2026 marks the 12th year of operations for the VBTC exchange, Vietnam’s first and longest-operating Bitcoin trading platform.
Launched in early 2014 as a collaborative effort between international partners and the original founding team of BitcoinVN, VBTC provided Vietnam at the time with its first Bitcoin trading platform – at a time when the majority of the global audience was not even aware of Bitcoin.
In fact, so unaware that a Bitcoin (!!) trading platform in Vietnam(!!!) – of all places – was far outside the risk tolerance of most traditional startup investors.
Well, as it turned out, both Bitcoin and Vietnam had a remarkable success story to show over the past one and a half decades.
With very limited capital (everything was self-funded from the salaries we took in our full-time jobs), it took several years of grind and sacrifice, turning over every single satoshi thrice – but then, during the 2017 cycle, came the breakthrough.
Suddenly, we had days of over 100 BTC (pure spot, no leverage) in trading volume and got into a position where we could finally quit our full-time jobs and put full focus on VBTC.
The hockey-stick chart coming true.
At the end of 2017, our firm even received a takeover offer for $50,000,000 from a Hong Kong firm suddenly rushing to expand their exposure to the “cryptocurrency space,” which we considered for a moment, but ultimately politely declined.
Well, maybe we should have taken it – as events in early 2018 quickly brought us back down to harsh reality.
Various brazen crypto investment scams in Vietnam brought people onto the streets, demanding the government take action – and they did, with a harsh crackdown on existing and easily reachable domestic players.
As we were the most visible player in the market at the time, our main domain, bitcoin.vn, was frozen and suspended, and our business declined by more than 90% almost overnight.
While – most likely – Chinese exchange operators, due to their sheer size and firepower in terms of access to capital and human resources, would eventually have taken over much of the market anyway, this step unfortunately contributed to a domestic player built by a local team being severely crippled at a crucial time.
It is fair to say that we never fully recovered from this incident. While we continued serving our clients diligently and honestly, the market advantage that the large Chinese platforms managed to obtain in Vietnam simply became too significant to overcome.
Overall, we never catered to a “get rich quick” audience wanting to “play Bitcoin.”
We can also proudly say that we never lost our clients’ money – neither through our own inability to protect client funds and manage risk, nor through what is, unfortunately, the industry’s common M.O.: luring users into all kinds of questionable investments and excessive trading behavior that may be highly profitable for the exchange operator, but often disastrous for the personal finances of the majority of their users.
By not engaging in these practices, however, VBTC also never had the financial resources and firepower to withstand the behemoths of the industry, who effectively concluded: “If people want to gamble and blow up their family savings in horrible investment scams, let them do it.”
VBTC entered the game earlier than most of the big names — but the decision not to engage in practices that make clients poor and operators rich also placed us in a position where we could not compete once barriers to entry became measured in $$$ rather than in the quality of service provided to the customer.
While we were ultimately able to build the business with a very solid client base (thank you!) that appreciates our level of service, commitment, and honesty, this allowed us to run a sustainable business without exploiting our users.
At the same time, this approach also meant that we were unable to build the capital reserves required to comply with the new licensing requirements for domestic trading platforms.
With that said, we can look back on some highlights in our operating history.
In twelve years of operation, we never lost any of our clients’ funds. By avoiding leverage trading and refusing to engage in exploitative “shitcoin” schemes, we ensured that our clients never became the source of profit for such practices.
We are fully aware that this makes us an outstanding partner for our clients in Asia – and it is something the larger BitcoinVN Group aims to adhere to and carry forward as we transition our product offering in the years to come.
Besides pioneering the Bitcoin trading platform space in Vietnam, in 2021 our platform also became the first exchange platform in Asia to support Lightning withdrawals – at a time when Lightning was still far from as common, widespread, and developed as it is today.
These technological developments gradually shifted our focus away from operating a purely domestic exchange and toward building infrastructure that can serve a much broader global user base.
In the post-lockdown era, VBTC also became consolidated into the wider BitcoinVN Group. While not much changed on the surface, this meant that our own team took full control of the codebase and everything associated with the platform.
Our former technology partner Blinktrade exited the partnership on good terms, and we have since been able to begin implementing the first improvements of our own.
With that said, our developer resources – highly skilled but scarce – have recently been focused on other products within the BitcoinVN ecosystem. Most notably, this includes strengthening our internal Lightning infrastructure, as well as preparing the Gustav BTM series for primetime (you will hear more on that front soon as well – and if you are interested in hosting a Gustav in your town, get in touch and we will put you on the waitlist).
The announcement that operating a licensed trading platform in Vietnam would require a minimum charter capital of $400 million – effectively making it the most expensive license in the world – made it clear that despite some early successes, it is time for our team of pioneers to focus our efforts elsewhere: discovering and serving market niches that remain underserved and – as in our early days – are still primarily of use and interest to a more sophisticated niche audience.
We believe that we have identified such opportunities. They generally align with our personal values, and over the years we have built – from basic to significant – experience around the various puzzle pieces that will need to come together for our new offering.
While the regulatory landscape globally is becoming tighter, we believe there is also a growing need to rely on modern methods rather than outdated 20th-century frameworks, which increasingly expose honest clients to the risk of becoming targets of violent crime.
While we will remain strict and have zero tolerance for abusive use of our services for illicit conduct, we also recognize a strong duty to protect our client base from the elevated risks that can arise when operating in this space.
Execution, of course, is another matter. While we may not always have been the fastest on that front, we have certainly demonstrated resilience over the years.
Long-Term Value for Clients
People who bought Bitcoin from us are generally better off today. Our colleagues at BitcoinVN Shop have supported this effort by providing swift and easy access to hardware wallets in Vietnam since 2017, helping ensure that clients can use Bitcoin for what it was designed to do: protecting family savings across space and time in the best way possible.
Our core team still consists – to a far greater degree than the average “crypto firm” in Asia – of Bitcoiners who were early believers in Bitcoin’s original mission, not simply operators looking to extract a quick profit by playing speculative fiat games.
One of the most delightful experiences for us is when clients from a decade ago return and reach out for help with an issue they need sorted out – because they know our team consists of experienced people they can trust.
Thank you to all our clients and supporters for your continued support over the years – without you, these first twelve years of VBTC’s history would not have been possible.
Team VBTC — February 2026
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Further reading: VBTC Service Announcement – wind-down of VND spot markets
