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🚨 The exchange era might be coming to an end. BitMEX just announced it’s shutting down in September. Think about that for a second. 11 years in the game. $2 trillion in volume on a single contract. And now it’s reportedly doing around $400,000 a day. The decline didn’t happen overnight. They tried to sell the business first. A bank was hired, with a target valuation of around $1 billion — but no buyer stepped in. Then, just 3 weeks before the shutdown announcement, the CEO, CFO, and head of growth all resigned. $BMEX dropped 90%. And BitMEX isn’t alone. Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, and Crypto.com have all cut staff this year. But while exchanges are shrinking, something bigger is happening underneath the surface. 17 banks — including JPMorgan, Citi, and Bank of America — are building their own onchain settlement network. The exchange was supposed to be the bridge. But now, everyone is starting to build their own roads. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid generated $161 million in revenue in Q1 — the highest of any DeFi protocol. The old exchange model was a workaround for broken infrastructure. Now the infrastructure is getting better. And when the rails improve, the middlemen start getting squeezed. 🚨 #DailyOrbit