Welcome to Slate Sundays, CryptoSlate’s weekly characteristic showcasing in-depth interviews, knowledgeable evaluation, and thought-provoking op-eds that transcend the headlines to discover the concepts and voices shaping the way forward for crypto.
Gracy Chen leaves fairly an impression. As the one feminine CEO among the many high 10 crypto exchanges, she’s effectively conscious of the challenges going through ladies leaders, and she or he’s decided to make use of her female wiles to her benefit. But, not like a few of her counterparts who yank up the step ladder on their approach up, Gracy lifts as she climbs—half of Bitget’s administration staff is feminine. As she jokes:
“That’s like discovering a Bitcoin pockets that didn’t get misplaced in a boating accident—uncommon, however wonderful.”
Bursting into the Bitget for UNICEF press convention in Dubai, in a vivid blue UNICEF cap, her charisma lights up the room. There are two male representatives from UNICEF Luxembourg current, however their innovation lead, Sunita Grote, is unable to attend. Her journey plans have been disrupted by rising regional tensions. “You don’t usually get males overlaying for ladies,” Gracy laughs, with a depraved glint in her eye.
Gracy’s humor is a strong weapon in her arsenal, and she or he makes use of it usually to place folks relaxed, together with a showstopping smile and killer mind. Underestimate her at your peril. With an MBA from MIT with a GMAT rating within the high 1% of the nation, Gracy’s as sharp as a razor.
Beneath her management, she’s taken Bitget out of relative obscurity to turn into a number one alternate with the biggest copy buying and selling platform and 120 million customers globally.
“My purpose is to convey Bitget to a better stage, to accumulate extra customers, and to construct stronger partnerships,” she says.
Gracy Chen is a grasp in fundamental autonomy and a Michelin-starred chef
If Gracy’s chosen profession path is uncommon, her background is equally unconventional, rising up in Southwest China with a powerful feminine function mannequin. She shares:
“I used to be so impressed by my mother, who was a single mom, but in addition an MBA. As a result of she was so busy along with her work and examine, at 9 years outdated, I used to be principally a Michelin-starred chef already. If a Michelin star means boiling immediate noodles with out burning the home down.”
She smiles:
“My childhood was very very like a mini MBA, the place MBA stands for Grasp of Fundamental Autonomy. Lesson one: if you would like noodles, you higher study to cook dinner them your self.”
Whereas her mom didn’t move on her culinary abilities, she did take Gracy to plenty of eating places, and, having studied at the very best college within the area, she imparted three useful classes:
“One: independence. Two: going after what you need. Three: how important it’s to get an training.”
Analysis has proven that educating ladies and women is vital to enhancing communities, Gracy explains, and even to rising a rustic’s GDP. “That’s why I used to be so excited to associate with UNICEF and be part of the Sport Changers’ Coalition,” she enthuses.
Gracy’s rewriting the principles of inclusion in web3
The Sport Changers’ Coalition seeks to advance digital training and gender equality by empowering ladies and women in blockchain and web3. Along with UNICEF, Bitget will present scholarships, mentorship, and academic applications to 300,000 members throughout eight growing international locations, together with Morocco, India, and Cambodia, with a long-term purpose of reaching 1.1 million folks throughout 12 international locations by 2027.
The initiative emphasizes constructing foundational abilities, supporting women as creators within the digital financial system, and growing a worldwide help community. With such lofty objectives, Bitget isn’t doing issues by half, however then, I quite doubt that Gracy would put her title on something much less.
“We all know that girls are underrepresented in our crypto neighborhood, however we wish to rewrite the principles of inclusion in web3. The Sport Changers’ Coalition is our subsequent step in doing that. If we wish to have true equality, it’s important that every one these ladies are given alternatives to study this new and paradigm-shifting expertise. “
This isn’t Gracy’s first foray into mentoring and supporting ladies. Bitget launched its Blockchain4her initiative, spearheaded by Gracy, in January 2024, which focuses on “elevating, empowering, educating, and embracing” ladies and making ready them to take management roles. Amongst its inspiring ambassadors are Gracy’s good buddy, Solana President Lily Liu, and Lighting Labs’ founder and CEO, Elizabeth Stark.
If they’ll do it, you are able to do it: Why altering perceptions is vital
I inform Gracy a couple of reality I heard that girls CEOs usually should undergo much more postings than their male counterparts, and that girls in blockchain come up towards further limitations, corresponding to widespread misogyny and stereotyping. On multiple event at a convention or facet occasion, I’ve been mistaken for the woman serving drinks.
