Building a Top 5 Global Crypto Exchange with 120M Users, with Bitget CEO Gracy Chen

Thank you for having me. Hi everyone.

So I the first time I heard anything crypto related was obviously like many of us Bitcoin. So, in 2020, sorry, 2015, when I was a TV host, I was introduced to Bitcoin by some of my TV network friends and they said, 'Gracie, you should check out crypto, specifically Bitcoin.' That time, I think Bitcoin was only traded around 300D. And look at where we are today. So, I began by reading the Bitcoin white paper and was instantly hooked. I actually studied applied mathematics for my undergrad degree in Singapore National University of Singapore. So at the mathematics background, I just loved the mathematical beauty in Bitcoin that was like clearly written in the 13-page very clear and simple Bitcoin white paper. So I was excited by also how democratic this system could be. I was drawn to the way it's established this new decentralized ledger that very much criticized a little bit but you know not not exactly the white paper but very much criticized and complemented the traditional centralized financial industry. So I started to look at not just Bitcoin but also Ethereum and XRP and that's the only three cryptocurrencies that I bought in early days. I also later invested in some crypto startups including something called BitKeep which is later rebranded to Bitget wallet. By that time when I started to know Bitget team I wasn't oh sorry BitKeep was still BitKeep. It's a decentralized independent wallet. So in spring of 2022, some of the Bitget team reached out that said Bitget was recruiting for a managing director whose role is very much like a CMO and they asked me if I know someone. Then I immediately volunteered myself because I did have 10 7 8ish years background in marketing in web two world. So I decided to join Bitget in 2022 and that was three years ago, one year ago actually one and a half year ago when the previous CEO of Bitget stepped down. I was also approached by the board whether I want to take that role as the CEO. Then I said yes. So that's where I am today.

As a centralized exchange people look at typically users and trading volume and also it can be loosely divided into centralized exchange or decentralized exchange and the centralized exchange there are spot market and derivative markets that we are serving specifically. So in either way of spot or derivative Bitget is typically ranked top five in terms of total trading volume globally. For example, I'm looking at CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap which are two data aggregator websites that many people look into. So right now Bitget is ranked top six for the centralized exchange spot market volume and for the derivative it's eighth but typically we are top five. Again the volume right now the 24-hour volume of Bitget is about 10 billion. Again, this ranges or this volume number ranges day to day where you have 24-hour volume typically fall into 10 to 20 billion USD. That's the total amount of trading that's happening on Bitget. One of the best exchanges including liquidity and coin offerings as well as volume together. Bitget we mentioned earlier Bitget wallet which is how I was introduced to the team. So today it has centralized exchange component which we call Bitget exchange as well as decentralized wallet where Bitget wallet earlier BitKeep are serving. So in total we serve 120 million users on these two platforms. Bitget exchange users are all KYCed while Bitget wallet users just like the MetaMask wallet and some other decentralized wallet those users may not be KYC but in total it's a huge amount of user base that we're looking at here.

Yes, we have more than 200 people just on the centralized exchange side.

Geographically, more than half of our users are from Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, even South Asia or all sorts of Asia markets. But in terms of growth, we think we see a lot of growth in Europe as well as Latin America. Right now the approaches of all the exchanges are historically important. Some exchanges are heading the offshore way. Some exchanges are more heading to the fully compliant way. Some exchanges are trying to find a balance in between, and of course strategy shifts when there are especially clear regulatory frameworks coming out in certain markets. For us, we were mostly viewed as an offshore exchange serving the global market, meaning whichever market that we don't have a license, but there is a clear framework. For example, the US, we tend not to serve. We do not serve the US market. But moving forward our strategy is more towards the compliant way because in 2025 we thought that the global crypto market is more and more related to the full traditional financial market. So moving forward, you have to be compliant and you have to be able to provide the services in a compliant way as well as to provide some enterprise level B2B service that's going to really bridge the gap and bring crypto to the mainstream. Serving the very small niche of crypto native users was our previous approach, but strategically we think we want to be the bridge for more mass adoption. So geographically we are also developing a lot, especially in Europe under MiCA. We are playing for license, we want to serve that market fully compliant. And again, strategically we are more heading towards the more mass adoption RWA, UEX, which we can definitely chat more into. UEX stands for Universal Exchange by the way.

Just to highlight, I joined Bitget in 2022. Before that, I wasn't that involved in the crypto space other than being an investor holding some cryptocurrencies. But I did have another interesting background maybe very relevant to what you are interested in. In 2016, the first startup after my journalism career, a very short journalism career, I had as we mentioned earlier a long experience in web two startups. The first startup that I co-founded in late 2015, so it's 2015-2016ish, that is a fintech company and it still exists today serving lots of freelancers to provide them with fintech B2B service, sorry actually B2C service. We can talk about that a bit more later if that's relevant. But basically in 2016 I started to build in fintech already, and I guess that's another reason why in 2022 when I joined Bitget, although I don't have that much crypto-specific experience, I did have a few years of fintech startup experience and got to know how this world works. So back to your point in terms of co-founding a company and finding that product-market fit, I think that's probably the most important thing that a co-founding team should focus on. Today this is an issue still in many crypto companies which rely too much on narrative, different layer one, layer two solutions, zk tech, sort of technology, not necessarily on very appropriate product-market fit. Like who exactly are we serving? What specific needs are we serving? But that's different in web two world. There isn't much room for narrative speculation in web two. You either make it or you're gone. You have to be able to identify your users and provide a top-notch user experience for them. So that's something I learned, although quite naive, but very important lesson that I learned in my early days of startup.

[laughter] Uh why is it naive? Because as a startup in my humble opinion, as a startup you have to solve a solution and you have to solve a need. It has to be a need, not even something people desire. So feasibility, viability, desirability of your product is so key in a startup. For example, on day one of my startup journey, I look at certain tools like a lean canvas, a business plan canvas. Either way, whatever framework you use in the entrepreneurship 101 class, it doesn't really matter which framework you use, but what matters is you have to look at who is your user, what's the current solution, what's the pain points, how do you make money, things like that. Again, in my opinion, very naive. But when I entered the crypto world, I noticed especially in early days, the ICO age, maybe it still worked in 2022-2023 kind of bear market with some projects building, and maybe in 2024ish the early bull market. But if you look at 2025, it doesn't really work anymore. Even if there are tokens that may perform okay or even well, it's short-term. If you don't have fundamental value, if you are not generating real utility, you can pump and dump your token price, but you can't do that sustainably in the long run. There are some recent launches of very highly expected layer ones and layer twos in the past few months, but many of them in terms of token price are not as high as early days, even you force under their private market investment. Some VCs complained about this a lot. I think for the past one year, many crypto industry people including projects, VCs, asset managers, or even exchanges feel it's just harder and harder to get users, hard to make money. And in my opinion, it will become even harder if you don't have proper product-market fit.