, providing users with a comprehensive cryptocurrency payment solution.
And in September, Bitget Managing Director Gracy Chen announced the launch of the US$100 million EmpowerX Fund at the Singapore Web3 Summit "Bitget EmpowerX" to build Complete ecosystem.
In August, Bitget’s “Blockchain4Youth” project launched the Builders program, which will recruit 100 young talents worldwide.
The Bitget Builders program has been officially launched in the third quarter of this year, recruiting 100 young talents worldwide. Focus on countries and regions such as Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia.
In addition, in July, Bitget plans to use the Middle East as its next business expansion region, and will focus on exploring Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Bitget’s Compliance Department has now begun exploring local compliance-related applications to provide local services that comply with regulations. The expansion will see the establishment of a regional headquarters locally and the recruitment of 30-60 new team members for middle office and back-office functions.
The latest statistics on the popularity of cryptocurrency show that the Middle East and North Africa are the regions with the fastest growth rate of cryptocurrency, accounting for the total number of global transactions from 2021 to 2022. 9.2% of the amount. From 2020 to 2022, the number of registrations in the United Arab Emirates increased by 400%. In addition, blockchain-related educational projects in the region increased by 300%.
In June, Bitget launched the Turkish trading platform Bitget TR.
4. Coinbase
Coinbase Wallet, Layer 2 Base, Coinbase International Station, etc. are the cornerstones of Coinbase becoming a global encryption ecosystem.
For a long time, Coinbase has adhered to the concept of "deeper and wider", and its main international expansion strategy is accelerating the adoption of cryptocurrency worldwide. have recently secured licenses or expanded in key markets such as Canada, Spain and Bermuda, and have identified Ireland as their EU MiCA entity location.
In December, Coinbase plans to launch spot trading on international sites as part of its global expansion strategy. Separately, Coinbase launched a fund transfer service by sending links on WhatsApp, TikTok and Instagram.
In November Coinbase developed an open source on-chain payment protocol to improve its commerce products. The protocol currently supports the Ethereum, Polygon, and Base blockchain ecosystems. And the protocol provides instant settlement, low fees and extensive asset support to improve the payment experience for merchants and their customers.
Also during the month, Coinbase Financial Markets (CFM) announced that Coinbase Advanced users in the United States can now access regulated cryptocurrency futures contracts. These futures contracts are designed for retail traders and are available in sizes of 1/100 Bitcoin and 1/10 Ethereum. This move provides traders with the ability to hedge risks, diversify portfolios, trade with leverage, and predict market movements.
Coinbase received approval in August to offer federally regulated cryptocurrency futures trading in the United States for qualified customers.
On September 14, according to The Block, Coinbase launched a zero transaction fee event for British customers on Advanced Trade for one month.
On September 12, according to official news, Coinbase announced that its prime brokerage platform Coinbase Prime has launched an institutional-grade Web3 wallet. Institutional and corporate customers can use this non- MPC technology for hosted wallets, storing any token from supported networks.
The crypto market is still in a bear market for most of this year, and many investment institutions are cautious, but there are still large companies and investment banks that have laid out popular tracks. In particular, potential benefits such as Bitcoin spot ETF expectations, BTC halving, and U.S. interest rate cuts next year will make institutions willing to take more action.
1. a16z
In December, a16z released some views of crypto partners on upcoming trends in 2024: the rise of modular technology stacks, the combination of AI and blockchain, the “Play and Earn” model, AI becoming a game maker, NFTs become ubiquitous brand assets and SNARKs go mainstream.
In early November, a16z opened its London office, its first outside the United States.
On October 31, a16z plans to raise approximately $3.4 billion for its next core early and seed stage fund. Fund raising will begin around the end of this year, with a final expected close in the first half of 2024.
In September, a coalition formed by a16z crypto, Bain Capital Crypto, Blockchain Capital, Coinbase, Ledger and Paradigm advocated for digital assets in Texas Develop transparent and consistent regulations.
On August 10, a16z crypto launched two new technologies based on SNARKs, Lasso and Jolt, which provide a more effective method for SNARKs design, which may It will make it faster and easier for developers to understand, and may promote the development of ZK-rollups in Layer 2.
2. DWF Labs
December 22 , DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev wrote that it seems that each L1/L2 should have its own MEME currency, because Meme is the driving factor for on-chain activities, new wallets, attention, and end-user participation.
On December 21, TurtSat, the infrastructure platform on Ordinals, announced a strategic partnership with DWF Labs. Both parties will provide comprehensive support to Ordinals open source projects and ecological builders in the development of Ordinals infrastructure.
On the same day, DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev posted that the institutional-level OTC trading platform DWF Liquid Markets will be launched in January 2024. DWF Liquid Markets is an institutional-level OTC/RFQ (over-the-counter transaction/request for quotation) platform with no counterparty/platform risk and supports instant settlement.
On December 14, DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev posted: "DWF Labs is building 2 more for large ecosystems and layer 1/2 MM (Market Maker) product. Our goal is to win three-quarters of the transactions in the market and provide more funding and venture capital. There are also 3 other secret projects."
On December 4, DWF Labs announced the launch of two validator nodes on the TON blockchain. DWF Labs said it launched these validator nodes.
On November 29, DWF Labs said it would launch the first 2024 Web3 incubation program with DWF Ventures, inviting early founders and startups, including Socialfi, ZK Decentralized applications (Dapps) in areas such as , trading and derivatives, EVM and the infrastructure of the BTC ecosystem.
On October 8, DWF Labs co-founder Andrei Grachev announced on the X platform that DWF Labs has cooperated with the Dubai Commodity Center (DMCC) to become Financial partners for its ecosystem.
