Opinion: Binance Ends Wealth Effect of Trading Platforms, Trump Initiates a New Wave of Wealth Creation

Original Title: "Binance Ends Wealth Effect of Exchanges, Trump Initiates a New Wave of Wealth Creation"
Source: Zuoye web3

Diverse Asset Classes ≠ Strong Wealth Effect

In 2021, CZ confidently stated, "Centralized trading platforms are merely a transitional phase to on-chain DeFi."

By 2026, in his year of reckoning, CZ gambled his entire reputation in an attempt to violently kickstart a second spring for Meme trading.

Moral criticism pales in comparison to a $73.7 billion fortune, but the P2P transfer system envisioned by Satoshi Nakamoto has inevitably become the grand backdrop for PVP.

If we trace the history of trading platforms, 2026 marks the year with the worst liquidity and reputation. BitMEX, the inventor of Perp, failed to sell itself and ultimately shut down, AB Finance perished before it could even begin, and OKX, immersed in compliance, gradually faded away, not to mention a founder more concerned about competitors than himself.

Binance, the universe's trading giant, sees U.S. stocks as a lifeline, but its primary task is to surpass Hyperliquid's second-order TradeXYZ.

Universal brokerage or on-chain gambling is no longer an ideological battle; it will directly determine whether a business can continue to survive.

No one knows whether a crypto world without CEX will rely on on-chain disruption of traditional finance or, like Men Tou Gou and FTX, take away all confidence.

But at least now is the time to seriously consider writing a phase summary for trading platforms; the choice of inflection point will derive specific wealth opportunities from the grand narrative.

In a Dilemma, Will Robinhood Save Liquidity?

"Coinbase's Alibaba Transformation: Major Acquisitions Fail to Open a Second Growth Curve"

The story of universal brokerage, which began in 2025, encountered Perp DEX/PM/Stock/Pre-IPO in 2026, with U.S., Korean, and even A-shares all swallowed by CEX.

However, the rich variety of SKU has never been able to create a profit effect. Foreign monk Sam and local fat Donglai both prove that review standards can create trust, and thus earn excess profits on that basis.

In this regard, Coinbase and Robinhood serve as contrasting examples.

Coinbase has made every effort to save itself, whether through the Base chain's push for "Web 3 Meme social" or the acquisition of options product lines like Deribit and Opyn.

But no matter how loud the slogan of Everything Exchange is, the reality is equally harsh.

Image Caption: Buying Power Cannot Be Acquired
Image Source: @zuoyeweb3

If we calmly analyze Coinbase's financial data, I remain in awe of the institutional DeFi that emphasizes lending protocols. The money from banks and pensions amounts to hundreds of trillions of dollars, but how much liquidity can it bring? Please take a look at Coinbase.

As for letting institutions bet against prediction markets or participate in Stock Perp point competitions, it is closer to a moment of fantasy.

Everyone needs to be clear: referencing the revival of the Wall Street alliance chain Canton, Robinhood's Meme, NFT, DeFi, and even introducing dYdX to create new Perp DEX products like Arcus, it is evident that the crypto circle's gameplay is the only way to survive.

Catering to others is never as good as sticking to oneself.

Western CB and RH are gradually showing signs of rivalry, marking a significant change not seen since Binance reached the top in 2017.

However, this does not rest on the iterative upgrade of U.S. products but on the growth fatigue of offshore exchanges like Binance.

There is no need to use data to prove Binance's predicament; it is enough to know that the standards for Binance VIP have been lowered repeatedly, and Binance's BTC trading volume has stalled multiple times.

Of course, there are surprises; the options business, long monopolized by Deribit, is seeing new changes.

Bitget is attempting to develop business lines like FCN fixed interest notes, which is essentially a dual-currency win transformation. Similarly, Bybit's options product line is also surging, and Deribit is even being dragged down by Coinbase, with its overall share decreasing.

But this is not a good story of the East rising and the West falling. Complex derivatives like options, compared to the simple and understandable Perp, have maintained a share below 5% for years. We need to consider whether the simplification of complex financial products can support the next phase of trading platforms?

This is not a proposition that can be decided immediately, but it is likely a rational choice for second-tier exchanges in the post-crypto era.

The so-called universal brokerage business is what Binance needs to consider. Most second and third-tier exchanges need to rely on the richness of SKU to find viable regional markets and barely earn a transaction fee.

If Alpaca behind bStock is already considered a mini partner, then the channel Atomic Vaults behind Bitget Stock+ may have fewer than 10 people. Welcome to the real business society.

Separation Leads to Reunion, What Are the Gains and Losses of Identity Exchange?

"Dual-Currency Win and Perpetual Contracts Prove That Yield Products and Trading Products Can Be Interchanged"

Currently, CEX is undergoing a round of soul exchange:

· DeFi and CEX, TGE business has cooled, on-chain DeFi needs to go through CEX to distribute real business, such as R25 distributing Phraos tokens through Binance, backed by Southeast Asian consumer loans;

· CEX and TradeFi, RWA Perp/Stock Perp are just the most dazzling representatives. TradFi on-chain is already in progress, but CEX has little business increment facing them.

