Interview with Bybit founder Ben: Get out of the impact of hacker attacks and share the development code of rising against the trend

Interview: Tong, PANews

Written by: Zen, PANews

Among the crypto exchanges, Bybit and Binance have a lot in common. Their founders Ben and CZ have shared experiences in studying and living overseas. The companies were established in Shanghai and went overseas quickly and then made a fortune in the international market. The Middle East is now their strategic center, and even their offices in Dubai are located in the same location. But they also have obvious differences. Compared with Binance Spot, Bybit relies on one trick of derivatives to make a living, and then gradually builds a spot system and rise against the trend.

"Beyond the Boundary" is Ben's definition of Bybit's development in the past two years. In mid-April, Bybit organized a CCCC content creator event in Bali. Ben also shared the history, security upgrades and innovative products of Bybit in the seven years since its establishment. PANews editor-in-chief Tongtong was invited to serve as the CCCC event mentor and conducted exclusive interviews with Ben.

The most popular Bybit hacking incident has basically settled, and this crisis handling is also hailed as a "textbook" by the industry. In the interview, Ben Zhou admitted: "I started to face challenges alone since I was a child. This experience taught me how to stay calm in a crisis and mobilize team resources to deal with emergencies as quickly as possible." Because of this, in the face of the industry-shocking hacker attack in February, Ben not only disclosed information and stabilized market expectations as soon as possible, but also personally coordinated various departments to conduct post-investment and system repairs, demonstrating excellent leadership and judgment.

**Adjust security concepts after hacking incidents and turn to openness

and transparency**

On the night of February 21, 2025, Bybit was hit by the largest hacker attack in the history of the crypto industry so far, with assets worth nearly $1.4 billion worth of assets stolen. The hacker stolen funds that should have been transferred to the hot wallet and spread them to multiple unknown addresses through an attack on SafeWallet, a third-party wallet service.

Less than half an hour after the incident, Ben, as CEO, quickly grasped the situation. He posted a message to the community on the X platform, briefly telling the whole story of the hacking incident. One hour after the incident, Ben broadcasted live and provided real-time updates and detailed explanations during the live broadcast that lasted for more than two hours. "Bybit is solvency. Even if hacker losses cannot be recovered, all customer assets have 1:1 support and can make up for losses." Despite the huge scale of this hacking attack, Bybit guarantees users that its 1:1 reserve can ensure the security of assets.

Ben previously revealed in an interview that he actually didn't have much emotion in the face of this emergency, because he had to think about how to deal with things at the first time. This extremely strong resistance to stress may be related to his growth experience in his teenage years. Ben went abroad alone at the age of 12 and went to New Zealand to study. Since he has no parents to take care of him or his relatives, he often needs to face and solve various problems in life and study.

"I am not very sensitive to the amount itself and pay more attention to data indicators." Ben said that he did not care much about the absolute amount of the loss in this incident, but paid more attention to how to solve it. "What makes me most depressed is that I know I have the ability to do better, but I didn't do it." Looking back at the whole story of the hacker incident, Ben said that his biggest regret is that he was more inclined to business before and did not devote his time and energy to the management of security and technical teams.

"My style is very detailed, but in fact some of the mechanisms in the middle could have been avoided." On the second day of the accident, Ben began to serve as the chief technology officer , focusing on the safety and technology sectors, and changed the concept of the entire security team, from the original closed management to openness and transparency. As of April 10, Bybit has completed five rounds of internal security audits and four rounds of external audits after the hacking incident, and has upgraded more than 50 security measures. "After asking external third-party agencies to complete the audit, I also found many other problems." Ben believes that the safest one is capable of being transparent. The greatest value of this is to regularly talk to the world's top security experts with clear Bybit architecture and listen to their suggestions.

The hacking incident reflects the good brand and trust that Bybit has established in the cryptocurrency industry , and shows the side of the industry becoming united and resisting security threats after it matures.

How was the "Whampoa Military Academy" in the exchange made

In the crisis of hacking incidents, even under extreme pressure, Bybit's withdrawals and product services are always open, and customers can contact the support team and their account managers at any time, and the team is fully prepared and efficient. This is related to Bybit's corporate culture and organizational strength.

"We're all joked now that Bybit is 'Whampoa Military Academy' and it's easy for people who go out from us to find jobs," Ben quipped in the interview. Previously, PANews had conducted an exclusive interview with Bybit COO Helen. This "atypical" crypto exchange executive from HR said that Bybit has implemented the "Work hard, play hard" culture, and the company's human efficiency is among the highest in the industry.