In fact, educating ladies is a strong initiative, I say, however when limitations like this exist, how else will we go about altering these lingering perceptions? She sits for a second in quiet thought earlier than answering:
“That’s positively one of many objectives of Blockchain4her. It’s about constructing feminine function fashions and altering folks’s views. We’ve got an extended line of feminine ambassadors… We wish to arrange these examples for females to know which you could be one among them… if they’ll do it, you are able to do it.”
She continues:
“The opposite factor about altering the mindset is, I really say this lots in varied panels, particularly after I’m in a panel with 5 completely different gents speaking about stablecoins or rules, or exchanges, or enterprise, et cetera. Folks ask me lots: You’re a feminine CEO. How do you steadiness work and life? I’m like, why don’t you ask them? Additionally they have a household. Why don’t you ask them methods to steadiness work and life? Issues like that about mindset altering are what we wish to work towards.”
Are there ever occasions when Gracy feels she’s taken much less critically as a feminine CEO or her opinion given much less weight?
“There could be circumstances the place I’m not taken critically, and in these circumstances, I don’t actually care. I’ll simply show myself and do the fitting factor for me and the corporate. Additionally, there are specific different circumstances, particularly when it comes to advertising and marketing, the place being a lady grew to become a leverage, and a bonus.”
She provides the instance of a current characteristic in Coindesk’s high 50 most influential ladies in web3 and AI, among the many likes of Cathie Wooden and Cynthia Lummis. She shrugs:
“It simply provides me extra advertising and marketing alternatives. That’s what I imply by saying being a lady on this trade is each a blessing and a curse.”
Past the Arctic and Antarctica: Bitget’s quest for world progress
Gracy began at Bitget in 2022 as Managing Director and was promoted to CEO in Might 2024. I ask what imaginative and prescient she dropped at Bitget and what her goals had been approaching as CEO:
“My imaginative and prescient, and in addition a part of the founding staff’s and better government staff’s imaginative and prescient, was to convey the 2022 model of Bitget to a extra world platform.”
As a China-born alternate, Gracy was one of many “only a few” executives who spoke fluent English, and her function as Managing Director was to raise the Bitget model picture and affect globally. She affirms:
“At this time, we’re certainly a worldwide alternate. We serve greater than 100 international locations. Our personal workers come from greater than 42 completely different international locations, and passport holders, and we now have groups on each single continent apart from the Arctic and Antarctica.”
She unlocks her telephone and holds it up. “Right here,” she says, “I can simply rapidly present you.” I’m taking a look at a display with the clock faces of a number of locations. She says:
“I actually have Los Angeles all the way in which coated to Auckland in New Zealand. So I have to know the place everyone seems to be and if I have to have a gathering with them, what’s their time zone, what’s my time zone? Issues like which can be a great way of taking a look at how world we’re.”
That is the primary time I’ve come throughout a CEO or founder who gave a flying hoot about what time they referred to as their workers, or who didn’t outsource this process to their EAs. Appears to be like, brains, wit, and respect for her fellow people. I believe I’m growing a bit crush. She continues:
“Now, am I happy with all the outcomes? Are we world sufficient? I believe there are nonetheless methods to work and to enhance.”
A case-by-case foundation to raised serve institutional purchasers
Past onboarding worldwide customers and workers, a large chunk of Bitget’s progress this 12 months is pushed by establishments. Gracy says:
“I’m in conversations with plenty of market makers, VCs, some tokenized cash market funds, and all the assorted institutional partnerships we’re constructing. At this time, we’re extra targeted on the institutional facet as a result of we had been lagging when it comes to institutional purchasers, perhaps earlier than final 12 months.”
If Bitget was lagging within the institutional race, the alternate has rapidly caught up: 80% of Bitget’s spot quantity now comes from this group, and 80% of crypto quant companies are utilizing Bitget to commerce. What attracts them to the platform particularly, and the way does this affect the corporate’s method?
“This afternoon, really, I would like to fulfill native regulators to speak about us getting completely different licenses. Dubai is one area. Really, it’s not simply Dubai, it’s additionally Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, completely different international locations and jurisdictions we’re taking a look at to have conversations or we’ve had some conversations.”
She says that Bitget has modified its technique to accommodate institutional purchasers in a number of methods, however “compliance is unquestionably one among them.” Bitget can be rolling out steady updates and tooling, corresponding to unified buying and selling accounts, to make institutional purchasers really feel at dwelling.
“Institutional purchasers want extra dashboards. They want increased, sooner traces. In any other case, they only don’t wish to be part of you. Unified buying and selling accounts is a brand new product we’re launching with the intention to higher serve our institutional VIP purchasers.”
