How Bitget Is Merging AI, Crypto & TradFi in Universal Exchange Push

Thanks for having me, Laura. Hi everyone.

Sure. Yeah, in the crypto world we are very familiar with the term CEX and DEX, centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges. After the FTX collapse there were a lot of debate on whether there should be more DeFi trading, DEX, and maybe CEX have too much power because we are the custodial platform together with the trading platform and some users also have their assets on CEXs doing some earning etc. I think after three years after the FTX collapse things cooled down, definitely people still trust CEX. The DEX kind of market share went up about 20%, from it was probably like 5 to 10% to where it is today 20% in terms of total trading volume market share. But for us, a merge or a trend, a few trends that we observed from 2022 until maybe 2025, and that made us want to pivot to UEX. The trends being: the first one, again, DEX is becoming more popular especially for new tokens. A lot of people realize CEXs have a relatively tedious listing process and we do have team, we do have resource, for example we need to get the market maker ready when we need to list any centralized exchange's token. But still there are only probably 600, 700 tokens available on CEX trading. And Bitget, Binance, Coinbase may have slightly smaller range of tokens. And then what if people want to trade those tokens who are now listed, who are outside of this top 600, 700 tokens? So we embedded our ability from Bitget Wallet, which has already enabled on-chain kind of swap and tradings. That means again, outside of the 600 listed CEX tokens, people can trade them on DEX or decentralized wallets. So we embedded their ability into CEX and have our users be able to trade the decentralized tokens or much more choices out there. So that's the first trend: embedding or integrating CEX experience with the DEX options, the DEX tokens. The second trend that we saw especially from 2025 is the rise of RWAs, for example tokenized stocks, tokenized commodities like gold, silver, copper, oil etc. These are becoming more popular and it is of course people talk about that for a long time but it's until 2025 that we see some good players in the space, for example Backed, xStocks, and they both provide tokenized stocks with a relatively comprehensive structure of technology, using like oracles to feed the price and then auditing process. Every single stock, the underlying there is a specific SPV that holds the real stocks and then they mint and burn the tokens accordingly when the users need to trade them. So assets or players like this made RWAs and tokenized stocks and commodities more visible and more popular. So we also partnered with them to enable those assets on our platform. And then of course AI, we can chat more on AI, but basically these are the trends that we realize as an exchange ourselves. It's not really accurate to call ourselves just CEX because now we have all those DEX assets and we're not just serving crypto users, we're also serving some sort of like TradFi users or at least users who maybe want to use stablecoin to buy TradFi assets. That's why we think calling ourselves a CEX is not accurate and we pivoted to UEX, universal exchange, universally asset classes. We want to enable our users to trade, to be able to trade again universally valuable assets that includes forex, commodity, stocks together with cryptocurrencies. Yeah. So that's a very important strategy we shifted or we came up with in 2025. End of 2025, around September, in my seven-year CEO letter I wrote about UEX for the first time. And of course along the way we also see some, I would say, great minds share, great minds are alike. Coinbase and Brian Armstrong call it everything exchange. OKX is also in my opinion leading going to the same direction. NASDAQ last year also mentioned that they want to tokenize their US stocks and enable 24/5 trading hours, and NYSE this year January mentioned that they want to also head to that and enable 24/7, which is more aggressive in terms of trading hours. So we are all building towards this kind of trading platform that provide RWA assets, more tokenized options, using blockchain to settle the transactions and broker the unbrokered, I would call that maybe short. So that's the UEX world that we are building.

