Author: JuCoin

Introduction

On March 7, 2025, U.S. President Trump signed an executive order to list Bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset. Behind this decision is Bitcoin’s 16-year transformation from geek toys to a trillion-dollar market capitalization asset, and the evolutionary history of centralized exchanges (CEXs) from the grass-roots era to compliance giants. This article will take the development history of Bitcoin as the main line, deeply analyze its path to evolve into strategic reserve assets, and explore the key role played by centralized exchanges in this process.

1. The birth of Bitcoin and the wild growth of early exchanges (2008-2013)

1. Satoshi Nakamoto's subversive experiment

At the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008, a mysterious figure named "Satoshi Nakamoto" released the "Bitcoin White Paper", proposing an electronic cash system that does not rely on centralized institutions. On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin Genesis block was born, with the front page title of The Times embedded in the block, "The Chancellor of the Exchequer is on the verge of the second round of rescue of the banking industry", pointing to the drawbacks of the traditional financial system.

Key data:

Bitcoin price in 2009: USD 0 (no market)

First transaction in 2010: 10,000 BTC exchanged for 2 pizza (valued at approximately USD 41)

June 2011 peak: USD 31.9 (early speculative bubble)

2. Rise and hidden dangers of centralized exchanges

In July 2010, the Japanese Mt. Gox exchange was launched, quickly becoming the world's largest Bitcoin trading platform. By 2013, it accounted for 70%-80% of the total transaction volume on the Internet, with the highest daily transaction volume of approximately US$1000 (estimated at the November peak of US$1,000 /BTC).与此同时， 交易所市场开始萌芽——2013 年成立的 JuCoin 凭借本地化运营崭露头角，至 2015 年成为 主要交易平台之一。

然而，安全隐患已Clues are available:

Hacking incident in June 2011: The hacking attack in June 2011 caused about 2,609 BTC to be stolen (valued at about US$80,000 at the time), and the price fell to US$0.01 at one time, and trading was suspended for one week.

DDoS attack in 2013: The exchange was down multiple times, and users were unable to withdraw cash, causing market panic.

Exchange pattern (2013):

Mt. Gox market share: 70%-80%

Other major platforms: Bitstamp (Europe), BTC China ( ), JuCoin ( )

Average daily trading volume on global exchanges: approximately 100,000 BTC (about US$50 million at an average price of US$500)

3. Implications of early markets

3. style="text-align: left;">Centralized exchanges solve the problem of Bitcoin liquidity, but their vulnerability is fully exposed: technical defects, regulatory vacuum, and user asset custody risks have become the three major pain points in the industry. Despite this, Bitcoin’s market value exceeded $10 billion in November 2013, indicating that its financial attributes began to emerge.

2. Industry pain period: Exchange crisis and regulatory awakening (2014-2017)

1. Mt. Gox collapse: the collapse of centralized trust

In February 2014, Mt. Gox announced the loss of 850,000 Bitcoins (valued at the time of US$450 million), accounting for 7% of the circulation at that time. The post-investigation showed that the main reasons were chaotic management of hot and cold wallets, internal personnel surveillance and code vulnerabilities that have not been fixed for a long time. This event caused Bitcoin price to plummet by 80%, and daily trading volume on global exchanges shrank to less than 10,000 BTC.

Range reaction:

Japanese police arrested Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès

New York State, USA, launched BitLicense, requiring exchanges to meet the requirements of anti-money laundering (AML), capital reserves, etc.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) concepts emerged, but were limited by technical bottlenecks (such as the DAO incident in 2016)

2. The wave of compliance and institutional testing

In 2015, Coinbase won the first BitLicense in New York State and launched institutional custody services; in 2017, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) launched Bitcoin futures, with the first-day trading volume reaching 4.6 100 million US dollars. During this period, the exchange showed two major trends:

Georological differentiation: The three major exchanges (Huobi, OKEx, and Binance) occupied the Asian market. In 2015, JuCoin rose rapidly and became one of the major platforms in Asia, with significant daily trading volume.

Technical upgrade: Binance pioneered the "Platform Coin" model (BNB), and raised US$15 million through ICO in July 2017; JuCoin launched financial services and liquidity mining at the same time, exploring ecological competition.

