Offshore "The Feast is Over": From US Stock Tax Supplement to On-Chain Pricing Power, the "Route Dispute" of Crypto Assets Exchanges

Global regulation and on-chain innovation are compressing the survival space of offshore exchanges, and the future will be the world of compliant local CEXs and on-chain DEXs competing for global asset pricing power. This article is based on an article by Web3 farmer Frank, curated and contributed by Foresight News. (Summary: LBank Exchange is rumored to launch a US listing plan, invited full-time employees will receive 250 original shares, Chinese employees excluded) (Background supplement: Vietnam will launch the first national digital asset exchange, South Korean leader Upbit provides technical backing) Have you thought that Crypto transactions will also be taxed in the future? Since the spring of this year, many mainland Chinese users who use Tiger Brokers, Futu Securities and other US stock transactions have successively received retrospective notices of tax reimbursement, which is no accident, with the implementation of CRS global information exchange, from high net worth to ordinary middle class, overseas accounts and investments are being included in the full perspective monitoring. The truth is the same, the "sovereign vacuum" of finance is often short, today's U.S. stock brokers, not not tomorrow's Crypto trading preview: once the reckless era passes, Liangshanbo will always be incorporated into the regular army: From the hidden freedom of offshore account opening in U.S. stocks to the global exchange of CRS information, from the barbaric growth of third-party payment to the strict control of central bank licenses, financial innovation outside of mainstream supervision has moved from gray to standardized, which is an irreversible one-way street. Especially since this year, with the entry of Web3 and the entry of power, Crypto exchanges can be said to have stood at the fork in the road of fate, compliance localizers are firmly seated in the fishing platform, the offshore gray space is rapidly narrowing, and the on-chain DEX is gaining momentum. There is no middle ground, only clear directional divisions. Offshore CEX, a feast that has passed the (CEX) of centralized exchanges, is still the top predator in the current Crypto ecosystem. It can be said that CEX, which takes transaction fees as the core source of income, has eaten the biggest dividend of Crypto's volume explosion, according to public market estimates, the current Binance, OKX and other head offshore CEX annual revenue and profits are in the billions or even tens of billions of dollars, for example, Binance's annual revenue in 2023 is as high as $16.8 billion, and the annual cryptocurrency trading volume is more than $3.4 trillion. This means that even in the turbulent cycle of the global macro environment, offshore CEX remains one of the most profitable businesses. Source: Fourchain However, the golden age of offshore mode has clearly come to an end. Compliance pressure and tax turmoil are extending from traditional finance to the crypto field, and like the recent rampant tax on US stock transactions, careful users should find that in the past year, offshore CEXs such as Binance and OKX have actually set off public opinion controversies: including but not limited to restricting their accounts by using cryptocurrency assets as their only source of income, and requiring the user to provide annual income and tax certificates. Objectively speaking, the price paid by offshore giants such as Binance and OKX in order to "go ashore" can not be described as high, in addition to the judicial accountability faced by the founders, the capital is also expensive: Binance has publicly disclosed that hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in compliance and security alone in 2024, and the internal compliance team has grown to 650 experts. Especially since 2025, companies have been taking advantage of the "political dividend window" to accelerate compliance and potential listings. For example, Kraken, first the US SEC dropped the securities violation charges against Kraken, the FBI also closed its investigation of its founder, then hinted at potential IPO plans, and recently reported that it raised $500 million at a valuation of $15 billion, completely turning to compliance. OKX did the same, first settling with the U.S. Department of Justice in February this year, paying more than $500 million in fines, and then aggressively promoting an IPO in the United States, and the news that the compliance department in the United States has been adjusted to the highest priority of all departments. These moves send a clear signal that the living space of offshore mode is compressed to record lows, and CEXs are scrambling to reach the final compliance window. It can be said that this honeymoon period of Crypto politics, catalyzed by Trump's reshaping of the policy narrative, BTC's "balance sheet" and stablecoin boom, is almost the last window of the offshore CEX transformation. Once the opportunity to "go ashore" is missed, it may go from being a predator at the top of the ecology to being cleaned up by the times. The foreseeable pattern of "three parts of the world" If today's crypto market is compared to the Hong Kong and US stock markets that Chinese investors participated in a decade ago, then regulation and market evolution are only a few years behind the schedule. When global tax compliance, capital controls and financial institutions are superimposed, the future pattern of exchanges can almost be predicted as "three parts of the world": Localized licensed compliance CEX: Represented by Coinbase, Kraken, HashKey, OSL, etc., the core feature is to have bank docking and compliance clearing capabilities, mainly serving local users and institutions/high-net-worth users, and building long-term brand value through compliance moats; Offshore gray CEX: represented by Binance, Bitget, Bybit, etc., serving global retail investors and some high-risk users will inevitably be compressed and encroached upon and marginalized under the current global compliance trend and on-chain experience; Pure on-chain decentralized exchange (DEX / DeFi native ): no KYC, permissionless access, native support for on-chain asset settlement and multi-chain combined transactions, or will become a new global liquidity hub in the future; Among them, the compliance exchange is undoubtedly a "rising curve player" that benefits from the policy dividend, in the United States, Hong Kong and other markets, the compliance firm can not only undertake institutional and bank cooperation, but also be included in the local tax system, and the strategic goal of such platforms is clear: to become a new generation of digital asset securities and clearing houses. For example, a signal that is easy to overlook is that compliant exchanges represented by Coinbase are ushering in their own golden moment: for the whole year of 2024, Coinbase revenue was $6.564 billion, a year-on-year increase of more than double, and net profit reached $2.6 billion, almost close to 50% of offshore leader Binance ( ) according to market estimates. More importantly, Coinbase has little to no need to worry about the risk of enforcement or bank freezes in mainstream jurisdictions around the world, so it will naturally become the preferred "safe harbor" for institutions and high-net-worth users. On-chain DEXs belong to the "global market players" with the largest potential and high ceiling, they do not need to rely on national licenses, and are 7×24-hour global liquidity hubs, especially those that natively support on-chain asset settlement and cross-asset portfolio strategies, which are highly programmable. Although its current market volume is still less than 10% of CEX, its growth flexibility is extremely flexible, and once the on-chain derivatives market matures, DEX's market depth and strategic space will attract a large number of high-frequency funds, arbitrageurs and institutional liquidity migration. For example, Hyperliquid's capital growth soared in July, from just under $4 billion at the beginning of the month to $5.5 billion, and at one point approached $6 billion in the middle and late months. Moreover, the gameplay of DEX is not only a carrier of DeFi innovation, but may also become the cornerstone of decentralized pricing of global commodities and crypto assets, just like Fufuture's newly launched T...