CHEVAN

The recent security incidents involving Bybit, Bitget, and now Binance should serve as a wake-up call for every leader in the crypto industry. Security should never be an area of commercial competition. It is a shared responsibility to protect our customers and the entire industry. Over the past decade, major crypto exchanges have made significant progress in protecting private keys. We have seen relatively few incidents involving direct private key compromises in recent years. So far, we have not seen conclusive evidence that Binance’s hot wallet private key was leaked. The greater concern may lie in vulnerabilities in access controls and wallet management systems. Companies that have never experienced a major security incident should not assume they are inherently safer or immune to attacks. At OKX, we have built multiple layers of sophisticated security protection and maintained a strong security track record over the past decade. But we also recognize that no system is absolutely secure. We must remain humble, vigilant, and constantly challenge our own security assumptions. A major security breach at any exchange undermines trust in the entire crypto industry, ultimately hurting every company and every customer. I believe CEOs across the industry need to come together, just as we did during the Bitcoin fork crisis in 2017, to establish stronger industry-wide security standards and coordinated response mechanisms. For example, transfers and settlements between verified exchanges could be processed in real time, while large withdrawals to unknown or unverified addresses, as well as transactions granting smart contract permissions, should be subject to additional verification and appropriate security delays. Crucially, these safeguards should be enforced at the cryptographic signing layer, rather than relying solely on application-level controls. Even if an attacker compromises an exchange’s wallet management system, they should not be able to bypass these fundamental security restrictions. We should also establish industry-wide mechanisms for real-time security incident notifications, coordinated monitoring of suspicious funds, and rapid responses to potential attacks. Exchanges, stablecoin issuers, and other major industry participants should work together to enable the rapid, lawful temporary freezing of suspected stolen assets when necessary. We should also work together to accelerate the industry’s transition to quantum-resistant cryptography and strengthen our defenses against emerging AI-powered security threats. These are long-term challenges that no single company can solve alone, and they require coordinated research, shared standards, and collective action across the industry. Security is everyone’s responsibility. No company can protect the future of crypto alone.