Eleven years in crypto isn’t merely an anniversary. It means navigating a number of boom-and-bust cycles, altering asset narratives, trade failures, and the rising convergence between conventional finance and onchain markets.
At its 11-year mark, LBank stories greater than 30 million registered customers and $23.81 billion in day by day buying and selling quantity. In an unique interview with Bitcoinist, Eric He, LBank’s Neighborhood Angel & Danger Administration Advisor, seems past the following sizzling token to debate a extra consequential query: how an trade can stability velocity, entry, safety, and sturdy belief because the market turns into extra advanced.
Q. LBank is marking its eleventh anniversary. Trying again, what’s an important precept the corporate has realized—not the largest progress quantity?
Eric He: A ship is most secure in port, however that’s not what ships are constructed for. In favorable markets, any platform can discuss progress. The actual take a look at comes when volatility rises and confidence is fragile: can the platform maintain working reliably, and might it maintain threat administration forward of quantity?
Over eleven years, what customers anticipate from an trade has modified. Early on, the questions have been easy: Is the asset out there? Can I commerce it? At the moment, customers additionally ask whether or not liquidity is actual, whether or not listings are dealt with with self-discipline, how their property are protected, and whether or not the platform helps them navigate a extra difficult market.
That’s the reason we’ve stored evolving our product and infrastructure moderately than treating an anniversary as a static milestone. This 12 months, LBank surpassed 30 million registered customers globally. To me, that’s not a end line. It represents 30 million particular person selections throughout areas, languages, ranges of expertise, and threat appetites. The quantity that issues most is whether or not they select to stick with LBank by the following market cycle.
Q. Competitors amongst exchanges is shifting past who lists property quickest towards who can help extra buying and selling use circumstances. What position ought to LBank play on this subsequent part?
Eric He: Aristotle wrote that excellence isn’t an act, however a behavior. An trade shouldn’t be only a web page that brings consumers and sellers collectively. Throughout asset discovery, commerce execution, and threat selections, it ought to assist customers construct higher buying and selling habits over time.
The trade was primarily a gateway. Going ahead, it must be extra like disciplined buying and selling infrastructure: attentive to crypto-native alternatives, whereas giving customers higher liquidity, higher instruments, and clearer threat context. For LBank, meaning advancing three issues without delay: staying near rising crypto narratives, increasing entry to property linked to the true financial system, and persevering with to enhance threat controls and buying and selling expertise.
We don’t consider extra options robotically create extra worth. The target is to present customers a coherent path. They could start with property they already perceive, then—as soon as they perceive the foundations and dangers—entry tokenized U.S. equities, stablecoin-related merchandise, or different eligible asset courses. The measure of success isn’t whether or not a characteristic exists, however whether or not customers genuinely use it.
Q. On the 11-year milestone, what achievements greatest signify the place LBank is at present? Which metrics would you like the market to concentrate to?
Eric He: Essentially the most significant achievements aren’t remoted peaks. They’re a set of indicators displaying that customers proceed to decide on the platform and that the platform itself is changing into extra succesful.
This 12 months, LBank reached 30 million registered customers and $23.81 billion in day by day buying and selling quantity. In 2026, spot buying and selling quantity reached $16 billion, whereas complete buying and selling quantity reached $23.81 billion. Extra importantly, progress isn’t coming from one market alone. Our month-to-month TradFi buying and selling quantity reached $3 billion, whereas LBank ranked first for stock-market depth within the related market information. LBank Inventory market share peaked at 27.32%, and U.S. inventory spot market share was reported at a 340% premium to the top-10 common.
The product information issues, too. Copy buying and selling has reached $15 billion in capital, LBank Money has processed greater than 10 million transactions, and BK Genie has served greater than 1.5 million merchants. We have now allotted $70 million in complete rewards, with $15 million in cumulative Earn subscriptions and $55 million distributed by Token Splash and airdrops. Sixteen listed property have delivered positive factors of greater than 100x.
None of those figures is a price judgment by itself. Collectively, they need to reply a extra helpful query: Is progress rooted in actual buying and selling demand, sturdy liquidity, and merchandise that folks really use—not merely short-term incentives?
Q. As tokenized U.S. equities turn out to be a brand new battleground for exchanges, what’s LBank’s core aggressive benefit on this market?
Eric He: Partnerships and distribution can create a market entry level shortly. However long-term competitiveness is dependent upon whether or not customers can execute high-quality trades as soon as they arrive. We don’t see tokenized equities as one other class to fill on a product shelf. We see them as an improve to what an trade can provide: a path between crypto and conventional property that may function across the clock, with actual liquidity and clear threat boundaries.
LBank’s first benefit is execution high quality. It isn’t sufficient for an asset to be technically tradable. In a BeInCrypto market-depth report, LBank ranked first for U.S. inventory spot buying and selling depth. For HOOD-related pairs, HOODON order-book depth was 4.42 instances that of Gate, HOODX was 2.23 instances Gate’s, and HOODB depth was 22.8% greater than Binance’s. That issues as a result of it exhibits customers can do greater than see tokenized equities listed; they’ll commerce them in a market with deeper, extra actionable liquidity.