Key data (2017):

Summary Bitcoin market value: US$326 billion

Average daily trading volume on global exchanges: 500,000 BTC (at about US$25 billion at the time)

Coinbase user count exceeded 10 million, with a valuation of US$1.6 billion

3. Fork tide and the authority of exchanges

In August 2017, Bitcoin split out Bitcoin Cash (BCH) due to controversy in expansion, and the exchange became the core battlefield for fork coin pricing: Binance, Huobi and other platforms were the first to launch BCH trading, with a single-day increase of more than 200%.

3. Breakthrough of mainstreaming: Exchange compliance and financial innovation (2018-2021)

1. Exchange security battle

From 2018-2020, hacker attacks caused exchange losses of more than US$3 billion, forcing the industry to upgrade risk control: 7,000 BTC stolen in 2019: Starting SAFU funds (10% transaction fee income as insurance pool)

Coinbase listed on Nasdaq: Coinbase disclosed its holdings of a large amount of BTC after its listing, and its specific scale has not been disclosed, with a valuation of US$85 billion.

JuCoin Response Strategy: Introducing multi-signature cold wallets, real-time on-chain asset audits.

custody market structure (2021):

Professional custodian: Coinbase Custody (asset size of US$50 billion), Grayscale Trust (US$40 billion)

Exchange self-custodial: Binance Cold Wallet has reserved over hundreds of thousands of BTC, JuCoin has deployed Web3 hardware (such as JuOne mobile phones) to strengthen asset security

2. Derivative market explosion and institutional entry

2020 In 2019, CME Bitcoin futures open contracts exceeded US$4 billion, and MicroStrategy, Tesla and other companies announced that they would include Bitcoin in their balance sheet. The exchange launched innovative products:

Binance Contract: up to 125 times leverage, with a peak daily trading volume of US$37 billion

JuCoin Contract Service: Launching 0 slippage and 0 pin insurance mechanisms, free KYC design to attract global users

Market Value and Trading Volume (November 2021):

比特币市值：1.3 万亿美元（超越 Meta、腾讯）

全球交易所日均交易量：800 亿美元（现货）+ 2000 亿美元（衍生品）

3. Regulatory heavy blows and industry clearance

In 2021, cryptocurrency trading is completely banned, Huobi and OKEx withdraw from the mainland market; the US SEC sued Ripple, deeming XRP as a securities. Compliant exchanges accelerate their layout:

Binance sets up regional headquarters (Dubai, Paris): abandons anonymous coins and removes leveraged tokens

JuCoin Transformation: After being acquired in 2024, it upgrades to "the world's first service exchange", focusing on the Web3+AI track, launching a $100 million industry innovation fund

4. Strategic reserve assets: The collision between Bitcoin and the financial system (2022-2024)

1. Trump's logic and challenges

Trump promotes Bitcoin to become the strategic reserve of the United States, mainly based on the following factors:

Hedging the dollar credit crisis: US Treasury bonds exceed $35 trillion, and the 21 million Bitcoin cap has anti-inflation attributes.

争夺数字霸权： 央行数字货币（DC/EP）已在跨境结算试水，比特币可成为美元体系的补充。

选民年轻化策略：18-35 岁美国人中，25% 持有加密货币（皮尤研究中心数据）。

Implementation Challenges: Legal Obstacles: Whether Bitcoin is "property" is not yet unified.

Market volatility: Bitcoin’s annualized volatility exceeds 60%, far exceeding gold (15%).

Housing security: Reserves require a trillion-dollar custody solution, and existing exchange technology is difficult to bear the burden.

2. Reconstruction of roles of exchanges

As Bitcoin enters the reserve system, centralized exchanges will be divided into:

Complied custodians: Coinbase, Kraken passes bank-level security certification (such as SOC 2), providing on-chain audit services.

Liquidity market makers: Binance, JuCoin undertakes central bank buying and selling orders and uses high-frequency trading to smooth price fluctuations.

Derivative hedging platform: Bitcoin options and ETFs launched by CME help the Ministry of Finance manage reserve risks.