"Helen is an HR person. She focuses on people and organizations. The role positioning of our entire company's leader is not a person who sets the direction, but a person who supports the people below to achieve their goals." Ben said that this is even more true for Helen, the COO, who is more about supporting and promoting her work. He added: "If you say you want to do something, we will give you resources and promote it. If you want to ensure that you can do it, we will promote it according to your pace."

Of course, this also gives Bybit relatively higher work pressure and intensity. Helen previously mentioned that Bybit encourages capable employees to take multiple positions. Correspondingly, Bybit will provide employees with generous incentives and rewards through performance appraisal. At the beginning of this year, Binance and Bitget disclosed that they had paid high year-end bonuses to employees, which attracted industry attention. Bybit, which focuses on "result orientation", is no exception. Ben said that the rewards they provide to high-performance employees are very considerable, with the best performing team of the year, with an additional 1.8-fold bonus, and last year's spot was one of the best teams.

Since its founding Bybit in 2018, Ben has personally trained new employees every month. During the training process, he always asks newcomers a "soul question": "Why are you here in Bybit? If you are here to find a comfortable environment, you are going to the wrong place." Ben admitted that Bybit is trying to be the world's number one, which means that the weekend may need to be sacrificed, and he himself does not have a break on weekends at all. “But the environment we create is that as long as you want to do things, we will support you with all our strength, and you will do it very well.”

Innovation-driven growth: Gold spot and "life-saving" RPI mechanism

For employees who are determined to do things and do their best, Bybit provides fertile soil and adequate nourishment, and this culture opens up a vast space for innovation in the exchange.

In late January this year, Bybit announced the launch of Bybit Pay in Brazil , a payment solution that connects traditional banking systems and Web3, providing end users with seamless payment services that integrate seamlessly with Brazil's leading payment system Pix. The innovative business was launched by the Bybit fiat currency team and was launched after in-depth market research based on the friendly regulatory environment and high penetration of cryptocurrencies in Brazil. In addition to countering projects and investing resources and manpower to make decisions, Ben has not intervened too much in Bybit Pay products. He admitted: "I didn't participate in this product at the beginning and directly delegated power to the team to explore innovative products to meet market needs ."

In fact, in addition to continuously optimizing core spot and derivatives businesses, Bybit Pay is just the tip of Bybit's iceberg in business model innovation.

The current gold boom is sweeping the world, and as early as August 2024, Bybit became the first crypto exchange to support spot gold trading denominated in USDT, and launched the " Gold & Forex Copy Trading " function in January this year, allowing users to follow the gold and forex strategies of professional traders. In addition, Bybit officially launched CFD products such as crude oil and stock indexes on the MetaTrader 5 (MT5) platform, supporting users to directly trade global commodities and indexes using USDT.

The above measures not only attract more traditional financial market participants, but also allow them to obtain considerable trading volume and liquidity even during bear markets. With the above-mentioned diversified products and innovative functions, Bybit hit a single-day high of US$107 billion in August 2024, a four-fold increase from the previous average, ranking second largest crypto exchange in the world. In addition, with the recent surge in gold prices, on April 17 this year , the gold transaction volume of Bybit platform reached US$ 24 billion in a single day.

Bybit achieved a strong recovery in just one week after the hack. A report from Block Scholes pointed out that the RPI (Retail Price Improvement) mechanism deployed by Bybit is a key factor in the exchange's rapid recovery. It said: "With the help of timely launching RPI orders, Bybit stabilized its liquidity situation and began to rebuild its share in overall cryptocurrency spot trading." RPI happened to be launched a few days before the hacking attack. It was designed for retail users and only matched with non-algorithmic orders, so as to deeply activate the platform's order book while ensuring fairness. Ben also compared the liquidity depth of Bybit and Binance in the top 200 currencies in the market value at the event, and the results were far better than the industry level.

**Give up the Web3 wallet business and strive to be a one-stop asset

management platform**

In recent years, almost all centralized exchanges have been striving to be the first choice entrance to the Web3 ecosystem, and the hybrid strategy of "CEX+Web3" seems to have gradually become the standard configuration of cryptocurrency trading platforms. In the public's perception, CEX seems to be no longer just a traditional buyer and deal matcher, but also a builder and developer of Web3's underlying infrastructure and products. However, Bybit seems to be a "retrograde" under this trend.

On April 16, Bybit released an important update on the adjustment of Web3 products and services, announcing that it will terminate several Web3 services in a strategic transformation. According to the announcement, Bybit will stop services from Bybit's Cloud Wallet and Keyless Wallet on May 31 this year, and plans to close multiple Web3 transaction features during the same period, including its DEX Pro platform, Swap & Bridge services, and the broader NFT market.

Before that, as of April 8, Bybit had terminated support for products including Inscriptions, NFT Pro, ApeX, Buy Crypto and its initial DEX distribution (IDO) platforms, and its Web3 Points plan will also be stopped on April 28.