The second benefit is how these property connect with the remainder of the platform. Via initiatives involving xStocks, Ondo Finance, and bStocks, we’re increasing the vary of property customers can entry. However we’re equally centered on what follows: efficient value discovery, a transparent understanding of asset construction, and continuity throughout market hours. Tokenized equities ought to join with crypto-native liquidity, buying and selling instruments, and schooling—not sit in an remoted tab.
Our month-to-month TradFi quantity has reached $3 billion, which alerts actual demand for around-the-clock, cross-market entry. However this market should be constructed on transparency, regional availability, asset mapping, liquidity, and clear threat disclosures. Customers ought to perceive precisely what they’re buying and selling, in addition to the rights and dangers concerned.
Q. LBank has partnered with a number of IPs lately, most notably Pudgy Penguins. Decrypt has additionally described LBank as a extra youth-oriented trade. What’s the strategic logic behind this IP method, and what does “youth-oriented” really imply to you?
Eric He: Being youth-oriented isn’t about utilizing brighter colours or repackaging FOMO. It’s about understanding how a brand new era discovers property, varieties identification, participates in communities, and is sensible of advanced monetary concepts.
Crypto has by no means been only a value chart. For youthful, culturally fluent customers, a group, a personality, or a shared language will be the entry level to a brand new narrative. That’s the context for our partnership with Pudgy Penguins. It isn’t a easy brand collaboration. Pudgy Penguins is a cultural asset that Web3-native communities already perceive. The collaboration helps make one thing summary—liquidity—extra tangible. Liquidity isn’t solely a quantity on an order ebook; it may be understood, shared, and linked to a collective reminiscence.
However tradition isn’t an alternative to product. IP can decrease the barrier to consideration and participation. The trade nonetheless has to ship liquidity, product high quality, threat disclosures, and dependable asset safety. We wish youthful customers to enter LBank with their very own pursuits and manner of expressing themselves, moderately than asking them to suit a standardized dealer profile. That’s the actual which means of this 12 months’s anniversary theme, “Come As You Are”: protect particular person distinction whereas offering each person with clear selections and the identical baseline of safety.
Q. AI is not a standalone sector—it’s changing into a structural pressure throughout markets. With corporations reminiscent of Anthropic and OpenAI extensively seen as potential IPO candidates, capital markets, expertise narratives, and crypto are converging. How might this reshape asset provide, person decision-making, and threat administration for exchanges? How is LBank getting ready?
Eric He: AI has moved past being one other market theme. It’s altering productiveness, capital allocation, and the way info is distributed on the identical time. If main AI corporations finally attain public markets by IPOs or different routes, customers is not going to solely be an AI-themed token. They are going to be making an attempt to know totally different dangers and alternatives generated by the identical expertise cycle throughout public equities, tokenized property, and crypto-native networks.
That adjustments three capabilities an trade wants. First, asset provide: exchanges have to help credible AI-related crypto property and, the place laws enable, present paths to tokenized expertise publicity. However “AI” can’t turn out to be an excuse to decrease itemizing requirements. Second, person decision-making: when narratives journey sooner than analysis, platforms ought to assist customers separate technological worth, commercialization progress, liquidity, and pure sentiment moderately than amplify the noise. Third, threat administration: AI can enhance risk detection, anomaly monitoring, anti-phishing efforts, and market surveillance. But AI-driven automation also can amplify errors, manipulation, and data asymmetry if governance doesn’t maintain tempo.
For LBank, the work runs on two tracks. Externally, we’re following the asset and cross-market buying and selling demand created by the AI cycle, together with broader expertise publicity the place merchandise can be found in compliant jurisdictions. Internally, we’re making use of AI to market intelligence, product help, and threat identification—notably to determine uncommon fund flows, account habits, and rising assault alerts extra shortly.
The boundary is obvious: AI could make info extra out there, however it can’t make funding selections for customers. It might probably speed up threat response, however it can’t change clear guidelines, human evaluate, and accountability. The system value constructing isn’t an “AI dealer” that bets for customers, however one which helps them see extra clearly, commerce with extra self-discipline, and defend their property extra successfully.
Q. After trade failures, asset misappropriation, and more and more subtle assaults, what particular steps is LBank taking to strengthen safety?
Eric He: Safety can’t be lowered to “belief us.” It’s a system that has to work below strain. The business has realized that an trade can solely present liquidity, execution, and world entry when asset safety and threat governance are credible first.
At LBank, safety is a platform-wide duty, not a single workforce’s process. On the infrastructure layer, we proceed to strengthen cold- and hot-wallet segregation, multi-layer authorization, abnormal-behavior monitoring, real-time threat alerts, and incident-response mechanisms. On the person aspect, the aim is to make safety extra seen at important threat moments with out creating pointless friction in atypical use.
