Former Chinese billionaire: Aster's privacy completely outshines Hyperliquid, Wall Street dares not use transparent order books.

In a recent interview, former Chinese billionaire CZ stated that his 20 years of trading experience tell him that professional traders absolutely do not accept orders being monitored in real-time. Aster's privacy design addresses the fatal flaw of Hyperliquid's transparent order book, "If you know exactly how others are trading, there will always be a way to make them lose." Why does this former Chinese billionaire place a heavy bet on privacy DEX? This article provides a deep analysis of CZ's investment logic and the future landscape of decentralized exchanges.

CZ Investment Thesis Revealed: Privacy is the Lifeline of Professional Trading

On October 10th, CZ publicly elaborated for the first time on his investment logic regarding decentralized perpetual exchanges during an interview with CounterParty TV. This former leader of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange reached a clear conclusion based on his 20 years of trading experience: Aster's privacy design represents the future direction of professional trading platforms, while the transparent on-chain order book adopted by Hyperliquid has fundamental flaws that may prevent institutional investors such as those on Wall Street from ever accepting such platforms.

CZ candidly pointed out in an interview that his core reason for investing in Aster comes from a simple yet critical insight: professional traders absolutely need order privacy. He revealed that every Wall Street trader he interviewed expressed the same concern, that they do not want others to see their orders in real-time. This is not a matter of preference, but a matter of survival. CZ summarized this logic in one sentence: "If you know exactly how others trade, there will always be a way to make them lose."

The harsh market reality lies behind this perspective. In a transparent order book environment, the strategies of large traders are fully exposed. Other participants can see that a certain address is building large long or short positions, can observe the patterns of order modifications and cancellations, and can even reverse-engineer trading algorithms through machine learning. Once a trading strategy is cracked, the counterparties can target and ambush, positioning themselves ahead of large orders or deliberately triggering stop-losses at key price levels. This "being stalked" trading environment is unacceptable for professional traders managing hundreds of millions of dollars.

The privacy design of Aster is precisely born from this pain point. The platform implements a hidden order mechanism, where traders' orders are not publicly displayed on the blockchain, and others cannot see the specific buy and sell orders, order sizes, or modification history. This design allows professional traders to execute large trading strategies with peace of mind, without worrying about being targeted or having their algorithms cracked. CZ revealed that he published a post about the importance of order privacy in June of this year, and on that day received recommendations for 30 projects, ultimately prompting Binance Labs to decide to invest in Aster and other privacy-focused DEX projects.

The Fatal Flaw of Hyperliquid: Transparency Becomes a Double-Edged Sword

Hyperliquid, as one of the most关注的 DEX for perpetual contracts, has received widespread acclaim for its technological innovations and user experience. However, in CZ's view, this platform has a potentially fatal structural flaw: a fully transparent on-chain order book. This design choice does have advantages in terms of decentralization and verifiability, but it also creates an extremely unfriendly environment for professional traders.

The transparency of Hyperliquid means that anyone can instantly view the complete status of the entire order book, including the prices, quantities, and wallet addresses of all orders. Furthermore, due to the traceability of the blockchain, historical order records can also be viewed, allowing for the analysis of a specific address's complete trading behavior patterns. This level of transparency is unimaginable in traditional financial markets, as even in Centralized Exchanges, users can only see an anonymous order book and cannot associate orders with specific users.

CZ pointed out that this transparency makes traders "vulnerable to attacks" because malicious actors can reverse engineer their trading algorithms and exploit them. Specifically, if a quantitative trading fund executes a strategy on Hyperliquid, other participants can gradually figure out its trading logic by observing the order behavior of that fund's address. For example, they might discover that the fund always places orders when a certain technical indicator triggers, or has a habit of adjusting positions at specific times, or follows a fixed stop-loss and take-profit pattern. Once these patterns are uncovered, counter-parties can act preemptively, eating into the fund's profit margins.

More seriously, large traders on Hyperliquid can hardly hide their intentions. When an institutional investor attempts to build a large long position, even placing orders in batches, the entire process can be monitored in real-time by market participants. This can lead to prices being pushed up in advance, increasing the cost of building positions; or when closing positions, others may choose to sell off first upon seeing large sell orders, driving prices down. This kind of "information asymmetry" is actually reversed, putting large traders at a disadvantage, which stands in stark contrast to the informational and execution advantages enjoyed by institutional investors in traditional financial markets.

CZ also acknowledged that Hyperliquid could technically add privacy features to address this issue, but he pointed out that competition among exchanges is not limited to a single feature, but unfolds across multiple dimensions. Even if Hyperliquid adds privacy protection in the future, Aster has already established a first-mover advantage and technical accumulation in this dimension as a platform that has prioritized Aster's privacy as a core design concept from the very beginning. Furthermore, for users who have already left a large number of transparent transaction records on Hyperliquid, the historical data remains traceable, making it difficult to completely resolve this issue.