Yeah. So Bitget started off seven years ago, seven and a half years ago, which was mainly based in Asia. For that reason even until today we do have more than half of our users being Asians, East Asia, Southeast Asia. Some areas that we see a lot of growth for the past few years. Then I think in 2022 which is exactly the same year when I joined Bitget, when we started globalization. So since then we have more users coming from the world, LatAm, Europe, we see some growth there. In 2022 we did struggle whether we should have a big US kind of setting in the United States but that was still a question around the FTX time but after that we decided not to go into the US market. We even ended lots of collaborations and development in the US market with for example partners or KOLs. But this year 2026 we are reconsidering entering the US. So hopefully there might be some interesting and good news coming up about the specific US market end of this year or later in the first half of 2027. But other than the US we are quite globalized. I would say we serve more than 100 different countries and regions in terms of our users profile. But again Asia is a big base that we have. Then back to your second part of the question around the UEX transition for users. I actually want to clarify because this could be a common misunderstanding that is Bitget still a crypto exchange or is Bitget like directly competing with companies like Robinhood or in Asia there's Futu, Moomoo, they're the same company but with different brands, the more local brands versus more global brands, but basically some traditional brokers are they our direct competitors? I wouldn't say, I wouldn't agree to that. We are still serving the need of our users who hold stablecoin rather than fiat currency. Also when they trade even if it's traditional financial asset classes for example US stocks, it is tokenized US stocks rather than direct US stocks because the traditional financial world has been around for what 400 years, yes, that leads to the first stock exchange in Amsterdam in Netherlands. But for the past, less than a century, the financial world hasn't evolved a lot. It's still on the quite T plus two kind of settlement period. You need to have a quite tedious process to open account etc. In our opinion, we don't want to go back to that old financial system. We think blockchain, just like how stablecoin and cross-border transactions are much faster and cheaper than traditional cross-border transactions. Similarly, the current tokenized stocks and tokenized world, probably liquidity wise we can improve but in terms of the settlement and the technology itself is just faster and cheaper and more advanced. So we're still focusing on enabling the crypto users. The major difference is they used to use stablecoin for example USDT, USDC to purchase cryptocurrencies on us. But now we want them to use stablecoin to trade many other asset classes. But again, want to clarify it's still mainly crypto users and the tokenized version of everything rather than going back to the traditional financial world of settlement etc. And then in 2025 and 2026 after we rolled out UEX we did see a slightly structural shift in terms of we have more VIP clients, we have more institutional clients interested in this goal, still again still crypto users but many VIP clients shifted some of their money at other exchanges or even at traditional financial brokers to Bitget because they can now trade all the different assets in under one umbrella, under one room. And then yeah, it's just slightly different over there in terms of selling more valued assets, more valued clients and more VIP clients.

Well honestly it's not because it's not that I don't want to tell you. It's indeed we haven't decided. We're still in the period of time of acquiring some licenses and talking to our local partners. That's why I estimated this will only be done later end of this year or earlier in 2027 maybe after a year later. Right now in Q2 and Q1 our key focus in terms of compliance and global expansion is actually to get the MiCA license and the Dubai VARA license. Actually the Dubai VARA license was supposed to be done in Q1 but given the war in the region it's definitely delayed to Q2. But for the first half of the year those are the key things. But what I am able to share is that when we are thinking about the US strategy we don't necessarily plan to do it just by ourselves. We will definitely do it with some partners. Whether it's a joint venture kind of setting or we acquire some partners etc to build that foundation are both feasible. So rather than ourselves applying all the licenses by ourselves I think it would take a much longer time if not a lot more money as well but yeah that's roughly the current plan.