This is different from CZ's belief in 2021 that Binance would eventually become a DEX. The current DeFi financial stack is no longer something that can be summarized by a few forms like DEX Lending.

Image Caption: Covering the Disappearance of Wealth Effect
Image Source: @zuoyeweb3

For trading platforms, Coinbase proves that retail trading is indispensable, while Binance proves that new assets do not require old platforms.

The incremental growth of CEX is mainly concentrated in a few businesses like stocks, but beyond KOL tweets and paid reports, the overall trading volume of trading platforms has nearly halved. In a declining market, it is impossible to compensate for collective blood loss.

Even Bitget Wallet's million BD marketing is essentially a transmission of coldness; departments that pull in users need to prove their profitability, much like how stacking chips supports the revenue of Macau VIP rooms.

Here, I do not analyze the inevitable failure of trading platforms regarding Pre-IPO and Stock Perp; the battle for pricing power of unlisted assets: the pricing power of Pre-IPO has been introduced in the PB business of trading platforms.

The reason boils down to one sentence: trading platforms do not have pricing power over new assets like stocks.

However, it does not mean that the crypto circle will completely lose pricing possibilities. We are filled with the logic of trading platforms, often afraid to imagine other possibilities.

But precisely because Changxin, which does memory, was preemptively priced by TradeXYZ, and Yushu Technology, which makes robots, can it once again be traded at a reasonable price worldwide? We can just observe.

Thus, the problem is no longer complicated. How to regain the asset pricing power "stolen" by Wall Street becomes the crux of all games; Pre-IPO is merely the opening segment of a major exam.

This is not to say that Pre-IPO and Stock Perp are unimportant, but please note that the underwriting, new issuance, trading, and PB services of IPO are still fully controlled by the traditional financial system. Occasional on-chain occurrences are merely a left hand to the right hand.

Do not say that trading platforms, public chains, and stablecoins have not gained any benefits. After Robinhood Chain completes its cold start relying on Meme, it will still move towards real financial business.

However, trading platforms cannot do this. What trading platforms truly provide is the "wealth effect," or more bluntly, the multiples of explosive growth. Only under this premise can Perp/Dogecoin and PumpFun find common ground.

But as the TGE system recedes, trading platforms have no capacity to forcefully pump prices and can only passively share the leftovers after Wall Street's arrangements.

It must be that something unique to the crypto circle was sold to the mass market, rather than selling something from the mass market to the crypto circle. The crypto market is too small to support such consumption, leading to an inability to innovate and then sell back to the mass market.

Separation Leads to Reunion, Stealing the Traditional Trading System

"24-Hour Trading Drags Trading Platforms into a More Familiar Battlefield"

The previous discussion focused on the dilemma of trading platforms, mainly betting on the dead end of institutional DeFi. Here, I would like to add that CB's assertion that institutional DeFi is reasonable is a story that Wall Street can understand.

Coupled with the U.S.'s natural control over public opinion, it naturally evolves into an industry consensus. We have survived in this environment for many years, and it is not complicated for everyone to understand.

One-dimensional people cannot imagine a story without trading platforms. Without Wall Street, we wouldn't even have the imagination.

If we break free from all this, how to envision a survival path under a non-American consensus would feel difficult to grasp. Let's start with the most fundamental liquidity.

Image Caption: Trading Platforms Are Still Making Money
Image Source: @LorenzoARK

To correct a misconception, the difficulties faced by trading platforms are not due to not making money, but rather continuing to maintain a lack of exorbitant profits. In the overall profit-sharing pattern of the industry, trading platforms are still more profitable than DeFi and stablecoins combined.

It can even be further deduced that the institutionalization of American finance is a predetermined route, and crypto is merely following the pace of U.S. stocks, which is not surprising.

In the exchange between CEX and TradFi, Nasdaq plans to introduce night trading and has thoughtfully designed it for daytime hours in Asia, meeting the needs of Asian investors with 5X23 hours. The new cold war is a technology (stock) war, and the competition for each other's or international liquidity will give birth to many new opportunities.

Thus, Binance has taken on Changxin's contracts, but the demand from Asian investors has never been about leveraging. A-shares do not allow short selling, which has never led to a boom or bust.

Therefore, the superficial stealing is the reverse domestication of trading platforms by Wall Street, selling Pre-IPO and super brokerage to American institutions, but the real stealing lies in how to arbitrage globally in a regulated financial market.

Conclusion

Trading platforms are gradually retreating to the second tier, playing the role of matchmaking and recording, ultimately becoming the launch pad for various Pre-IPO and Stock Perp, forming a new financial stack with the stock market and DeFi.

The historical mission of trading platforms does not end with OKX's compliance, nor with Bitget's delayed C2C, but lies in CZ's market manipulation behavior, still relying on Memes. Trading platforms have become powerless to create new asset issuance paradigms.

An era has come to an end. What we see now is merely the dying struggle of a sunken ship. Looking forward, do not look back; seek new asset issuance methods.

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