How Ben Zhou Refused to Let Bybit Fall

Bybit:- As 2025 draws to a close, the crypto industry has no shortage of milestones to reflect on. This was the year when perpetual DEXs matured, stablecoins quietly entered mainstream payments, and regulatory clarity finally began to take shape across key markets.

Yet, amid all the progress, one moment stands apart – perhaps etched permanently into the collective memory of the industry – the Bybit hack.

In February 2025, crypto’s fifth largest centralized exchange suffered what would soon be described as the largest crypto hack in history.
More than $1.5 billion vanished in a single exploit. The scale was staggering. The implications were existential. And when early on-chain traces pointed toward North Korea–linked Lazarus Group, the jinarrative turned even darker. History had shown what followed such incidents: loss of trust, frozen withdrawals, regulatory pressure, and in many cases, a slow, quiet collapse.

For millions of users, the fear was immediate and personal. For the market, the verdict seemed pre-written: no exchange survives a breach of that magnitude.

Many believed this would be the end.

But this time, they were wrong. The script changed.

A Founder at the Center of the Storm

On the night of the hack, Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, received a call from his CFO – a person who usually stuck to texts. It was of course signaling immediately that something serious had happened. It was the kind of call founders fear most, the one that instantly redraws the future of a company.

But what stood out, according to people close to the incident, was not panic or paralysis. When he heard of “the hack,” Zhou didn’t freeze. He didn’t retreat. Instead, he moved forward with clarity.

Within hours, he made a decision that would define the months that followed: Bybit would stand behind every user, regardless of the cost. Even as withdrawal fears mounted and the word “bank run” began circulating, Zhou publicly stated, “Even if we are experiencing a bank run, it’s not an issue. We have enough tokens to give to the clients.”

It wasn’t bravado. It was a signal that he was going to get this survived.

Ben Zhou’s path to that moment was hardly cinematic by design, but it prepared him for crisis. Born in Hangzhou and raised partly in New Zealand, Zhou had spent years in retail FX before founding Bybit in 2018 with a trader’s obsession. This included uptime, execution, and a matching engine that wouldn’t fold when markets exploded.

He had built a culture where engineers and customer-support leads were as central to the product as order books.

That was an orientation that got exemplified when Ben Zhou did not disappear behind lawyers, statements, or silence. Instead, as panic spread across social media and trading desks, Zhou stepped forward – publicly, decisively, and repeatedly. Ben Zhou took to social platforms and press briefings, not to manage optics, but to buy time, focus and “support.”

Behind the scenes, Zhou with his team coordinated a global response: industry specialists such as Chainalysis, Elliptic, TRM Labs and incident responders including Sygnia and NCC Group were mobilized. On-chain trails were opened for cooperative analysis, and a public bounty invited the broader crypto community to assist recovery efforts.

Within weeks investigators were mapping conversions, tracing transfers through mixers and bridges. Ben Zhou was coordinating with custodians and counterparties to freeze and recover even small tranches.

Also Read: Inside the Exponential Rise of Stablecoin-as-a-Service Business

Refusing to Shrink

Conventional wisdom says companies retreat after crises. They cut risk, pause expansion, go quiet. Bybit did the opposite.
Riding on the resolve forged during the hack, Zhou moved the company into an aggressive growth phase: expanding into Kazakhstan, reopening in Vietnam and India.

It is ending the year with another landmark Dubai license as one of the first fully regulated virtual-asset platforms in the region, and obtaining MiCA clearance in Austria.

He has also broadened the product vision beyond crypto, pushing into gold, commodities, oil, FX, and offering access to stocks through the app. This is Zhou’s intentional pivot toward a unified, multi-asset trading experience.

The strategy has further extended into decentralization with the launch of ByReal, Bybit’s DEX, with Zhou calling it “both a good thing and a curse” for its branding as CEX-branded product.

A Defining Leadership Moment

Crypto has seen plenty of founders build fast. Far fewer have been tested at scale, under pressure, with everything at stake. For Ben Zhou, the February 2025 hack was that test.

By the end of 2025, the market had delivered its verdict: Bybit has crossed 80 million users globally, recorded $7.1 billion in trading volume, and is ranked No. 5 among cryptocurrency spot exchanges. These are the numbers that spoke not just to recovery but to renewed confidence, returning liquidity, and institutional trust.

But what defined Bybit’s survival was not the absence of damage but its co-founder and CEO’s refusal to let the damage define its future. Zhou did not deny the failure, deflect responsibility, or allow fear to dictate the company’s next chapter. He chose accountability, speed, and an unwavering commitment to users.

If 2025 is remembered for anything in crypto, it may well be this: the year a $1.1 billion hack did not end an exchange – because its founder refused to walk away from the fire.

Also Read: SharpLink Appoints Sole CEO Joesh Chalom