The Midnight Call
“I’ve been on calls until two a.m. every night lately.”
The speaker is a veteran who has spent more than a decade in traditional brokerage. He sets his phone face-down on the coffee table, eyes faintly blood-shot yet voice calm. We sit in a Beijing courtyard house whose red-lacquered doors are starting to peel. Afternoon light cuts through the dust in the air while he shuffles papers on an old wooden desk, juggling regulators, partners, and product road-maps.
He has survived the last financial crisis, launched funds on four continents, and managed teams across time-zones. In the last few years, however, he has pivoted to a sector the old guard once dismissed as fringe: virtual assets.

From Sideshow to Center Stage
Traditional finance’s flirtation with Web3 did not begin in 2025. The trail-blazer was Robinhood.

• 2018: quietly added BTC and ETH trading—no wallets, no seed phrases, just “buy like TSLA.”

• Q4 2024: crypto revenue hit $358 million, +733 % YoY, and accounted for 35 % of total net revenue.

• Q1 2025: another $252 million, still 27 % of the top line.

The catalyst was not a new blockchain but millions of ordinary clicks. Robinhood never preached Web3; it simply let users trade. Crypto stopped being a side dish and became the growth engine.

The Giants Declare Intentions
With Robinhood’s template in hand, the incumbents stopped spectating in 2025. Their message: “Traditional finance will absorb crypto within ten years.” The takeover is already underway.

• March 2025: Charles Schwab (AUM > $10 T) pledges spot-Bitcoin trading within 12 months.

• May 2025: Morgan Stanley will list BTC and ETH on E*Trade for retail clients.

• May 2025: JPMorgan, long a crypto critic, opens Bitcoin purchases to clients.

• July 2025: Standard Chartered launches spot BTC & ETH for institutions in Asia, MENA and Africa.

These institutions control global fiat rails, clearing networks, and onboarding flows. Their combined balance sheets dwarf the $4 T total crypto market cap.

Seizing the Gateway
In TradFi, whoever owns the account relationship owns pricing power, capital flows, and client data. For years, centralized exchanges (CEXs) used listing leverage and fiat ramps to dominate liquidity. Now that gateway role is slipping back to the incumbents.

CEX Anxiety at 5 a.m.
Inside one exchange, a product lead answers Telegrams at dawn: “We’re just trying to survive the squeeze.”
The fight is three-front: rival platforms, shrinking growth, and an external juggernaut that brings licenses, millions of users, and full-service custody.

The Defensive Play: Tokenized Stocks
Almost overnight, every major CEX listed tokenized equities: buy Apple with USDT, 5× Nvidia on-chain, 24/7 Tesla futures.

• Bybit shipped its US-stock tokens in two months via XStocks.

• The pitch: after-hours access and geographic unlocks.

• Reality: volumes are thin. A Solana meme-coin can out-trade an entire tokenized S&P 500 pair in a day.

Not the First Rodeo
FTX tried the same concept in 2020—TSLA/BTC, AAPL/USDT—as an assault on Nasdaq pricing. Today, the same playbook feels like a band-aid, not a battering ram.

Compliance Mirage
Exchanges race for licenses in tiny jurisdictions, hire ex-bankers, and re-brand as “regulated.”

• “A Seychelles permit is not a seat at the table,” shrugs the Beijing veteran.

• A real seat means correspondent-bank accounts, Fedwire access, audit trails, and regulators who treat you as a peer.
  Most platforms remain in the corridor, not the room.

Outliers Who Got the Keys

• Bybit secured an EU MiCA license and opened headquarters in Vienna.

• Bitget holds VASP licenses across multiple continents and is pursuing MiCA next.
  These are exceptions proving the rule: cracking the regulatory shell is brutally hard.

Mid-Game Musings

• In a shaded Beijing courtyard, a Hong Kong broker sips tea with listed-company executives.

• In Vienna, Bybit cuts the ribbon on its new office.

• In a Shanghai call-center, Bitget staff answer questions until sunrise.

All echo the same line: Things are moving fast, but we have to move slowly.

Who Will Deal the Next Hand?
CEXs are no longer the sole narrative engine of crypto. They linger at the edge of a new order, watching larger capital and tighter rules re-stack the deck. New features ship, press releases fly, but the subtext is survival: keep a chair at the table before the reshuffle ends.

Some remain hopeful.

• “Crypto’s impact on TradFi is bigger than TradFi’s squeeze on us,” says Bitget’s Xie Jiayin.

• “Two financial worlds echoing each other—almost romantic,” adds Bybit’s Emily.

Yet everyone privately wonders: Will regulators really let us stay? Will banks truly coexist, or simply replace us? And when the next megatrend arrives, will we still get to name it?

For now, they keep the lights on—patching products, chasing licenses, waiting for the tide that decides who remains in the game.

