Binance in 2021. Huobi in 2023. And now, to close 2024: Bybit.
The Securities Commission has announced enforcement action against Bybit Technology Limited for operating an unregistered Digital Asset Exchange, in breach of the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007. On 11 December the SC directed Bybit to:
- disable its website and mobile apps in Malaysia within 14 business days;
- immediately halt all advertising to Malaysian investors; and
- shut down its Malaysia-focused Telegram support group.
CEO Ben Zhou is held personally responsible for compliance — the SC's signature move. By today's announcement, Bybit had complied. The exchange had sat on the SC's Investor Alert List since July 2021, making this a three-and-a-half-year runway from warning to action.
The scoreboard
Three cycles of the same playbook — alert list, patience, enforcement order naming the CEO — have now cleared the three largest offshore platforms from direct Malaysian access. Meanwhile five licensed local operators compete for the market those platforms served. Whatever one thinks of the pace, the consistency is impossible to miss: in Malaysia, the perimeter holds.
Update, April 2026: after sustained regulatory engagement, Bybit was removed from the Investor Alert List — and became an investor in licensed local exchange Hata.