The Unexpected Origin of BNB Chain Meme Coin Explosion

In addition to discussing the privacy advantages of Aster, CZ also shared an interesting behind-the-scenes story during this interview: the recent explosion of Chinese-themed meme coins on the BNB chain actually originated from a "spur-of-the-moment" Mid-Autumn Festival greeting tweet he posted. This case vividly demonstrates the astonishing influence of community power and meme culture in the cryptocurrency market.

The story begins with CZ posting a simple tweet during the Mid-Autumn Festival: "Happy Mid-Autumn Festival, share your best memes." This was originally just a festive greeting, but the community's response far exceeded his expectations. Users started creating various moon-themed content and Chinese word games, the most popular of which was "Zhao Chang'e," a wordplay on CZ's Chinese name Zhao Changpeng, linking it to Chang'e, the goddess residing on the moon in Chinese mythology.

CZ recalled: "I didn't plan it, it just slowly evolved into this. All the tweets I posted were turned into memes by them. Later, I suddenly said, forget it, I'll just post tweets casually from now on." This unintentional interaction triggered a chain reaction, and in recent weeks, the market capitalization of five China-themed meme coins on the BNB chain has reached between $100 million to $500 million, successfully attracting the attention of traders who were originally active in the Solana ecosystem.

CZ observed that the trading behavior patterns of meme coin traders on the BNB Chain are significantly different from those on Solana. Due to the stronger utility background and project foundation of the BNB Chain, its traders "place more emphasis on holding," tending to hold long-term rather than engage in quick speculation. "They won't see fluctuations the next day," CZ said, indicating that this relatively stable community culture may provide more lasting support for meme coins on the BNB Chain.

BNB vs Solana: Which ecosystem is more open?

In the interview, CZ also rebutted a common criticism: that the BNB chain is a closed vertical ecosystem from the launch platform to the listing on Binance. His argument is quite controversial, claiming that the BNB ecosystem is actually more open than Solana.

CZ listed several examples to support this point. First, the Binance exchange launched tokens from all blockchains, including meme coins on various chains, not limited to BNB Chain projects. Second, Trust Wallet, which is owned by Binance, supports BNB Chain, Solana, and many other blockchains, making it a cross-chain wallet. In contrast, Phantom, the most popular wallet in the Solana ecosystem, does not support BNB Chain, and the leading DEX Raydium operates only on Solana. "Their ecosystem is actually more unique than ours," CZ summarized.

CZ also presented an interesting perspective explaining why meme coins are particularly thriving on Solana. He believes this partly stems from the SEC's aggressive enforcement against utility tokens during President Biden's administration. As issuing tokens with real use cases faces potential securities violation claims, builders are forced to turn to meme coins that claim to have "no utility" to evade regulatory risks. "If you launch a real project with a utility token, you will definitely be sued by the SEC. We just declare that meme coins have no value, no utility, and are just for fun," CZ explained the regulatory roots of this market distortion.

The Future of DEX: CZ Predicts Catching Up to CEX Within a Cycle

At the end of the interview, CZ made bold predictions about the future of DEX. He believes that the trading volume of perpetual DEX will catch up with that of centralized exchanges within a cycle, and this timeframe is much faster than many expect.

CZ's depicted evolution path is as follows: new users will first register in the cryptocurrency market through a user-friendly, interface-friendly Centralized Exchange. After accumulating a certain amount of experience, they will gradually migrate to DEX, as DEX offers a wider range of token options and earlier token acquisition opportunities. This is especially true for investors who want to participate in the early stages of new projects, as DEX is often the only choice, since these tokens have not yet gone live on Centralized Exchanges.

But CZ also emphasized that this is a gradual process and will not happen overnight. "In 20, 30, or 50 years, everything will be on-chain. But in the meantime, if traditional users flood in, Centralized Exchanges will get better. After that, it will slowly shift towards DEX," he provided a long-term perspective.

In this evolutionary process, Aster's privacy design may become a key competitive advantage. As more professional traders and institutional funds enter the decentralized trading space, the demand for order privacy will only become stronger. Platforms that ignore privacy needs may find themselves only able to attract retail and small-scale traders, unable to gain true large liquidity. In contrast, platforms like Aster that have made privacy a core feature from the very beginning are more likely to become the preferred choice for professional traders.

CZ emphasized that, apart from privacy needs, how exchanges protect users and handle errors is the most important long-term competitiveness. This implies that his assessment of DEX is comprehensive, with privacy being one key dimension, but undoubtedly an important dimension that has been long underestimated.