*A conversation between Elias Demir, journalist at bitbülteni, and Arman Achmed, Business Director at BitMart. November 2023.*

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Elias: Arman, I want to start with something that's been on my mind since the SBF verdict dropped two weeks ago. Guilty on all seven counts. A year ago FTX collapsed, and now the man behind it is looking at decades in prison. But I don't want to rehash the trial — what I'm more interested in is what it did to the industry. Something shifted, didn't it?

Arman: Oh, a hundred percent. And honestly? The shift kicked in way before the verdict. The verdict just sealed the deal — it confirmed what the whole industry already knew in its gut. Look, when FTX went down in November 2022, the knee-jerk reaction from every exchange was "we're not FTX, here's our proof of reserves, don't panic." But then, over the next few months, something way deeper started happening. The conversation in every major exchange boardroom flipped from "how do we grow faster than the next guy" to "how do we make sure we don't get wiped out by regulators."

Elias: That's a pretty dramatic reframing.

Arman: No doubt, but that's where we're at. Think about 2021 for a second. Exchanges were in a straight-up arms race — who can list the most tokens, who's got the craziest leverage, who's throwing the biggest launch party. It was all about product. Who's got the slickest derivatives? Who's got the most trading pairs? Who's plastering their name on an NBA arena?

Elias: And now?

Arman: Now it's all about trust. And in this new chapter, trust is spelled C-O-M-P-L-I-A-N-C-E. The exchanges that are gonna lead the next cycle aren't the ones with the most bells and whistles — they're the ones holding the most licenses. That's the ballgame now.

Elias: I've been tracking the licensing push and it's genuinely remarkable how fast it accelerated. You've got Dubai with its VARA framework, Hong Kong reopening to retail trading with a proper licensing regime, MiCA moving through the EU pipeline. Japan has had strict rules for years and suddenly that looks like foresight rather than overreach. It feels like every major jurisdiction decided simultaneously that crypto isn't going away, so they'd better build a framework for it.

Arman: Right, and here's the thing people totally miss — this isn't regulators coming after crypto with pitchforks. It's regulators absorbing crypto into the financial system. And that changes the whole game for exchanges. Because once you've got a framework, you've got a standard. And once you've got a standard, the exchanges that meet it get a seat at the table — and everybody else gets shown the door.

Elias: So the competition becomes: who can get compliant in the most jurisdictions the fastest?

Arman: Bingo. It's a land grab, except instead of grabbing users, you're grabbing licenses. And that takes a totally different kind of operation. You gotta have legal teams across multiple jurisdictions. You need the whole compliance stack — KYC, AML, transaction monitoring — that can flex to different rules in different places. You need actual relationships with regulators, and let me tell you, that stuff doesn't happen overnight. It takes years.

Elias: This is interesting because it also changes who can compete. The barriers to entry just went way up.

Arman: Through the roof. Back in 2020, you could spin up an exchange with a halfway decent matching engine, some liquidity partnerships, and a marketing budget, and you were in business. Today? You need all of that plus millions in compliance infrastructure before you can even think about launching in a regulated market. The whole "move fast and break things" era in crypto exchanges? That ship has sailed. Now it's "move smart, get licensed, don't cut corners."

Elias: Let me push back on that slightly. There's an argument that this consolidation around compliance favors the biggest players — Binance, Coinbase, OKX — and squeezes out smaller exchanges that might actually offer better products or more innovation. Isn't there a risk that we end up with an oligopoly that looks a lot like traditional finance?

Arman: I hear that take all the time, and I get it. But here's where I'd push back — compliance doesn't automatically favor the biggest. It favors the most adaptable. I mean, look around. The largest exchange in the world by volume has had more regulatory headaches than anybody. Being big doesn't make you compliant — sometimes it makes you a bigger target. And real talk, mid-sized exchanges like BitMart actually have an edge here. We're big enough to put serious money into compliance infrastructure, but we're nimble enough to pivot fast. We don't carry the baggage of having operated in a gray area for years like some of the giants do.

