At noon on Thursday, CCTV-2's Zhengdian Finance column reported that "the US government reached a settlement with cryptocurrency trading platform Binance for $4.3 billion, and the founder of Binance pleaded guilty to money laundering charges." CCTV's unprecedented public reporting on the crypto market seems to suggest that China's supervision of this field will become increasingly strict.
Indeed, there have been a lot of "big" things happening in the crypto industry recently. In fact, there are two perspectives to look at these things. The first perspective is the entertainment perspective, focusing on the novelty and fun in news events. From this perspective, the more details the better, because rich details can increase entertainment.
However, the second perspective is macroscopic, analyzing these events to reflect the trends of the industry and the world, and thinking about their relationship with individuals to guide decision-making. From this perspective, you need to look through a telescope. Don't always think about deciphering the curious, because those details have nothing to do with you. Think about how the current news will be recorded in a book 100 years later, and then imagine what will appear on the next page of this book? This is the really important question. Only by omitting all kinds of trivial details and grasping the overall trend can you identify the pattern called "historical law", and only by identifying such a pattern can you help yourself make choices and decisions.
Looking back, Web3/Crypto can be likened to a rich new continent. The first group of explorers were idealists, and the second group were adventurers. After they immigrated to the new continent, they quickly occupied the mountains and established a system that mixed idealism, speculation, money worship and plunder. However, this system lacked order, was full of chaos and jungle laws, and was also a hotbed of innovation. This stage can be called the Age of Exploration.
Binance seized the historical opportunity, established order in chaos, balanced factors such as ideals, innovation, speculation and hype, and became a leader in the era of exploration.
However, this new world has not yet formed an organization and power form to compete with the traditional world. The passive confrontation methods that originally relied on anonymous mechanisms are now not effective enough. When the scale of the crypto industry becomes larger and even begins to have an impact on the balance of power in the traditional world, the traditional world will definitely take action to intervene in the new world. This will push the history of the new world into the second stage, the colonial era.
For Web3/Crypto, the colonial era is an era of establishing order. However, this order is not the most suitable order for the local characteristics of the New World, but a variety of colonial systems with different characteristics formed by the traditional world's multiple colonial powers after they established their own territory in the New World based on the characteristics of new technologies and their own systems. These systems coexist and compete with each other.
Countries that have seen this are advancing the colonization process in different ways. Some countries are more proactive and willing to go deep into the hinterland of the New World, while some countries are more passive and only seek to defend their borders. The Binance legal settlement incident is a sign that the United States is accelerating its colonization process in the new world of cryptocurrencies. Similar situations are also accelerating in Hong Kong, Singapore and other regions.
Binance's settlement is a helpless move in the short term, but it may be a good thing in the medium and long term. As a leader in the Age of Exploration, Binance was able to survive and enter the Age of Colonization, and its strength was not fundamentally damaged, so it has the opportunity to continue to play an important role in the new era. Such good things are rare in history books.
In the future, Binance may need to make some adjustments and compromises to comply with new regulations and regulatory requirements while maintaining its core values and innovative spirit. In addition, Binance can also actively participate in the industry's standardization and self-regulatory efforts, cooperate with other institutions and regulators, and promote the entire industry in a more transparent, sustainable, secure and trustworthy direction. Such efforts will help win the trust of the public and regulators, thereby laying a solid foundation for the long-term development of Binance and the entire crypto industry.
Summarize
It can be predicted that in the next decade, the colonization of the Web3/Crypto world will be the main storyline of the industry, and the industry narrative will undergo fundamental changes. The most significant innovation and wealth creation opportunities are on this main line. It is not to say that the order of the exploration age cannot exist in the form of ruins and reservations, but its importance will gradually decline.