The Midnight Call
“I’ve been on calls until two a.m. every night lately.”
The speaker is a veteran who has spent more than a decade in traditional brokerage. He sets his phone face-down on the coffee table, eyes faintly blood-shot yet voice calm. We sit in a Beijing courtyard house whose red-lacquered doors are starting to peel. Afternoon light cuts through the dust in the air while he shuffles papers on an old wooden desk, juggling regulators, partners, and product road-maps.
He has survived the last financial crisis, launched funds on four continents, and managed teams across time-zones. In the last few years, however, he has pivoted to a sector the old guard once dismissed as fringe: virtual assets.

From Sideshow to Center Stage
Traditional finance’s flirtation with Web3 did not begin in 2025. The trail-blazer was Robinhood.

• 2018: quietly added BTC and ETH trading—no wallets, no seed phrases, just “buy like TSLA.”

• Q4 2024: crypto revenue hit $358 million, +733 % YoY, and accounted for 35 % of total net revenue.

• Q1 2025: another $252 million, still 27 % of the top line.

The catalyst was not a new blockchain but millions of ordinary clicks. Robinhood never preached Web3; it simply let users trade. Crypto stopped being a side dish and became the growth engine.

The Giants Declare Intentions
With Robinhood’s template in hand, the incumbents stopped spectating in 2025. Their message: “Traditional finance will absorb crypto within ten years.” The takeover is already underway.

• March 2025: Charles Schwab (AUM > $10 T) pledges spot-Bitcoin trading within 12 months.

• May 2025: Morgan Stanley will list BTC and ETH on E*Trade for retail clients.

• May 2025: JPMorgan, long a crypto critic, opens Bitcoin purchases to clients.

• July 2025: Standard Chartered launches spot BTC & ETH for institutions in Asia, MENA and Africa.

These institutions control global fiat rails, clearing networks, and onboarding flows. Their combined balance sheets dwarf the $4 T total crypto market cap.

Seizing the Gateway
In TradFi, whoever owns the account relationship owns pricing power, capital flows, and client data. For years, centralized exchanges (CEXs) used listing leverage and fiat ramps to dominate liquidity. Now that gateway role is slipping back to the incumbents.

CEX Anxiety at 5 a.m.
Inside one exchange, a product lead answers Telegrams at dawn: “We’re just trying to survive the squeeze.”
The fight is three-front: rival platforms, shrinking growth, and an external juggernaut that brings licenses, millions of users, and full-service custody.

The Defensive Play: Tokenized Stocks
Almost overnight, every major CEX listed tokenized equities: buy Apple with USDT, 5× Nvidia on-chain, 24/7 Tesla futures.

• Bybit shipped its US-stock tokens in two months via XStocks.

• The pitch: after-hours access and geographic unlocks.

• Reality: volumes are thin. A Solana meme-coin can out-trade an entire tokenized S&P 500 pair in a day.

Not the First Rodeo
FTX tried the same concept in 2020—TSLA/BTC, AAPL/USDT—as an assault on Nasdaq pricing. Today, the same playbook feels like a band-aid, not a battering ram.

Compliance Mirage
Exchanges race for licenses in tiny jurisdictions, hire ex-bankers, and re-brand as “regulated.”

• “A Seychelles permit is not a seat at the table,” shrugs the Beijing veteran.

• A real seat means correspondent-bank accounts, Fedwire access, audit trails, and regulators who treat you as a peer.
  Most platforms remain in the corridor, not the room.

Outliers Who Got the Keys

• Bybit secured an EU MiCA license and opened headquarters in Vienna.

• Bitget holds VASP licenses across multiple continents and is pursuing MiCA next.
  These are exceptions proving the rule: cracking the regulatory shell is brutally hard.

Mid-Game Musings

• In a shaded Beijing courtyard, a Hong Kong broker sips tea with listed-company executives.

• In Vienna, Bybit cuts the ribbon on its new office.

• In a Shanghai call-center, Bitget staff answer questions until sunrise.

All echo the same line: Things are moving fast, but we have to move slowly.

Who Will Deal the Next Hand?
CEXs are no longer the sole narrative engine of crypto. They linger at the edge of a new order, watching larger capital and tighter rules re-stack the deck. New features ship, press releases fly, but the subtext is survival: keep a chair at the table before the reshuffle ends.

Some remain hopeful.

• “Crypto’s impact on TradFi is bigger than TradFi’s squeeze on us,” says Bitget’s Xie Jiayin.

• “Two financial worlds echoing each other—almost romantic,” adds Bybit’s Emily.

Yet everyone privately wonders: Will regulators really let us stay? Will banks truly coexist, or simply replace us? And when the next megatrend arrives, will we still get to name it?

For now, they keep the lights on—patching products, chasing licenses, waiting for the tide that decides who remains in the game.