From Bear Market Survival to Global Asset Trading
TREE NEWS reports: Eight years after the 2018 crypto winter, five industry participants reflect on a question that resonates across every cycle: what happened to those who cautiously decided to “give it a try” when everyone else was leaving?
The 2018 bear market was a brutal inflection point. ICO mania had collapsed, Bitcoin traded near $3,200, and the exchange landscape was dominated by Binance, Huobi, and OKEx. Yet it was also the year when institutional interest began stirring and DeFi’s bull run was quietly forming. Newer exchanges like Bybit and Bitget entered the scene, betting they could survive until spring returned.
Product Innovation as a Differentiator
For early Bitget seed user Hang, the turning point came when the platform launched copy trading—a product innovation at a time when most exchanges focused almost exclusively on spot and perpetual contracts. “Product innovation attracts users for the first time; service experience convinces them to stay,” he noted, adding that in 2018 exchanges competed on innovation, but by 2026 they compete on user service.
Institutional Standards Reshape Exchange Selection
Jessie, a quantitative strategy researcher with an institutional background, outlined three criteria institutions apply when choosing a CEX: fund safety, standardized and scalable strategies, and capacity to handle large capital volumes. After FTX, Merkle trees and proof-of-reserves shifted from bonus features to baseline requirements. She described Bitget’s responsiveness as “refreshing”—no posturing, no delays, no buck-passing—citing a two-week turnaround on backend API standardization for TradFi products.
The UEX Vision and Tokenized Assets
Xie Jiayin, Bitget’s Chinese-language lead, championed the UEX (Universal Exchange) strategy launched in September 2025, aiming to support crypto, US stocks, gold, ETFs, and forex through a single account. Official data shows rToken cumulative trades reached 1.2 million with AUM exceeding $200 million, while Bitget TradFi contracts surpassed 250 million trades in August with monthly volume consistently above $100 billion. Non-crypto assets now account for up to 40% of platform volume, and 52% of users hold both crypto and US stocks.
Forward-Looking Perspective
The next eight years will test whether exchanges can unify RWA and crypto infrastructure, whether crypto can decouple from Federal Reserve influence, and whether retail opportunities shrink as institutional adoption accelerates. The “Archimedes Plan”—a $300 million institutional support initiative targeting over 50 projects in six months—signals that the battle for the next cycle is already underway. As one participant put it: uncertainty remains the industry’s most compelling feature.
