PANews has published a market analysis arguing that the "wealth effect" long associated with crypto exchanges is fading, pushing the sector into a more consequential choice between becoming broader brokerage-style platforms and moving more aggressively on-chain.
The article, written by Zuoye Waiboshan, opens by recalling a 2021 comment from CZ: 「中心化交易所只是通向链上 DeFi 的中间过程」. In the author’s account, the environment for exchanges in 2026 looks far weaker in both liquidity and reputation, and that shift is forcing a reassessment of what centralized exchanges are actually built to do.
Growth stories around exchanges are being tested
The piece argues that the old exchange growth narrative no longer holds up as easily. It cites BitMEX, OKX, and Binance as examples of platforms facing different forms of pressure, and says the debate between becoming an all-in-one brokerage and going deeper into on-chain markets is now tied directly to survival rather than ideology.
Coinbase and Robinhood are presented as a contrast. The author says Coinbase has tried a broad self-rescue strategy, from pushing "Web3 Meme social" activity on Base to acquiring options-related product lines such as Deribit and Opyn. Even so, the article argues that a wider SKU mix does not by itself rebuild profitability or restore the kind of market excitement exchanges once generated.
Robinhood, by comparison, is described as staying closer to crypto-native behavior through Meme, NFT, and DeFi exposure. The article says Coinbase and Robinhood are increasingly becoming rival poles in the Western market, and frames that shift less as a story of dramatic product improvement by U.S. exchanges and more as a result of slowing growth at offshore platforms such as Binance.
The author does not build that argument on a full statistical section, but points to repeated cuts in Binance VIP requirements and says Binance’s BTC trading volume stalled multiple times.
Options and structured products are not yet a clear answer
On derivatives, the article says the options market, long dominated by Deribit, is beginning to change. It points to Bitget’s push into FCN fixed-coupon note products, which the author describes as a variation of dual-currency yield products. It also says Bybit’s options line is expanding quickly and that Deribit’s overall share is slipping, with Coinbase mentioned as a drag in that context.
Still, the author does not treat this as a simple power shift from one side of the market to the other. The piece says complex products such as options have stayed below 5% share for years when compared with simpler instruments like perpetual contracts. That leaves a harder question unresolved: can exchanges enter their next phase by distributing more complex financial products in a simplified way?
The article then separates the challenges facing large and smaller platforms. In its view, the all-in-one brokerage question matters to Binance, while second- and third-tier exchanges are more likely to focus on using broader product lists to find regional markets where they can survive and collect access fees. It references Alpaca behind bStock and Atomic Vaults behind Bitget Stock+ while discussing the practical limits of those partnerships.
The boundaries between CEX, DeFi, and traditional finance are shifting
The article describes the current period as a "soul swap" for centralized exchanges. Between DeFi and CEX, it says the fading of the TGE model has pushed on-chain projects to use exchanges to distribute assets tied to real business activity. As an example, it says R25 used Binance to distribute the Phraos token, backed by consumer lending demand in Southeast Asia.
Between CEX and traditional finance, the article points to RWA perpetuals and stock perpetuals as the most visible examples of the new overlap. Traditional finance moving on-chain is already underway, it says, but exchanges have not gained much incremental business from that shift.
The author contrasts this with CZ’s 2021 idea that Binance might ultimately become a DEX, arguing that today’s DeFi stack is too broad to be reduced to a few categories such as DEXs and lending.
The real issue, the article says, is pricing power
According to the piece, Coinbase has shown that retail trading remains indispensable, while Binance has shown that new assets do not necessarily need old platforms. It says whatever growth remains for centralized exchanges is concentrated in a few areas, including stocks, while overall exchange trading volume is already close to being cut in half once the noise of KOL posts and paid reports is stripped away. Dominating a shrinking market, in this view, does not solve the broader drain on the sector.
The article also mentions Bitget Wallet’s million-level BD marketing push and treats it as another sign of pressure flowing through the industry. On Pre-IPO access and stock perpetuals, the author does not repeat a full failure case here, but gives a clear conclusion: exchanges do not control pricing for stocks and other new asset classes.
That does not mean crypto has fully lost the ability to price assets, the piece says. It points to ChangXin being priced first by TradeXYZ and raises the question of whether Unitree Robotics could again be traded globally at what the market sees as a reasonable price. In the author’s telling, the central struggle is how to take back pricing power that Wall Street has "stolen," with Pre-IPO only the opening stage of that contest.
The article adds that underwriting, IPO subscriptions, trading, and PB services remain firmly inside the traditional financial system. Even occasional tokenization, it argues, is often just a transfer from one hand to the other. It also says public blockchains and stablecoins have not gained much from this structural shift, while Robinhood Chain, after using Meme activity for a cold start, will still move toward real financial business.
Exchanges are said to sell a wealth effect, not just product access
The author’s core claim is that exchanges do not merely sell access to financial products. They sell a wealth effect, or more bluntly, the prospect of explosive upside. That is the logic the article uses to connect perpetuals, dog-themed coins, and PumpFun within the same market frame.
Once the TGE system loses momentum, the piece says, exchanges no longer have enough room to engineer sharp price runs on their own. Instead, they are left sharing whatever value remains after Wall Street structures the opportunity first. The article argues that crypto can only build a new growth cycle by selling some distinct crypto-native characteristic to the broader market, not by importing mainstream market products into crypto and hoping the sector is large enough to support that consumption and then re-export the innovation.
Round-the-clock trading and global liquidity are framed as the next battleground
In its closing sections, the article turns to liquidity. It says the problem for exchanges is not that they are unprofitable, but that they can no longer sustain the level of extraordinary profits they once enjoyed. Even so, the author says exchanges still earn more than DeFi and stablecoins combined within the industry’s broader profit-sharing structure.
The article goes on to argue that the institutionalization of U.S. finance is already a set path and that crypto is simply moving in step with U.S. equities. It points to Nasdaq’s plan for night trading, scheduled around Asia daytime hours, with a 5X23h structure aimed at Asian investors. In the author’s view, competition for international liquidity will create new openings.
It also notes that Binance has listed a ChangXin-related contract, while arguing that Asian investor demand has never been only about leverage. From there, the article says the visible form of "encroachment" may be exchanges trying to sell Pre-IPO access and super-brokerage capabilities back to U.S. institutions, but the deeper contest is about how to arbitrage globally inside regulated financial markets.
The article’s conclusion
The piece ends with a blunt judgment: exchanges may gradually retreat into a secondary role focused on matching and record-keeping, while serving as launch venues for products such as Pre-IPO listings and stock perpetuals alongside equities and DeFi in a new financial stack.
It adds that the historical mission of exchanges does not end with OKX compliance efforts or with Bitget’s delayed C2C push. Instead, the author points to what is described as CZ’s market manipulation through Meme trading as the signal that exchanges can no longer create a new asset issuance model on their own. The article’s final view is that one era is ending, and the market now needs to look for newer ways to issue assets.