Since no two purchasers’ wants are equal, Bitget takes its institutional method on a case-by-case foundation. Gracy explains:
“Even when they’re all market makers, they’ve completely different preferences. Some need this, some need that. So what we do is rather like operating a restaurant, we give them a menu and so they can select this and that.”
She smiles as she returns to a restaurant analogy, a enterprise she seems to know effectively and thinks fondly of from her days boiling noodles and shadowing the footsteps of her superhero mother. I wish to ask if that’s the place Gracy could be if she hadn’t fallen down the crypto rabbithole, however I do know she doesn’t have a lot time, and we transfer on swiftly as a substitute.
Regulation, market cycles, and ballooning M2 provide
With a change of guard in Washington and a groundswell of help for crypto, we flip the dialog stateside. Crypto companies have been frozen out of Fortress America for much too lengthy, however with the biggest financial system on the earth nonetheless leagues forward of China and a crypto adoption price round 28%, does Bitget plan to pursue this profitable market now? Gracy pauses and measures her response.
“We’ve got given plenty of thought to serving the U.S. jurisdiction, perhaps beginning with a sure group of customers. However up to now, we haven’t determined whether or not we’ll enter the U.S. market. I don’t see that coming quickly. Even when the U.S. is changing into extra crypto-friendly, passing the stablecoin invoice… rules round exchanges are nonetheless sort of cooking, and we will’t make any resolution primarily based on assumption or hypothesis.”
And what are Gracy’s ideas available on the market right now? With Bitcoin grinding slowly up, then buying and selling sideways, and altcoins notably trailing, are we in a bull or a bear? For that matter, are we even in a standard cycle, or does Gracy subscribe to the supercycle thesis?
“My private opinion is that we don’t have the four-year bull-bear market anymore. We’re in a supercycle, and this supercycle is basically pushed by macroeconomic components, together with M2 provide, like quantitative easing, and completely different fiscal and financial insurance policies world wide, particularly within the U.S., Europe, and China.”
With U.S. M2 provide sustaining its agency trajectory of up and to the fitting, I suppose meaning Gracy expects Bitcoin’s value to considerably rise. She nods her head:
“For my part, you realize, $100K, right now’s Bitcoin value, remains to be buy value or entry value for individuals who don’t have any Bitcoin. I believe we’re in a supercycle. However supercycle for Bitcoin doesn’t imply supercycle for altcoins.”
Past Ethereum, Solana, and “perhaps another cash,” Gracy says it’s not as simple because it was once to boost capital and construct a venture that pulls and retains a significant person base.
“The very small cash are seeing plenty of issues proper now, particularly the older initiatives which were listed on many exchanges, however the venture staff isn’t doing very effectively… At this time, it’s a lot more durable as a result of you really want to construct an applicable product and have plenty of customers. And I believe that may be a more healthy approach of individuals getting into this trade.”
Wanting forward: What’s arising on Bitget’s horizon?
Past partaking with regulators and rising its worldwide and institutional base, what else is within the pipeline for Bitget?
“We’re not simply constructing an alternate,” Gracy insists, “we’re extra thinking about methods to serve our customers higher. What are their wants when it comes to buying and selling? What are their wants when it comes to each day actions? So we’re embedding lots round PayFi.”
PayFi is Bitget Pockets’s blockchain-based initiative to simplify crypto and real-world funds and financing by integrating DeFi and real-world property (RWAs). Gracy explains:
“What we see proper now’s, all the worldwide bank card networks have virtually a 3% to six% value per transaction that’s taken from merchandise and from the retail customers, and typically it takes three to 4 days to only settle a worldwide transaction. So plenty of effectivity, and cash, and time could be saved in these transactions by stablecoins and PayFi.”
She’s fast so as to add that Bitget will, “after all,” comply with all the mandatory procedures, together with Anti-Cash Laundering (AML), Know Your Buyer (KYC), and Know Your Enterprise (KYB). She provides:
“One other factor we’re working arduous on is AI; methods to have AI bots and utilizing AI to streamline a few of our companies to detect fraud, or to serve our customers for efficiencies, these types of issues. So, AI and PayFi are a number of the companies that we’re extra thinking about.”
Gracy has to fulfill with one other journalist earlier than her afternoon appointments, however she’s not too busy to insist on a photograph with me in entrance of Lionel Messi’s signed soccer shirt with the Bitget brand embossed on the entrance.
I ponder if the sort of interplay comes naturally to Gracy or whether or not she’s needed to work at it; and, for that matter, whether or not she’s needed to work at it twice as arduous as a person. She replies:
“Being a lady is who I’m and what I used to be born with. I don’t actually care what folks consider me. It’s extra about what’s the fitting factor and methods to convey this firm ahead.”
