Who Owns Bybit?

Ben Zhou founded Bybit in March 2018 after running a forex brokerage. His thesis was that crypto derivatives traders deserved an exchange that did not crash during volatility spikes, a direct shot at BitMEX, then the dominant derivatives venue, which was notorious for outages during liquidations.

Bybit launched with perpetual futures contracts and built its reputation on matching engine reliability. It added spot trading, then a full retail stack: Bybit Earn for yield products, copy trading, a launchpad for token sales, the Bybit Card for spending crypto balances, and Web3 products including a self-custody wallet. The company relocated its headquarters from Singapore to Dubai in 2022 as the UAE positioned itself as a crypto hub.

Registered users passed 50 million in late 2024 and 70 million by May 2025. The defining event of the company's history came on February 21, 2025, when hackers attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group drained roughly 400,000 ETH, about 1.4 to 1.5 billion dollars, from a Bybit cold wallet during a routine transfer. It was the largest theft in crypto history. Zhou addressed the incident publicly within 30 minutes and livestreamed updates for hours. Bybit processed more than 350,000 withdrawal requests within 12 hours, covered the loss through reserves and emergency loans from partners, and offered a 140 million dollar bounty for recovery help. Client funds remained whole under its 1:1 reserve guarantee.

Recovery came fast. Bybit ended 2025 with more than 80 million registered users and 1.5 trillion dollars in annual trading volume, retaining its number two position globally per CoinGecko. It also extended into traditional finance products and deepened institutional services through 2026.