Yeah. You are very updated because we just announced our Bitget Agent Hub I think within 24 hours for today's stream. Thank you for doing that. Yeah so a key thing is we do see AI evolve a lot for the past what, since 2022 end of 2022 when ChatGPT came out right, from the stage of only chatbot to start with then to more protocol like Anthropic MCP and then to more things like ClawHub and GPTs that provide skills, some domain expert skills and reusable capability modules to where it is now. That's why OpenClaw is so popular because OpenClaw has the persistent memory, has the active, more active and multi-agent collaboration, cross-platform collaboration. So in my opinion OpenClaw is probably the first open-source framework that can successfully integrate all these abilities of chatbot, MCP, skills, agent etc that can be included into one deployable system. And then we see a lot of potential in that in terms of helping our users make better investment decisions or trading decisions because those OpenClaw or this kind of operating system, agent OS we call it, agent OS kind of setting can really understand our users' own portfolio goals, behavior habits etc so that help them make a better decision. That's one thing we are heavily investing in and very, I would say pretty fast in terms of rolling out our OpenClaw platform as well as integrating many abilities to help our users trade better. Another thing is our AI team which was formed earlier last year actually rolled out more than 25 different scenarios within Bitget where AI are used. For example, customer service, translation. Those are simple things that anyone can think of. But maybe more subtle kind of applications of AI in terms of a CEX or UEX kind of setting could be know your transaction, KYT, in order to detect fraud or any potential risk from hack or from sanctioned accounts etc. KYT that's one thing. A lot of marketing campaigns that they actually just rolled out a Gracy AI a few weeks ago and that was just a fun experimental project that AI team put me in, you know, cute avatar and they collected my voice and made an AI voice of mine and also the whole memory of Gracy was built on my past interviews and my opinions not just for crypto but also for some like personal growth, career advice, etc. Anyway, it's some fun project that we rolled out and then GetAgent is a more serious kind of chatbot that help our users make better trading decisions. You know, all these things that we realize we have accumulated a lot of ability and it's time to share with our clients what all these different AI tools can do. And that's why we put out all the, I think we published 58 tools in nine major different modules to cover the whole trading life cycle in terms of different products like spot products, futures product, copy trading, earn, P2P etc and using all these different skills that we mentioned earlier, MCP, API, chatbot etc.

Sure. Yeah. Morph Chain, we know the team for a long time. We were initially their investor for I think two, three years ago. And basically last year when we were navigating our strategy for globalization and probably for potentially, it's probably not a secret anymore but it's also not highlighted that in the upcoming maybe two, three years we are looking for potentially getting listed in the US. So BGB became a platform token for a long time even before I joined the company but if we have a token on ourselves it could be a little bit of conflict of interest if we also looking for an IPO plan. So that's part of the reasons that we thought about transferring the ownership of BGB. But even if we transferred all the BGB to Morph Foundation, Bitget, Bitget Wallet and Morph we are still supporting BGB as ecosystem providers especially us as the exchange where we have a lot of BGB use scenarios for launchpool, launchpad, for VIP users to get a discount etc. Those things remain unchanged. Yeah but the key thing is we do want to separate BGB from Bitget and we thought holding it to Morph Foundation is a good plan because we know the layer 2 very early, we are one of their investors and incubators. I think Dragonfly backed them up as well and along the way supported us many of the important decisions we made including this one.

Rob, do you want to go ahead?

It's understandable that will appeal to these different parts of the world, or is it also true that this is a founder who understands how to reach different types of customers? And that's really important as well. And so these are the types of things that we are focused on when we want to invest. But it's also true that we're seeing a lot of growth now in the US as it's become more acceptable here and as we've seen tailwinds behind the administration and from a regulatory perspective. And so the idea is that crypto is really just different across regions in the way that user behavior is different across regions and the customer is different across regions. But so when you invest, you have to invest with the mindset and the understanding of how those customers behave in these different places of the world and how much adoption has taken place in those different places in the world. And so that's the way we like to think through.