This 12 months, we additionally launched the Crypto Resilience Initiative, with CertiK and SlowMist taking part. The initiative isn’t about including a one-off scan or borrowing credibility from a 3rd get together. It’s about shifting safety from post-incident response towards long-term resilience by steady monitoring, shared risk intelligence, incident-response workout routines, and person safety schooling. The target is to enhance each prevention and restoration when new assault strategies or excessive market circumstances emerge.
AI is a crucial layer in that effort. We’re strengthening AI-assisted threat identification and behavioral evaluation to detect suspicious fund flows, account anomalies, phishing exercise, and assault alerts earlier. However AI isn’t a magic phrase that may change governance. It has to work alongside human safety groups, outlined response processes, and out of doors experience. We don’t promise “absolute safety.” We’re constructing defenses that may maintain evolving and will be examined.
Q. How do you see the market growing from right here? After rallies and pullbacks, why do you stay constructive on crypto?
Eric He: I’d not body short-term value strikes as a certainty. Crypto will stay risky. Macro liquidity, fee expectations, regulation, expertise cycles, and market sentiment can all change costs shortly. But when the query is whether or not I stay constructive on crypto’s long-term course, the reply is sure. I’m, at coronary heart, a crypto believer.
That conviction isn’t primarily based on the concept costs solely transfer greater. It comes from the truth that infrastructure and actual demand are deepening on the identical time. Stablecoins are altering cross-border settlement and onchain capital effectivity. Tokenized property are making extra real-world worth accessible in versatile methods. AI is creating new productiveness and data-coordination use circumstances. And the demand for always-on, cross-border, verifiable monetary companies has not disappeared.
Each pullback removes some hypothesis, however it additionally forces the business to construct stronger merchandise, higher compliance practices, and extra resilient safety. I see market cycles as stress assessments, not assessments of perception. The market can rise or fall within the quick time period; the longer-term course will depend upon whether or not the business can flip technical benefits into actual, credible, and sturdy person worth. LBank’s position is to not name each turning level. It’s to supply liquidity, instruments, threat administration, and entry to rising asset courses by each cycle.
Q. What behavioral recommendation would you provide merchants within the present market?
Eric He: I’d moderately discuss self-discipline than particular tokens or entry factors. Crypto rewards sustained studying, however it punishes individuals who deal with emotion as a technique.
First, perceive the asset and the product you might be buying and selling—particularly extra advanced merchandise reminiscent of leverage, perpetual futures, and tokenized property. Second, outline what you may afford to lose earlier than deciding your place dimension, not the opposite manner round. Third, don’t let social-media momentum change analysis. A development could be a helpful sign to research, however it mustn’t turn out to be your conclusion. Lastly, set a time horizon and an exit situation earlier than volatility forces you to rewrite your individual guidelines.
I stay bullish on the business, however believing in an business isn’t the identical as believing in each commerce. A mature dealer isn’t somebody who captures each rally. It’s somebody who can nonetheless be within the recreation when they’re fallacious. The platform’s position is to supply clear info, ample liquidity, clear threat disclosures, and dependable instruments. Every funding determination ought to stay impartial and acceptable to the person’s personal circumstances; the place wanted, customers ought to seek the advice of a licensed skilled.
Q. In your anniversary letter, you outlined 4 coordinates for the longer term: globalization, safety, user-centricity, and a “super-ecosystem.” Why these 4?
Eric He: I’m cautious about end-state predictions. In an business that’s regularly repriced, saying “I don’t know” isn’t an absence of course. It means we don’t confuse creativeness with certainty. That’s precisely why we want coordinates that don’t shift with each short-term narrative.
First, globalization. Actual globalization isn’t translating the identical press launch into twenty languages. It signifies that a person in a small Latin American city or on a road nook in Southeast Asia can entry the identical baseline of belief and liquidity.
Second, safety. It isn’t a line in a whitepaper. It’s a disciplined respect for threat. On this market, threat administration should all the time transfer sooner than greed.
Third, user-centricity. Complexity ought to keep inside our methods, whereas the person receives a less complicated, smoother expertise and extra tangible safety.
Lastly, what we name the super-ecosystem: connecting the asset flows of conventional finance, the uncooked vitality of crypto, and the group worth of IP in order that they reinforce one another moderately than sit in silos. These 4 coordinates don’t assure that each short-term name shall be proper. They assist us maintain our course when the tide goes out.
Q. Eleven years from now, how would you want customers to explain LBank?
Eric He: We don’t need customers to recollect LBank solely as a result of it listed a specific sizzling asset or ran a single marketing campaign. We wish them to consider LBank after they enter a fast-moving market and want alternative, helpful instruments, and a platform that respects threat.
If customers come to see LBank as a spot that understands crypto-native tradition, brings a wider world of property into a transparent buying and selling expertise, and will be trusted when it issues, then the final eleven years can have meant one thing. An anniversary isn’t the end line. It’s the subsequent web page within the work of proving that.
Editorial Course of for bitcoinist is centered on delivering totally researched, correct, and unbiased content material. We uphold strict sourcing requirements, and every web page undergoes diligent evaluate by our workforce of high expertise specialists and seasoned editors. This course of ensures the integrity, relevance, and worth of our content material for our readers.