Elias: That's a pointed statement. You're talking about the ongoing situation with Binance and the DOJ investigation.

Arman: I'm talking about the principle. When you've been running at full speed in an unregulated or barely regulated space, making that switch to full compliance is like trying to make a U-turn with an eighteen-wheeler on a one-lane road. It takes forever. Smaller, more focused exchanges? We can make that turn on a dime.

Elias: Let me ask you specifically about BitMart then. You're talking about this industry-wide shift, but what has BitMart actually done? How has the exchange positioned itself?

Arman: So here's what I'm really proud of — and I think this sets us apart — BitMart didn't wait for regulators to come knocking. We were proactive about this stuff before it was trendy. We straight up pulled out of a bunch of countries and restricted access to our services before there were even formal rules in place. A lot of exchanges were like, "well, there's no law yet, so we're good." We took the opposite approach. If a market looked like it was heading toward regulation and we weren't sure we could operate cleanly there, we stepped back. That's not a popular move when your competitors are still in there scooping up users, but it's the right move.

Elias: That's a pretty conservative approach for a crypto exchange.

Arman: Conservative, cautious, whatever you wanna call it — I call it smart. The jungle moment is over, you know what I mean? That whole Wild West, anything-goes phase — it's done. The exchanges that are still operating like it's 2020 are playing with fire. We'd rather leave revenue on the table today than deal with a regulatory nightmare tomorrow. That's just how we see it.

Elias: Can you give a concrete example of that approach in action?

Arman: Sure. So right now, I'm personally handling the Turkish market for BitMart, among other responsibilities. Turkey is a massive crypto market — huge retail demand, tons of volume. But there's new legislation coming down the pipeline, probably hitting mid to late next year. And between you and me, there's a real chance BitMart pulls out of Turkey entirely when that happens. Not because we're afraid of regulation — we welcome it — but because you gotta look at each market and ask yourself: can we operate here in full compliance at a level that meets our standards, and does the math still work? If the answer is murky, we'd rather step back and reassess than stick around and hope for the best. That's been our playbook, and it's served us well.

Elias: That takes a certain discipline, walking away from a market that size.

Arman: For sure. But that discipline is exactly what separates the exchanges that'll be around in five years from the ones that won't. Keeping the business safe, keeping it clean — that's the priority now. Full stop. You can always re-enter a market once the rules are clear and you're set up to play by them. But if you burn that bridge by operating in a gray area and then getting hit with enforcement? Good luck coming back from that.

Elias: Let's talk about what compliance actually looks like in day-to-day operations. Because I think for a lot of people reading this, "compliance" is an abstract concept.

Arman: At the most basic level, it's knowing your customer — like, actually knowing them. Real identity verification, not just a burner email. It's watching transactions for sketchy activity and flagging it. It's having real standards for which tokens you list and being willing to delist fast when something doesn't pass the smell test. But at a deeper level — and this is where it gets real — it means your whole tech stack is built with compliance baked in from day one. Your architecture, your data pipelines, your reporting. It's not some afterthought department sitting in a corner office. It's how you operate, period.

Elias: I want to zoom out to the global picture because I think that's where this gets really fascinating. We're seeing something almost unprecedented — major financial jurisdictions are competing with each other to attract crypto businesses, but competing through regulation rather than through deregulation. That's not how regulatory competition usually works.

Arman: You're hitting on something huge. The old playbook for regulatory competition was a race to the bottom — jurisdictions trying to outdo each other by being more lax. What we're seeing in crypto is the total opposite. It's a race to legitimacy. Dubai isn't out here saying "come to us because we'll look the other way." They're saying "come to us because we've built a real, thought-out framework, and having our stamp means something." Hong Kong, same deal. The EU with MiCA, same deal.