Instead of Gracie, I actually just wrote out Gracie AI and asked my AI the same question: how do crypto users differ from each other in terms of the west and the east side of the market? Well, Gracie AI said there are a few key differences. First, investment philosophy and time horizon, where western users tend to have a longer-term investment perspective, view crypto more as a store of value or portfolio diversification, while eastern users show slightly more trading or speculative behavior. Second, risk appetite and leverage use. Third, asset preference. Fourth, regulatory mindset that Rob also mentioned. Fifth, community and social influence. I find it interesting that sometimes I also forget how many interviews I've done in the last four years and how Gracie AI just collected all those information, which I actually agree. So to build on what Gracie AI shared, the real Gracie, I would think before crypto, when we were only doing crypto, the major difference that we saw, I very much aligned with what Gracie AI was sharing. For example, some social or tap-to-earn kind of gamified activities were much more active in Asia. For example, we all know Axie Infinity was a very successful project at that time where most of the users came from Southeast Asia. And tap-to-earn Telegram kind of era, end of 2024, we also saw a lot of users from Asia and even Africa. Tap-to-earn is relatively easier, but of course it's not that popular nowadays especially with the introduction of AI. But basically these kind of trends are quite obvious when we only serve the crypto market. But now adding the RWA markets or the universal exchange kind of vision, in terms of RWA or TradFi assets, I kind of see at least the users who are trading RWA, for example tokenized stocks on Bitget, whether they come from east or west doesn't make a huge difference. By default, our RWA, especially tokenized US stocks, do attract more Asian users than western users because western users probably already have very good access to some US-based brokers or European-based brokers such as Robinhood. But many Asian clients, especially based in East Asia, some of them have very limited access due to capital control or it's hard to open an account, etc. So they tend to trade a lot of tokenized US stocks with us. But the trading behavior is a little bit similar in terms of the winner takes it all. The M7 stocks or some more ETF kind of stocks like QQQ are taking the major share of those trading. Probably the top 10 tokenized stocks on Bitget take about 80% of the total trading volume, although we provide more than 200 stocks to our users. So in terms of the RWA kind of asset classes, so far we don't see that much difference in west and the east. But when it was only purely crypto users, I would say I generally agree with what Gracie AI said and it's probably a quite comprehensive and thorough coverage of how the two markets can be different.

Agree. I think right now, first of all, I would say the tension in the Middle East actually feels very personal to me because we do have an office in Dubai and I've been to all these places that were affected during the war. Bahrain, Dubai, Qatar, actually you name it, just every single country. And then even in Dubai, all these places that were hit. For example, three months ago, I was just walking on JBR Beach with my 7-year-old son and my mother and we just passed the Fairmont Hotel every day admiring the Palm Tree pool. And now the same hotel was hit, had a fire at the courtyard because of the debris from the intercepted missile. So the whole kind of instability or geopolitical tension feels extremely real and of course it's impacting the global market. And this directly affects how I invest in general because right now I would say risk-off sentiment and diversification is no longer just a buzzword. It's a necessity. You can't put all your faith in one region or one asset. And of course for us, we are quite convinced that our users should diversify and they should look for different asset classes, not just crypto. And especially Bitcoin is more of a risky asset today than a risk-off asset. But also diversify into some other global asset classes including commodity. And then back to Bitcoin itself. Do you have a follow-up question, Laura?

Okay. Sure. Yeah. So for Bitcoin itself, I would say right now, 60K to 70K kind of price range is actually a good time to do dollar cost averaging. And I do think everyone should have a personal goal for Bitcoin accumulation, you know, buy one Bitcoin if they just started off, or 10 or 50 or 100. Although Bitcoin wasn't outperforming gold last year nor right now, I do believe it will. It is the millennials' digital gold and it is a pure capture or reflection of liquidity. So if we'll chat more on Warsh, but basically if the new Fed, in terms of the monetary and fiscal policy, if we have more QE, quantitative easing, and the interest rate cut, I think Bitcoin will catch up with gold, etc. So I personally still highly believe in Bitcoin's growth trajectory and think it's a worthy investment especially if you have a relatively long time horizon, three to five years, etc. But if you're waiting for Bitcoin to just go up right away, very short term, if you're very impatient, I would say it's probably not an asset class that will take a little bit of time.

Honestly, I want Rob to cover this question more because I think he knows the US market and he probably has some access to some policy makers and deeper views than I am for sure. But my quick three cents would be, I feel the market has already priced in the fact that Warsh is a hawk and that's probably the main reason that drove Bitcoin down from where it was 95K to where it is now 65K, that's a huge drop. Of course when liquidity was pretty weak after 10/10 last year, the largest single day liquidation, any kind of bad news could be pretty bad. But similarly, any kind of good news could be pretty good and the market could be quite volatile. But I don't have very strong opinion or any sort of insight on the new Fed chairperson other than what the market already knows.

