The weekend was lively—“crypto exchanges lining up and going bankrupt” became a hot topic. There was no policy pressure, no hacker attacks. Then one after another, shops suddenly closed. What’s the reason?

I don’t understand how exchanges operate, but as a coin holder who’s been in the market for more than a decade, my intuitive feeling is that they probably weren’t making money, or even were losing money. From saying “say a thousand to ten thousand” and opening the doors to do business, you’re supposed to make money. Every day you wake up, there are so many people waiting to get paid, so many everyday expenses—how can you keep going if you’re not making money?

I think exchanges should have two main sources of income. One is the trading fee they earn from traders. But now this money is hard to make. The bear market has lasted too long—people come in just to get trapped and cut, and the profit-making effect is too low. On top of that, the stock market has been surging forward. Newcomers don’t come anymore, and the old hands are either wiped out or lured into the stock market. With nobody trading, you can’t earn trading fees either.

The other source of income for an exchange should be money from listing fees and similar token-issuance projects. In a bear market, it’s hard for projects to raise investment. Fewer tokens are issued. Meanwhile, top-tier exchanges keep aggressively pushing Alpha, becoming the first-choice route for new projects to get listed. So mid-sized exchanges also can’t earn much from listing tokens.

No trading fees to be had, and no listing fees either. And mid-sized exchanges are big operations with heavy overhead—how can they support themselves by just living off old reserves every day? In the bear market, you can’t even see the end. So there’s only one way left: close down and cut losses.

Based on past experience, whenever exchanges can no longer hold on and start failing one after another, it often serves as a signal that the bear market is near its bottom. I don’t know if this old experience will work its magic again this time. Let’s all pray together. $BMT
{future}(BMTUSDT)