Elias: And that creates an interesting dynamic for exchanges. Because you can't just pick the most lenient jurisdiction anymore — you need to pick the ones whose regulatory stamp actually carries weight.

Arman: Exactly right. A license from some jurisdiction with weak standards? That's basically wallpaper. Doesn't mean a thing. The market's grown up enough that institutional players, banking partners, even savvy retail traders — they all look at where you're regulated and they know what it means. The value of your license is only as good as the regulation behind it.

Elias: Where does the United States fit into this picture? Because the approach there has been — to put it diplomatically — less clear.

Arman: The U.S. is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. Biggest capital market on the planet, and their approach to crypto regulation has basically been "we'll sue you and figure it out later." The SEC goes after exchanges and projects one by one, but there's no comprehensive law that just lays out the rules of the road. And here's the kicker — that uncertainty actually makes compliance harder, because how do you follow rules that haven't been written yet?

Elias: Do you think that changes?

Arman: It's gotta. It's not a question of if, it's when. When you see BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton filing for Bitcoin ETFs, the writing's on the wall. The big dogs of traditional finance have decided crypto is here to stay. And the regulatory framework? It'll follow the money. It always does.

Elias: If we fast-forward a couple of years, what does the competitive map look like? Who wins the compliance race?

Arman: Here's how I see it shaking out. You're gonna have three tiers. At the top, a handful of truly global exchanges — licensed in most major jurisdictions, serving users pretty much everywhere. We're talking maybe five to eight players, tops. Below that, regional heavyweights — exchanges that own a particular market because they've gone all-in on local compliance and partnerships. And then a long tail of DEXs and smaller platforms doing their thing in the gaps.

Elias: And BitMart's ambition is to be in that top tier?

Arman: That's the goal, and we're not just talking about it — we're putting in the work. Serious investment in compliance over the past year. New people, new tech, advisory relationships in key markets. But I wanna be real with you — it's also about knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. Being in the top tier doesn't mean being everywhere at all costs. It means being in the right markets, the right way. Sometimes that means leaving a market until the timing is right. That takes guts, but it's how you build something that lasts.

Elias: One thing I keep coming back to is the irony of all this. Crypto was born out of a desire to operate outside the traditional financial system. And now the biggest competitive advantage an exchange can have is how well it operates within that system.

Arman: Yeah, the irony isn't lost on me. And I know the crypto purists are probably pulling their hair out reading this. But if we're being honest, this was always gonna happen if crypto wanted to go mainstream. You can't have a multi-trillion dollar asset class operating completely off the grid. Was never gonna fly. The question was never "is regulation coming?" It was "what's it gonna look like and when does it land?" And look, a lot of the frameworks showing up now are actually pretty solid. They're trying to protect consumers without choking out innovation. Is it perfect? Nah. But we're moving in the right direction.

Elias: Last question. If you had to give advice to someone launching a crypto exchange today — is it still possible? Or has the window closed?

Arman: Totally possible. But the playbook's been completely rewritten. My advice? Don't start with the product. Start with the license. Pick your jurisdiction, build your compliance framework first, and then build your product on top of that. The exchanges that make it from here on out are gonna be the ones that were born compliant — not the ones scrambling to retrofit compliance onto something that was built without it.

Elias: Born compliant. That's a good line.

Arman: It's not just a line — it's the reality. And you know what? It's a good thing. The industry's growing up. The jungle phase was wild, it was exciting, I'm not gonna lie — but it was never gonna last. What comes next — a regulated, transparent, globally connected exchange ecosystem — that's what brings the next billion people into this space. And the exchanges that figured that out early? They're the ones that are gonna be standing when the dust settles.

Elias: Arman, thanks for the conversation. Plenty to think about.

Arman: Anytime, Elias. Hit me up when MiCA goes live — we'll do a round two.

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Elias Demir is a senior journalist at bitbülteni covering digital asset markets and regulation. Arman Achmed is the Business Director at BitMart, one of the leading global cryptocurrency exchanges.