Unknowingly, #OKX has accompanied me for 8 and a half years, 3134 days and nights. It has been a long journey, witnessing so much along the way, which is not easy at all!

Today, I just finished reading OKX's 2025 annual summary. What I saw was not just a beautiful report card of the exchange, but rather a real echo of Hayek's theory of "financial freedom" in the digital age.

This Nobel laureate once warned in "The Road to Serfdom": when economic freedom is deprived, political freedom will also vanish; and in "The Denationalization of Money," he boldly proposed that currency should not be monopolized by anyone but should be thrown into the market to compete, with the most useful winning.

Looking at what OKX has done this year, it is precisely the most hardcore response to Hayek's economic liberalism.

1️⃣ Stability is Freedom: A "Anti-Fragile" System Across Cycles

Hayek believed that the reason free markets are superior to central planning lies in their decentralized decision-making, spontaneous order, and utilization of local knowledge.

The market in 2025 has indeed been thrilling. Several extreme market conditions led to contract settlements colliding with a series of liquidations, causing many platforms to directly "pull the plug" and crash. This is a typical case of "centralized fragility." However, during the two most intense market waves in August and October, OKX not only withstood the pressure but also set a new record of 1.72 million transactions per second on October 11. This is not luck; it is a technical realization of Hayek's ideas.

Looking back at history, the reason the 1907 "Trust Company Crisis" caused nationwide panic was due to the lack of a settlement system that could maintain liquidity and trust under pressure. The Federal Reserve, established later, aimed to stabilize but also initiated a comprehensive monopoly of the state over currency. In contrast, OKX, without the backing of a "central bank," relied solely on self-developed technology and a decentralized architecture to support a system that can maintain order on its own. This is probably the technical realization of Hayek's dream of "spontaneous order being superior to coercive control."

2️⃣ Transparency is True Trust: Opening the Books for You to See

Hayek said, "If people are allowed to freely choose their currency, bad money will naturally be eliminated." But there is a major premise: information must be transparent.

Traditional banks operate on "fractional reserves," where the status of your money is entirely at the bank's discretion. The downfall of Lehman Brothers and Silicon Valley Bank stemmed from this; trust was built on a black box.

OKX took a completely opposite approach: maintaining a reserve ratio of over 100% for core assets like BTC, ETH, and USDT throughout the year, and directly opening the books for everyone to check through the Merkle Tree mechanism, even inviting third parties for audits. This is not just compliance; it returns to the most classical business principle. Just like in the 19th century "Free Banking Era," those who cannot produce real gold and silver for redemption must exit immediately. OKX's Proof of Reserves (PoR) is the "gold redemption promise" of the digital age, no longer relying on legal enforcement but reconstructing trust through cryptography.

3️⃣ Self-Custody is Sovereignty: The Ultimate Form of Financial Freedom

In "The Road to Serfdom," there is a harsh statement: "When the state controls economic resources, it controls people's destinies."

In the crypto world, we have a saying: "Not your keys, not your coins." In traditional finance, money is nominally yours, but in reality, it is managed by institutions. Once a crisis occurs, you become a powerless creditor.

The Passkey self-custody wallet launched by OKX truly returns control of private keys to users, which is the highest respect for "individual sovereignty." This reminds me of the Amsterdam Bank in the 17th century, which earned trust for a century because it promised users could withdraw their gold and silver at any time, being one of the world's earliest 100% reserve banks. Today, OKX has digitized this concept: you can choose platform custody or take the keys yourself. True freedom is not just a slogan but a series of real "options."

4️⃣ Open but Not Isolated: A Free Network Coexisting with the Global System

Hayek opposed closed utopias. In his view, a free market must be open, competitive, and correctable.

OKX did not isolate itself in a small circle of crypto punks but actively engaged in dialogue with regulators, cooperating with Chainalysis to catch fraud and assist law enforcement. This is not called compromise; it is called building "inclusive freedom." Just as the gold standard succeeded because the world played by a common set of rules.

The CEO of Chainalysis publicly praised OKX in the U.S. Senate, which indicates one thing: true financial freedom is not chaotic anarchy but maximizing the choices of good people under clear rules where bad actors can be held accountable. As Hayek said, "Freedom does not mean no rules; rather, the rules should serve freedom."

In summary, freedom is not an endpoint but a continuous construction. Hayek once lamented, "Freedom will not be maintained automatically; it must be constantly defended."

Everything #OKX has done in 2025, whether it is striving for system stability, insisting on asset transparency, or promoting self-custody and compliance, is not to show off technology but to make "financial freedom" a reality that ordinary people can reach.

In the lessons learned from FTX, global users finally understand: freedom built on lies can be easily shattered. OKX has proven a Hayekian truth with the choices of 120 million users, over 30 billion dollars in real reserves, and zero downtime during extreme market conditions: true financial freedom only arises at the intersection of "reliable, transparent, and sovereignty in the hands of the people."

This is not only a victory for OKX but also a beautiful realization of free market logic in the digital age. On the road to financial freedom, the OKX team has no time to shout slogans; instead, they have quietly paved the "road to non-serfdom" with lines of code, repeated audits, and resilience under pressure. Let me deeply respect this 🫡 @star_okx

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