Potential market size:

If the United States adds 1% foreign exchange reserves (about US$40 billion), 400,000 BTC (accounting for 3% of the circulation) must be purchased through the exchange.

Exchange commission income may increase by US$2 billion annually (calculated at a 0.5% rate).

5. Exchange security evolution: from the Bybit incident to the upgrade of industry standards

1. Bybit incident and industry reflection

On February 21, 2025, Bybit encountered the largest cryptocurrency theft case in history, and the Ethereum multi-signature cold wallet worth about US$1.5 billion was stolen due to complex front-end interface manipulation attacks.

JuCoin's response:

Introduce the "Asset Proof" system to update the on-chain reserve data at high frequency.

Upgrade the separation mechanism of hot and cold wallets, and 95% of user assets are stored in multi-signature cold wallets.

2. Trend of Standardization of Security Systems

Technical Progress: Zero Knowledge Proof (ZKP) Improve the transparency of reserve proof: Major exchanges are actively adopting ZKP technology to provide reserve proof in a more transparent and user privacy way. Exchanges such as Binance and Kraken are developing ZKP-based PoR systems.

AI-driven real-time security monitoring: Artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies are becoming increasingly widespreadApplied to exchanges to conduct real-time abnormal transaction detection and threat prevention.

Regulatory strength is strengthened: EU MiCA regulations come into effect, and EU MiCA regulations require crypto asset service providers (including exchanges) to disclose details of asset custody and security measures.

U.S. regulators are increasing their attention: U.S. regulators are significantly strengthening their scrutiny on the security of cryptocurrency exchanges and actively exploring the formulation of a more complete regulatory framework.

Industry active collaboration: Major exchanges in the industry, such as JuCoin and security companies, are actively collaborating to share threat intelligence and security best practices, and jointly promote the development of open source security programs in the cryptocurrency space.

6. Reflection and Outlook: Paradox and Evolution of Centralized Exchanges

1. Positive Significance of Bankruptcy Incident

Although previous exchange crises have caused short-term pain, they have promoted the industry to develop in a healthier direction:

Mt. Gox (2014) → Growing multi-signature wallets and cold storage standards

FTX (2022) → Promoting 100% reserve proof and on-chain assets transparency

Bybit (2025)→The exchange accelerates the upgrade of security protocols, such as the adoption of stricter multi-factor verification, end-to-end transaction verification, and isolated signature infrastructure. Third-party services (such as Safe{Wallet}) are facing stricter audits, and supply chain security is the focus.

2. Core propositions in the next decade

Technical integration: Exchanges integrate DEX liquidity (such as JuCoin plans to launch cross-chain DEX), balancing efficiency and decentralization.

Regulatory collaboration: FATF's "Travel Rules" are implemented, and exchanges such as JuCoin adapt to local compliance requirements through the "Global Hub Program".

Eco-extension: Hardware portals (such as JuOne mobile phones) and social functions (JuCoin Social) reshape user interaction scenarios.

3. The strategic value of Bitcoin is redefined

Become a reserve, Bitcoin has proved its resilience as a "digital gold":

Anti-censorship payment: In the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Bitcoin has become a cross-border donation channel, with the number of transfers on the chain exceeding 100,000 in a single day.

Asset allocation tools: Global sovereign funds and pension funds hold Bitcoin through Coinbase to hedge against the depreciation of fiat currency.

Web3 Infrastructure: Exchanges become traffic entrances for the meta-universe and NFT ecosystem, reconstructing the logic of digital asset issuance.

Conclusion: The end of the asymmetric revolution

The rise of Bitcoin is a history of "breaking through the center of the edge": from dark web transactions to El Salvador fiat currency, from the ruins of Mt. Gox to the listing of Coinbase, centralized exchanges have always played the "necessary evil" - they introduce risks, but they have also accelerated their popularity; they have been criticized repeatedly but evolved in crises. If Bitcoin is indeed included in the strategic reserve, it may be the best annotation for its "anti-frailty": a protocol born from technical experiments may eventually become the cornerstone of reshaping the global monetary order. The exchange will continue to play the role of "contradictory promoter" in this revolution - both the gravedigger of the old system and the builder of the new order.