Fake news crypto panic, will Binance gain users as market share falls? Asia Express – Cointelegraph Magazine

East Asia's weekly news roundup reviews the industry's most important developments.

Binance's secret sauce, Bitget goes

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance claims to have grown its user base by 30% year-on-year to 170 million.

According to Binance's 2023 Annual Report published on December 28, its expansion efforts appear to have been unaffected by the recent $4.3 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice on money laundering charges.

According to the report, during the year, the company listed 431 tokens, 112 fiat currencies are supported and more than 970 payment methods are available to their customers. The organization expanded its compliance budget from $158 million in 2022 to $213 million in 2023, a 35 percent increase.

Despite the increase in the number of customers, several exchanges (including Binance) saw the exchange's market share drop from 55 percent to 30.1 percent at the beginning of the year (according to CCData).

New compliance-focused CEO Richard Teng assured users that the exchange is “completely different” than when it focused on a pure growth strategy in its early years. Currently, the exchange is focused on building infrastructure from the United Arab Emirates and France and operates in 18 international territories.

The CCData report shows that OKX grew its share from 4 percent to 8 percent and Bybit increased from 1 percent to 6 percent.

Meanwhile, crypto exchange BitGate has emerged in an unprecedented way a few years ago, achieving a market share of 4% of the space in November 2023 (according to CoinGecko), the highest ranking in the derivatives category. In its 2023 annual review, BitGate Managing Director Gracie Chen said that the exchange currently has a total of 20 million users in its branches, largely due to a $30 million investment in multi-chain wallet BitCap, and subsequently to Bitget Wallet. In September, the exchange launched a $100 million Web3 fund for regional exchanges, data analytics firms and media networks operating in the ecosystem.

On the other hand, OG exchange HTX, formerly Huyo Global, has seen ailing fortunes for most of 2023. According to a CoinGecko report, the exchange's spot market share has dropped to 8 percent compared to a peak of 22 percent in 2020. Although it is still in the top three. In the year In early 2023, a workers' revolt over wages and working conditions was crushed by senior management. Shortly after its rebranding in September, HTX suffered a double-whammy when its ecosystem and related companies' networks were hacked four times in two months. Justin Sun, the owner of HTX Exchange, has promised to reimburse users for all losses.

Screenshots of fake crypto attacks spark fear in China

A fake script that has allegedly been causing a stir in the Web3 community in China has been approved by the police for holding cryptocurrencies.

In an explanation posted by the Fuzhou City Public Security Bureau, the police said that the script circulating was a screenshot of the capture of 38,000 ether (ETH) and thousands of bitcoins held by foreign individuals, captured by the Chinese Web3 protocol. , was untrue.

“After verification, the relevant content was false information,” the Fuzhou Internet Police wrote. “We urge netizens not to tell, believe or spread rumours. Community security agencies will strictly protect internet rumors in accordance with the law and maintain a clean internet environment.”

The initial shock caused by the screenshot was probably triggered by its reference to reality. In the year In July 2023, Chinese cross-chain protocol Multichain was shut down after its CEO Zhajun He was arrested by the police. At that time, digital assets worth more than $1 billion from both Chinese and foreign users were protected by the protocol and remained irretrievable. For the past year, most of the Chinese police have been cracking down on prominent Web3 executives in the country and confiscating protocol assets.

Victory Securities first trade in monthly crypto revenue exceeds $10M

Hong Kong brokerage Victory Securities surpassed $10 million in monthly trading revenue in Q4 2023 after acquiring the Virtual Asset Licensing System (VASP) from the Securities and Futures Commission. On December 30, Victory Insurance CEO Kenix Chan told local news. In addition to the earnings phase, several of the company's crypto divisions were “already profitable” outlets, with only Ethereum and Bitcoin currently available for trading on licensed Hong Kong exchanges, with 80% of trading volume at Victory Securities originating from Bitcoin.

Last June, Hong Kong launched a mandatory VASP licensing system for all exchanges in the region, with OSL, Hashkey, Victory Securities and Interactive Brokers among the first entities to receive regulatory approval. At the same time as regulatory efforts, Hong Kong has seen a series of financial scandals surrounding unauthorized exchanges such as JPEX and Hounax. However, city officials say the VASP licensing system will continue unimpeded despite any bad actors.

Singapore's Matrixport has been under pressure in the Bitcoin crash.

On January 3, Bitcoin's price fell more than 10% to $40,800 before recovering most of its losses. The price action was linked to a report by Matricport analysts that the US Securities and Exchange Commission would not approve the Bitcoin ETF position in January. Matrixport analyst Marcus Thielen wrote:

“The current leadership of the five-person voting commissioners is dominated by Democrats, which is crucial to the approval of the SEEEF. SEC Chairman Gensler doesn't approve of crypto in the US, and expecting him to vote to approve Bitcoin Spot ETFs might be a long shot.

In response to the social media firestorm, Jihan Wu, founder of Matrixport and Bitcoin mining company BitDeer, said the company “does not accept insider information from US regulators.”

“Matrixport analysts base their reports on publicly available data. It is unrealistic to believe that Matrixport's report could cause a trillion dollar market crash. If someone has a flash crash related to our report, I suggest we take a closer look at the analysts' expertise.

Wu also said that the distribution of the report “is not planned by Matrixport and is beyond our control.” Founded in Singapore in 2019, Matrixport publishes digital asset investment research for its clients. The firm is closely related to NASDAQ-listed Bitdeer, which provides cloud hash rate services to Bitcoin miners. Before creating Matrixport and Bitdeer, Wu founded Bitcoin application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) manufacturer Bitmain in 2013.

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Zhiyuan Sun

Zhyuan Sun is a reporter at Cointelegraph, focusing on technology-related news. He has several years of experience writing for major financial media outlets such as The Motley Fool, Nasdaq.com and Seeking Alpha.