Bybit launched in 2018 as a derivatives-focused exchange, founded by Ben Zhou, a former forex broker. While Binance and Coinbase dominated spot trading, Bybit carved out a niche in perpetual futures — offering high leverage, a clean trading interface, and aggressive marketing to the professional trader community. By 2024, Bybit had grown to become the second-largest crypto exchange by derivatives volume.
Bybit’s strategic decision to headquarter in Dubai proved prescient. As regulatory pressure mounted on exchanges in the US and Europe, Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) offered a framework that was permissive enough for innovation but structured enough to provide legitimacy. Bybit obtained a VARA license and used Dubai as a base to serve the Middle East, Asia, and African markets that represented crypto’s fastest-growing user bases.
The exchange’s growth accelerated during the 2024 bull market. Bybit’s copy trading feature, which let users automatically mirror the positions of successful traders, attracted hundreds of thousands of new users. The platform’s Web3 wallet and NFT marketplace expanded its offering beyond pure trading. By late 2024, Bybit was processing tens of billions in daily derivatives volume.
Bybit’s significance in the exchange landscape is that it proved specialization could compete with generalization. While Binance tried to be everything, Bybit focused on being the best derivatives venue for professional traders — and that focus earned it a durable market position that survived multiple cycles. The exchange’s Dubai base also positioned it at the center of the shifting global crypto geography, where regulatory arbitrage was becoming as important as product quality in determining which exchanges would thrive.
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