"We recently made a decision to keep only mnemonic wallet service on the wallet ." Ben said in an interview that when Bybit became the world's second largest exchange a year ago, he told the team to take market share out of core business indicators without being limited to market share . He believes that for Bybit, which has the dark horse genes, changing from copying well and copying quickly to realizing real innovation is the only way for the platform in the next stage. Therefore, in order to re-concentrate resources and focus on providing a more efficient and user-centric experience, it is necessary to streamline Web3 products, including wallet services promoted by major businesses such as Binance and OKX.

Ben pointed out that even if the cryptocurrency industry is in a bear market, centralized exchanges can still operate normally because they are at the throat of the industry. "I asked the team: 'Is the wallet the throat of Web3?' No one can answer it." He asked the team again, what is the throat of Web3? In the end, there is still no conclusion. "But there is a conclusion - that wallets are certainly not the throat," Ben added, because DApps have a much higher priority than wallets themselves. If mainstream DEXs like Jupiter, Raydium, or Uniswap do not support a certain wallet, users will not hesitate to switch to another compatible wallet, because DApp is their core requirement. This means that the Web3 wallet itself lacks irreplaceable traffic entrance value.

In addition, the barriers between wallets are extremely low and the cost of user switching is also low, making it easy to migrate assets between multiple wallets. Transfers are also very convenient, which makes it difficult to build a moat between wallets, and user stickiness and long-term retention become extremely fragile. This makes the competition between wallets eventually evolve into a race of "who can attract more hair-fighting parties", and this behavior of "relying on incentives to attract short-term traffic" is not only unsustainable, but also unable to build the ecological logic of "user sovereignty, agreement coordination, mutual benefit and win-win" that Web3 truly advocates. Ben made it clear: "Puzzle is not the core of Web3, nor is it the throat of the future."

"I think in the end everyone will strive to be a one-stop asset management platform." Ben pointed out that because of habit, most users are reluctant to frequently register or switch platforms for different assets. Even if the handling fee on another platform is lower, they would rather operate in a familiar environment. Therefore, only through a unified platform covering all categories of products such as US stocks, precious metals, and cryptocurrencies can we maximize funds, enhance stickiness and cross-selling opportunities.

Return to the crypto market in Europe and the United States

In recent years, the global cryptocurrency market is accelerating its evolution towards compliance, and regulators in many countries have introduced or improved frameworks to balance innovation and risks. Based on the UAE government's open policy on digital assets, a mature and forward-looking regulatory framework, and a superior geographical and economic location, Bybit quickly established a global headquarters in Dubai after obtaining IPA approval from the UAE Ministry of Economics in 2022. In February this year, Bybit obtained the Principle Approval (IPA) issued by the UAE Securities and Commodity Administration (SCA), allowing it to set up a virtual asset platform operator in the UAE, marking its final stages of obtaining a full-scale operational license.

For Bybit, which is determined to become a one-stop asset management platform for globalization, returning to Europe and entering the US market is its most important goal in international strategy.

“Bybit’s mission is to provide a secure and reliable trading experience for all cryptocurrency communities, supported by a strong regulatory framework. To ensure we meet the highest standards and pave the way for a safer and more sustainable future for the industry, we have taken the initiative to temporarily adjust our operations in the European Economic Area (EEA).” At the end of last year, Bybit announced his temporary withdrawal from the European market in response to the Crypto Assets Market Regulation (MiCAR).

In February this year, Bybit was removed from the "blacklist" by the French Financial Markets Authority (AMF) through active actions, ending the regulatory turmoil since 2022 and is regarded by the industry as a key turning point for its return to the European market. "Bybit is actively seeking to obtain a MiCAR license in Austria," Ben said that the previous hacking incident had no effect. Once the corresponding license is obtained, Bybit can re-engage with EEA's clients in accordance with applicable laws.

Since taking office as US president in January this year, Trump has sent strong signals through a number of administrative measures, providing a more relaxed regulatory environment for the digital asset industry. Faced with the open door, Bybit, who had no American business in the past and had not even hired American employees, began to explore the possibility of entering the US market.

In addition to the European and American markets, Bybit also sets his sights on Hong Kong. In February last year, Bybit's Hong Kong entity Spark Fintech Limited submitted a virtual asset trading platform (VATP) license application to the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission (SFC). Later, Bybit discovered that the licensed person in charge of its subsidiary had not completed the procedures before leaving the previous position after transferring to Bybit, causing dual identity issues. He finally decided to withdraw from the application first. At present, Bybit has applied for a VATP license again , and Ben emphasized: "Hong Kong is very welcome to go now."