Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industry’s most important developments.
Binance’s secret sauce, Bitget gets going
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance claims that it grew its user count by 30% year over year to 170 million.
According to Binance’s 2023 Annual Report published on December 28, its expansion efforts appear to be unaffected by its recent $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over money laundering charges.
The report states that during the year, the company increased its on-ramp features, with 431 tokens listed, 112 fiat currencies supported, and over 970 payment methods available to its clients. The firm also expanded its compliance budget from $158 million in 2022 to $213 million in 2023, a 35% growth.
Despite a surge in client numbers, multiple outlets (including Binance itself) reported the exchange’s spot market share fell from 55% at the start of the year to as low as 30.1% by December (according to CCData).
Its new compliance focused CEO, Richard Teng, has assured users that the exchange “is totally different” than when it focused on a pure growth strategy during its early years. Currently, the exchange is focused on building its infrastructure from the United Arab Emirates as well as France, and operates in 18 global jurisdictions.
The CCData report also shows OKX growing its share from 4% to 8%, and Bybit increasing from 1% to 6%.
Crypto exchange market share Dec 5 chart (CCData)
Meanwhile, crypto exchange Bitget emerged from largely unheard of a couple of years ago to a spot market share of 4% by November 2023 (according to CoinGecko), with higher rankings in the derivatives category. In its 2023 Annual Review, Gracy Chen, managing director of Bitget, said that the exchange now has a combined 20 million users across its subsidiaries, largely due to its $30 million investment into multi-chain wallet BitKeep and its subsequent rebranding to Bitget Wallet. In September, the exchange rolled out a $100 million Web3 fund dedicated to regional exchanges, data analytics firms, and media outlets operating within the…
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