I'll start since 10/10 kind of has a lot to do with one of the CEXs, especially the technical glitch there. So in terms of 10/10, what happened exactly, we kind of all know already. It was triggered by a sudden macroeconomic event when Trump mentioned that he will start a new trade war with China, although that kind of cooled down later. But then the technical glitch that happened mainly on Binance caused a lot of issues. During, by the way, it was also a liquidity vacuum I will call, because it was I think in Asia Saturday morning and then the US market is also closed. So the whole liquidity is very weak and it's mainly reflected on crypto since crypto is a 24/7 market that was one of the major asset classes that was still open. And then a lot of high leverage in CEX or in certain DeFi protocols went wrong, especially I would highlight USDE, but USDE was mainly having a liquidity issue on, sorry, the so-called delta hedging on Binance rather than DeFi platform. I think Hasu tweeted a lot on that clarification which I totally agree. But other than USDE, there were some B-wrapped or BNO which are wrapped versions of Solana and Ethereum that were highly de-pegged from the original asset, Solana or Ethereum, and that caused some more liquidity issues and then altcoins were down. So that was probably the main things that happened on 10/10 or 10/11 depending on your time zone, but I would call it a series of things that triggered together, triggered by the macroeconomic event together with the high leverage structure, liquidity vacuum, technical glitch, uncertainty, etc. So it's not just like one thing happened, but yes the whole world looks very different after 10/10.

Universal exchange.

Okay. I'll just quickly build on what Laura mentioned around my very bold statement about altcoins. Yeah, of course it sounds a little bit extreme, especially as a CEO of one of the largest UEX or CEX. Crypto or altcoins are the foundation of our business. Saying they are dead is a little bit too much I would say. But my point is in general investing in altcoins, on average, it's harder to outperform Bitcoin. Still there will be a lot of altcoins that have growth opportunities. They are seriously building on something. Dragonfly should make a lot of investment into that space as well. And then in terms of AI plus crypto kind of altcoins, I do struggle with this actually. A year ago I made a prediction in January that with the development of AI, those AI altcoins could be a growth sector and even could be the only growth sector. I was only half right about that. AI is growing very very fast but the AI altcoins are not. If we compare for example CoinGecko AI sector kind of all the altcoins market cap, it's only half at end of the year than the beginning of the year in 2025. So that kind of ties back to when I said altcoins are dead. It's very hard for altcoins to grow in terms of market share. Bitcoin is becoming more and more dominant. If you look at the total market cap and then there are so many altcoins coming up every day, especially with platforms like Pump.fun, it's so easy to issue a token, an altcoin token. So with the market total size being same or even shrinking since Bitcoin is more dominating, institutional adoption only goes to the major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, the market of altcoins is shrinking but the quantity of the altcoins is growing. So each individual altcoin just by mathematics itself should be shrinking and that's what I mean by altcoins are dead or it's harder to invest. But now with AI, I think again nobody will doubt the trend of AI. But I still doubt the trend of AI tokens or AI altcoins. First of all, many very good AI products like OpenAI, they are not issuing a token. And then many so-called AI projects or AI altcoins are not really doing a good job in terms of providing their AI services. So that's what I struggle with and I still remain relatively negative towards that sector. But one sector that I am optimistic is we touched upon that earlier in terms of how AI agents kind of communication and growth can enable more cross-agent transfer using stablecoins or using cryptocurrency. So that is a sector that I'm optimistic. But if we're talking about some project that claims that they're building AI, the AI tool, AI agent, to me, many of them look more like just a memecoin, just an AI meme. Sorry if this kind of provokes some arguments around altcoins, around some projects who are really building. I do again think there are many good projects who are seriously building but it's just harder and harder to find them out.

Thanks, Laura.