The industry has recently exploded with news. An insider mentioned that an old friend has been caught up in a cross-border investigation, with assets frozen, and it took half a year to fully recover. This situation is called "oceanic fishing" in the industry — simply put, coordinated investigations by international law enforcement agencies, which can range from asset freezes to even personal detention. The scale involved this time is said to be in the billions of dollars.

Looking at the data, over the past three years, more than 20 similar cases have been publicly reported, with 70% involving over one hundred million USD each. By the first half of 2024, globally frozen assets due to compliance reviews have surged by 180% year-over-year. While the crypto market is booming, dark currents are flowing beneath the surface.

But more worth pondering than individual incidents is the major regulatory overhaul behind the scenes. Recent months have shown clear signs: the Federal Reserve's stance is shifting, the US is beginning to grant access licenses to stablecoins, and the UK has outright classified crypto assets as personal property — these are not small signals. Regulatory thinking is evolving from "ban everything" to "categorize and define boundaries."

This raises a question: as the rules of the game change, how should our assets be managed? Should we completely avoid regulation, or actively embrace a new compliant framework? Both paths seem risky.

Some believe the answer is that there's no need to choose just one. Instead of passive responses, it’s better to adopt an asset form that meets compliance requirements while maintaining on-chain autonomy. For example, some stablecoins have interesting approaches — their logic is to build trust in the compliant era through on-chain transparency.

How exactly? First, reserve assets are fully transparent. The over-collateralized assets backing each stablecoin can be verified on-chain in real-time, aligning perfectly with regulatory transparency requirements. Second, the mechanism is designed to be decentralized, giving users complete ownership and control over their assets, with no risk of a centralized entity freezing or misappropriating funds.

From another perspective, this model directly addresses two key concerns of regulators: one, the ability to trace fund flows (transparency); two, the ability to ensure assets are not misused (security). Such a stablecoin framework not only aligns with the broader compliance trend but also leaves room for user autonomy.

How things will develop in the future depends largely on who can adapt more quickly to these new rules of the game.