3. Animoca Brands
In December, OKX Ventures announced that it had invested in Mocaverse, a Web3 ecosystem project developed by Animoca Brands, to co-build the Mocaverse project on OKX's newly launched zkEVM Layer 2 network "X1".
Animoca Brands made frequent moves in November. First, it announced that it had made a strategic investment in the TON ecosystem and became the largest validator of the TON blockchain, and would provide a funding, research and analysis platform for third-party TON ecosystem mini-applications.
TON Play, a TON-based game infrastructure project, provides the infrastructure and solutions needed to launch new game projects on TON and enables Animoca Brands’ 400 Multiple Web3 project portfolios can be smoothly ported directly to Telegram.
Then the platform said, "It plans to purchase additional EDU tokens from the open market. We believe that EDU and the work of OpenCampus and partners have great potential to inspire The creation of educational content promotes the application of blockchain technology among educators."
At the same time, Animoca Brands, AWS and Polygon Labs announced the joint launch of MoonRealm Express Accelerator . The MoonRealm Express accelerator program will empower global developers to develop in emerging fields such as decentralized identity authentication, SocialFi, and GameFi.
In addition, the sports and entertainment public chain Chiliz announced that Animoca Brands has joined the Chiliz chain as a new verification node to jointly promote Chiliz's SportFi (sports finance) plan .
In October, according to official news, Animoca Brands and Saudi NEOM (the "Neom" new city construction project technology subsidiary led by Saudi Crown Prince Salman Jr. The company NEOM Tech & Digital) has established a strategic partnership.
NEOM also plans to invest $50 million in Animoca Brands. Of this amount, $25 million will be through the issuance of convertible notes and the remaining $25 million will be used to purchase company stock in the secondary market.
In June, Animoca Brands announced a strategic investment partnership with Mitsui & Co., one of Japan's largest trading companies. , aiming to leverage Mitsui & Co.’s extensive network of investment partners and customers from industrial to consumer sectors.
4. HashKey Group
On December 20, HashKey Capital's Singapore subsidiary has obtained a license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), allowing it to provide fund management services in the country.
On December 18, HashQuark announced that in celebration of its fifth anniversary, the brand had been upgraded to HashKey Cloud. As a core member of the HashKey Group, HashKey Cloud aims to provide more upgraded and innovative infrastructure services to global blockchain users.
On December 12, HashKey Exchange announced that it had formally reached strategic cooperation and signed an MOU agreement with Xinhuo Technology Holdings Co., Ltd. The two parties will provide services for secure storage of virtual assets, Custody, OpenLoop clearing and settlement network, virtual asset compliance fund
On December 5, HashKey Exchange announced that it will officially launch a market maker starting from December 28, 2023 Project to reward and motivate users to provide liquidity to the platform.
The program is open to corporate or individual PI users. Applicants need to submit detailed information to HashKey and pass the review. HashKey provides different levels of negative order fee incentives for market makers, with levels determined based on the monthly average weighted depth ranking and the proportion of monthly Maker trading volume.
On November 20, the official account of China Asset Management (Hong Kong) issued a document stating that it had signed a memorandum of cooperation with HashKey Exchange and Hamsa, which would bring value to the Hong Kong market. Come to high quality innovative products.
On November 16, HashKey Exchange was approved by the Securities and Futures Commission to launch Hong Kong’s first licensed trading platform application. Currently, retail investors can only invest in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
HashKey Group Chief Operating Officer Weng Xiaoqi said that next year he will explore key assets such as RWA (real world assets) related assets, and expects the total transaction volume of the platform to reach 3 billion US dollars.
On November 15, HashKey Exchange announced its token listing fee policy: it is expected to be between US$50,000 and US$300,000.
On November 11, according to official update documents, HashKey Exchange’s individual professional investors refer to high-net-worth individuals with a minimum portfolio valuation of HK$8 million. , individual retail investors who apply for upgrade need to upload asset documents, including bank statements, securities statements, and trust certificates issued by the custodian. In addition to accessing fiat currency trading pairs of mainstream cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH, individual professional investors can also trade stablecoins and access all cryptocurrency pairs.
On November 1, HashKey Exchange launched a mobile app for retail investors.
5. Paradigm
This year, Paradigm led the investment in encrypted data platform Shadow, helping it complete a $9 million seed round of financing. And led the investment in data privacy solution Privy, helping it complete an $18 million Series A round of financing. In addition, Blast, a Layer 2 network based on Optimistic Rollup, completed US$20 million in financing, with Paradigm participating in the investment.
On October 28, Paradigm reached a cooperation with SignalPlus.
On September 14, Paradigm partner Matt Huang said that Paradigm will raise a US$1 billion fund by the end of the year or early next year.
On September 12, a coalition established by a16z crypto, Bain Capital Crypto, Blockchain Capital, Coinbase, Ledger and Paradigm advocated for a Develop transparent and unified regulations for digital assets.
At the same time, Paradigm launched what they call a "first-of-its-kind" policy laboratory that will become a "gathering place for academics, policy experts, lawyers and technical experts" ".
Summary
The encryption industry has multiple positive expectations in 2024. Overall, the environment is significantly better than the past two years. In particular, U.S. regulatory agencies have gradually communicated more frequently with encryption companies, allowing both parties to have a better understanding.
Therefore, the leading players in the encryption industry have made corresponding preparations for the new year early. And the above is just the tip of the iceberg. I believe there will be new dark horses in 2024. But in unknown situations, we might as well pay more attention to those known events to help investors make better decisions.
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