@ BitMEX and @ BitMartExchange have had problems both before and after, and I see that many people are still gloating, thinking that some exchanges' "thunderstorms" are needed as fuel to drive the next bull market. Well, there are certain characteristics of the bear to bull indicator, but the shuffling logic behind it may be different from what most people think: 1) Under the overall compliance trend, the competition between CEX is far more fierce than imagined, with licenses, proof of reserves KYC/AML/KYT、 Customer asset isolation and other compliance issues have become the entry ticket for the survival of the exchange. This has greatly compressed the "thunderous" space of CEX, and the zero sum game logic of "one whale falling, all things living" in the past has also disappeared. So, rather than calling it a thunderstorm, it's more accurate to say that it's an active shutdown in the face of intense competitive pressure, which is the result of healthy market competition; 2) The competition of CEX in the tokenization track of the US stock market is actually a strategic move of the exchange to actively expand its channel business, which also indicates that the platform operation model that relied mainly on coin listing "fees" and transaction fees in the past will no longer work. Introducing tokenized US stocks, ETFs, Pre IPO assets and other traditional financial asset targets urgently needs to expand new sources of income and growth scenarios. However, the replacement of encrypted native assets by traditional TradFi assets is the marginalization of CEX in pricing and settlement power. In the short term, relying on Perps may seem to maintain trading volume and revenue, but in the long run, the pricing center becomes a "cost" of becoming a channel and entrance. Therefore, the more intense the tokenization of the US stock market, the greater the survival pressure on CEX. You see, those who are not qualified to participate in the war basically cannot survive; 3) At present, CEX, especially small and medium-sized exchanges, must find a differentiated positioning in order to survive. Just like in the previous cycle, small exchanges relied on high-quality on chain assets such as IEO to attract traffic and users. It seems that there is only one way out now: Either deepen the cultivation of specific regional licenses and localized services, seize regulatory arbitrage opportunities, or focus on a specific niche product, such as TradFi assets, Perps, RWAFi, etc., or fully embrace the innovative narrative of encrypted native, including DeFi, Agentic Economy, MEMEs, etc., and use the power of encrypted native communities to survive the cycle. Anyway, continuing to homogenize and internalize will only accelerate the elimination trend, but on the other hand, clearing out some less competitive ones is not a bad thing.