Traffic is still important, but it is no longer enough.

When exchanges enter the era of existing stock, true competition has just begun

In the past few years, cryptocurrency exchanges have tried almost every possible growth method: introducing new assets, activity subsidies, derivatives, structured play. However, as the market undergoes several cycles, a reality is gradually emerging: existing users are being divided up by leading platforms, homogenized competition is rapidly squeezing marginal profits, and trust costs are rising.

More importantly, what can truly lift the market scale is not the frequent trading of existing users, but rather larger and more long-term changes in capital structure.

Coinhako Group CEO Yusho Liu mentioned during an internal review of 2025: The industry is entering a new phase, where growth no longer comes from emotions and volatility, but from trust, rules, and long-term allocation needs. This is also why more and more exchanges are beginning to reassess the issue of “moat”.

Traditional capital is not unwilling to enter the market, but lacks a "trust interface"

Regulation is becoming the key channel connecting the two worlds.

The growth of the crypto market comes partly from new users and partly from changes in capital structure. What can truly raise the market cap is often the latter: as more professional investors and institutional funds are willing to participate, trading volume, product complexity, and capital demand will all rise simultaneously.

A question that has been repeatedly discussed yet often oversimplified is: why has traditional capital not entered the crypto market on a large scale?

The answer is often not complicated. When traditional capital enters the crypto market, the first concerns are not yield but three things:

● Is the regulatory framework clear?

● Is asset safety verifiable?

● Are platform governance and risk control sustainable?

Without these "trust interfaces," exchanges can easily fall into a cycle: the more they rely on short-term traffic, the harder it is to establish long-term trust; the less trustworthiness they have, the harder it is to attract more long-term capital structures.

This is also why in the past two years, "compliance" has become not just a cost item for exchanges, but increasingly akin to a structural advantage: it determines whether the platform can legally connect to the banking system, whether it can accommodate larger capital, and whether it can transform risk from "uncontrollable black boxes" into "verifiable processes."

If trust cannot be established through regulations and systems, there will always be an invisible threshold between the two worlds.

Is compliance seen as a cost or a long-term asset?

Coinhako has chosen a slower and more difficult path

During the rapid expansion phase of the crypto industry, compliance is often viewed as a cost of growth. However, some exchanges choose to treat it as a fundamental capability, integrating it into long-term planning from the start.

Unlike those that rely on short-term expansion, Coinhako has insisted on operating within the Singapore regulatory framework since its establishment, viewing compliance and safety as part of the platform's infrastructure, rather than a temporary strategy. This means that in key areas such as product design, capital circulation, and user onboarding, higher compliance requirements must be met.

On the regulatory level, Coinhako holds a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), allowing it to conduct Digital Payment Token Services and Cross-border Money Transfer Services within the regulatory framework, serving local and regional users under compliance conditions. As regulations tighten and industry barriers continue to rise, this compliance background also becomes a crucial prerequisite for expanding its institutional business and cross-border funding services.

Compliance is not only reflected at the licensing level. In 2025, Coinhako continued to deepen cooperation with Singapore's regulatory agencies, helping to intercept hundreds of fraud cases and strengthen asset protection mechanisms for users. The significance is that: the safety of users' funds is no longer just internal risk control of the platform, but is incorporated into the risk prevention framework at the societal level.

This long-term investment has also received continuous external recognition:

• Won the Singapore "Outstanding Community Contribution Award for Anti-Fraud" for the 4th consecutive year
• Received the "Outstanding Partner Award" at the SaferSG National Security Summit in 2025
• Nominated for "Compliance Team of the Year" by Asian Legal Business for 2 consecutive years

Coinhako's compliance head, Glen Chee, has also been named "Compliance Officer of the Year" for two consecutive years and selected as one of the "Top 15 Compliance Officers in Asia-Pacific" by ALB. The role of compliance in the exchange is not about "slamming the brakes," but about providing a long-term scalable growth path for the business.

As the market matures, what do institutions want?

As the industry gradually matures, the demands of professional investors are also changing: structured returns, risk management, and long-term allocation are replacing simple short-term speculation.

In 2025, Coinhako's institutional business saw a noticeable acceleration:

• Structured product trading volume increased by over 450% year-on-year
• Options trading volume surpassed $1 billion
• The institutional revenue platform Coinhako Earn reached a cumulative committed asset size of over $200 million

This change reflects the upgrade of the exchange's role: from a single trading entry point to gradually evolving into a provider of digital asset solutions for professional investors.

Beyond trading, what is truly hard to replicate is "infrastructure"

Clearing, liquidity, and cross-border financial capabilities are becoming the demarcation line for exchanges.

If trading matching is the "front desk" of crypto finance, then clearing, settlement, and liquidity capabilities constitute the more foundational "back-end system." This is also the part that is most easily overlooked yet hardest to replicate.

The formation of such capabilities often relies on long-term investment and stable organizational collaboration. Around core modules such as clearing, settlement, risk control, and capital safety, Coinhako has teams in Singapore and Vietnam, with an overall staff size exceeding one hundred, adopting a regional collaborative operational model. Team members mainly come from world-renowned technology companies and the financial securities industry, responsible for building and maintaining related foundational systems.

In the past two years, the Coinhako platform has supported over $10 billion in cryptocurrency settlement, providing compliant, efficient, and reliable transfer support to the growing institutional client base in the Asia-Pacific region. Meanwhile, Coinhako continues to serve as a crypto-native liquidity provider across several major markets and platforms, including TP ICAP Fusion.

When exchanges begin to take on more fundamental market functions, rather than just matchmaking trades, competition logic will also shift from "function and fee comparisons" to differences in "system capabilities and depth of infrastructure."

The next phase for exchanges is not just trading

How to transition from crypto platforms to building financial infrastructure is becoming a pressing issue that exchanges must face.

Looking ahead to 2026, Coinhako will continue to invest around three long-term strategies:

• Deepen local regulatory cooperation and continuously enhance anti-fraud and user asset safety mechanisms
• Serve more institutional investors and provide more mature trading and revenue solutions
• Bridge more on-chain and off-chain scenarios, building cross-border crypto financial infrastructure

The next growth stage for digital assets is not limited to trading and revenue but depends on whether they can truly integrate into the payment, settlement, and cross-border capital flow systems of the real world.

The exchange's moat is returning to "trust" itself

As the industry enters the stage of existing stock competition, what is truly scarce may no longer be faster growth means, but lower trust costs.

Coinhako's path may not be suitable for all exchanges, but it provides a clear judgment sample: As the market moves towards institutionalization, compliance, safety, and infrastructure are redefining the exchange's moat.

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