CZ Says Acquiring CEX is More Complex than Ordinary Business
CZ stated that acquiring a centralized exchange is not simpler than other businesses, especially when it comes to addressing security attribution related to "old backdoors or new issues." He emphasized that while acquisitions are not impossible, post-merger hacking incidents will directly amplify the complexity of legal, technical, and liability divisions. This means that the core of exchange mergers and acquisitions lies not in price, but in historical code, risk control systems, and incident attribution, with the true scarcity being buyers capable of absorbing security risks.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Acquiring an exchange has never been as simple as "buying a brand" in the industry. BitMart itself has a history of being hacked for about $150 million, and such past incidents require buyers to reassess wallet architecture, permission management, and exposure of hot wallets. On the capital side, the biggest fear in CEX mergers and acquisitions is the inability to "buy assets without buying history": user funds, private key systems, operational personnel, and compliance records are all intertwined, and any subsequent attack could be traced back to legacy risks before the acquisition. Comparatively, this is more akin to acquiring high-risk infrastructure rather than ordinary internet acquisitions; similar to mergers with security companies, the focus of due diligence is not on revenue multiples, but on incident recovery capabilities, attack surfaces, and liability boundaries. Structurally, this reflects the overlap of regulatory changes and industrial chain restructuring: in an environment where AI-driven attacks are on the rise, the larger the exchange, the heavier the historical burden, and the entities capable of undertaking mergers must possess risk control, compliance, and compensation capabilities simultaneously.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- Buying a company is easy, buying history is the hardest.
- Risks do not disappear, they only change names.
- The essence of mergers and acquisitions is taking on responsibility.