Bybit closed 2025 with 80 million registered users and a firm grip on the No.2 spot among centralized exchanges — a stark contrast to February, when the exchange lost roughly $1.4 billion in ETH to the Lazarus Group. The hack became the ultimate stress test: Bybit covered all customer funds via its 1:1 reserve guarantee, restored reserves within 72 hours, and processed over 350,000 withdrawal requests in the first 12 hours. According to Kaiko, BTC liquidity recovered to $13 million daily within 30 days. Glassnode noted ETH trading volume hit a new daily all-time high of $8.5 billion after the incident, reflecting community trust.
Regulatory Milestones in 2025
In July, Bybit's Vienna office secured full MiCA compliance across applicable EEA countries. In October, the UAE's Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) granted Bybit the country's first Virtual Asset Platform Operator license, enabling full trading, custody, and fiat services. The exchange also relaunched in the UK through a partnership with FCA-regulated Archax, offering around 100 trading pairs for spot and P2P trading.
Spot Listing Strategy: Early Access Pays Off
Bybit Spot made headlines with early listings: TRUMP gained up to 548% in January; TUNA surged 2,637% on its first day; MET hit 255% on day one. In the RWA space, XAUT gained 127%, and the exchange launched xStocks for on-chain U.S. equity trading. Reward programs for NXPC and NIGHT distributed up to $40 million to users.
Trading Volume and Ecosystem Buildout
Bybit maintained its No.2 spot in monthly trading volume, recording $9.1 billion in daily spot volume on December 22. Ecosystem highlights include: Byreal, a Solana DEX incubated by Bybit, surpassed $1 billion in cumulative volume within 10 weeks with $10.88 million TVL. Bybit TradFi launched in May, offering gold, forex, indices, and 100+ stock CFDs with up to 500x leverage, later adding 24/5 trading for stocks like NVDA, TSLA, and AAPL. xStocks provides 24/7 settlement of tokenized U.S. equities on Solana.
Institutional inflows jumped from $1.3 billion in Q3 to $2.88 billion in Q4; wealth management AUM grew fivefold to $200 million. Bybit Earn's Mantle Vault hit $52 million AUM within 7 days. The partnership with Mantle made MNT a multi-functional asset for fee discounts, leverage, RWA, and staking. Bybit Card reached 2 million users, and Bybit Pay expanded its daily-use footprint.
WSOT Guinness Record and Security Overhaul
WSOT 2025 featured a $10 million USDT prize pool and set a Guinness World Record for the most participants in a 24-hour online trading competition — 71,765 on August 27. Across the event, 1,474 squads and 520,451 traders from 202 countries generated $172.8 billion in total volume (up 288% YoY). Bybit pledged 300,000 USDT to blockchain education via the Bybit Rising Fund.
Post-hack, Bybit conducted 9 security audits and over 50 upgrades, while launching the Lazarus Bounty program to crowd-source tracking of the hacker group.
2025 turned Bybit from crisis to strength: regulatory wins, product expansion across TradFi and DeFi, and a reinforced security posture define its new chapter.