Bybit used the glitter of a high-profile gala in Abu Dhabi to map out its institutional playbook for 2026, gathering senior executives, regulators, banking partners, liquidity providers and institutional clients for an evening that married celebration with strategy. The BIG Series – Bybit Institutional Gala framed the exchange’s recent regulatory wins and product rollouts as the foundation for a new, compliance-first era of digital markets.
At the heart of the night was the message that Bybit is no longer just a fast-growing trading venue but a regulated infrastructure provider. The company highlighted its newly secured full Virtual Asset Platform Operator (VAPO) license from the UAE’s Securities and Commodities Authority and its MiCAR authorization that clears the way for operations across the European Economic Area, milestones Bybit says position it squarely at the center of regulated digital finance.
Co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou used his opening remarks to underline how regulatory certainty and scale are shaping institutional demand. He pointed to the company’s retail footprint, including the Bybit Card, which exceeded 1.8 million cards issued across 13 regions in its first year, as a practical advantage that deepens liquidity and improves execution for professional clients.
Zhou also cited rapid growth in Bybit’s wealth and asset-management business, saying assets under management rose from about USD 40 million in Q2 to USD 200 million in Q4, and that asset inflows more than doubled from USD 1.3 billion in Q3 to USD 2.88 billion in Q4. “Institutions are choosing Bybit because they want certainty — certainty of liquidity, certainty of compliance, and certainty of performance,” he said.
Setting Sights on Regulated Growth
Compliance featured as more than a regulatory checkbox; for Bybit, it is now a product that builds institutional trust. In a keynote, Chief Legal & Compliance Officer Robert MacDonald argued that predictable onboarding, compliance embedded into product workflows and ongoing regulatory engagement materially reduce operational friction for banks and professional investors, a competitive edge that has already helped Bybit cement stronger banking relationships.
The gala was also a platform to unveil the next wave of institutional tools the company plans to roll out in 2026. Yoyee Wang, Head of Business to Business, showcased an upgraded INS Credit Suite that tightly integrates custody with tokenized, real-world-asset yield products, letting institutions keep assets in custody, earn returns via tokenized money-market funds, and at the same time access institutional credit.
She framed the architecture as a way to boost capital efficiency without surrendering control, noting the suite will continue to offer market-leading five-times leverage and support for up to 1,000 sub-accounts. Execution speed and reliability were another major theme. Bybit revealed enhancements to its Market Maker Gateway (MMGW), a dedicated, high-performance access point for institutional clients that the company says dramatically improves connectivity and stability for high-frequency and quant traders.
Bybit executives described a planned path to cut round-trip latency down from legacy levels around 30 milliseconds to multi-millisecond channels, an engineering focus aimed squarely at quant and market-making firms. The exchange also reported that the INS loan notional grew 26% quarter-over-quarter, driven by uptake from multi-strategy and HFT firms.
The program wasn’t all product demos and numbers. A cross-regional panel moderated by Dimitrios Psarrakis, Head of Global Affairs at Bybit, brought together regulators, bankers and market practitioners for a discussion that made clear a broader industry shift: traditional finance and digital assets are increasingly converging around shared priorities of transparency, market efficiency and institutional-grade governance. The tone of the conversation suggested the future of capital markets will be built in collaboration, among exchanges, banks, market-makers and supervisors, rather than in isolation.
The evening closed with recognition for firms that have been instrumental in building market infrastructure. Bybit presented awards for market leadership and institutional contribution, naming winners across categories from corporate trading terminals to liquidity providers and institutional trading desks. Recipients included Vantage and Jarvis Lab, Insilico Terminal and Coinroutes, Wintermute and Amber Group, alongside others such as Pulsar, Atomic, Gravity, Hashwave, CyantArb and Presto. Delegates used the ceremony as a moment to reaffirm partnerships and signal a shared commitment to long-term market development.
Executives from award-winning firms echoed that sentiment. Xin Song, CEO of GSR, called the recognition “a privilege” and said the gala reinforced the importance of trust, infrastructure and sustained partnership as the market matures. “GSR looks forward to continuing our collaboration with Bybit as we build institutional-grade products and services for the crypto market together,” Song said.
Bybit’s Abu Dhabi gala read as both a showcase of recent wins and a road map for the coming year: regulated status in two major jurisdictions, a growing retail engine that deepens market liquidity, upgraded credit and custody rails, and latency improvements meant to win business from the most demanding trading firms. For an industry still chasing mainstream adoption, the message was clear: scale plus compliance, delivered with institutional tooling, is the strategy Bybit hopes will define the next chapter of digital finance.