Welcome to Slate Sundays, CryptoSlate’s weekly function showcasing in-depth interviews, professional 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 properly conscious of the challenges going through ladies leaders, and he or she’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 means up, Gracy lifts as she climbs—half of Bitget’s administration crew is feminine. As she jokes:
“That’s like discovering a Bitcoin pockets that didn’t get misplaced in a boating accident—uncommon, however superb.”
Bursting into the Bitget for UNICEF press convention in Dubai, in a shiny 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 protecting for ladies,” Gracy laughs, with a depraved glint in her eye.
Gracy’s humor is a robust weapon in her arsenal, and he or she makes use of it usually to place folks comfortable, 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.
Below her management, she’s taken Bitget out of relative obscurity to turn out to be 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 degree, to amass extra customers, and to construct stronger partnerships,” she says.
Gracy Chen is a grasp in primary 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 robust 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 research, at 9 years previous, I used to be mainly a Michelin-starred chef already. If a Michelin star means boiling prompt noodles with out burning the home down.”
She smiles:
“My childhood was very very similar to a mini MBA, the place MBA stands for Grasp of Fundamental Autonomy. Lesson one: in order for you noodles, you higher be taught to cook dinner them your self.”
Whereas her mom didn’t go on her culinary abilities, she did take Gracy to lots of eating places, and, having studied at the very best college within the area, she imparted three beneficial 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 ladies is vital to bettering 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 foundations of inclusion in web3
The Sport Changers’ Coalition seeks to advance digital training and gender equality by empowering ladies and ladies in blockchain and web3. Along with UNICEF, Bitget will present scholarships, mentorship, and academic applications to 300,000 contributors 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 ladies as creators within the digital financial system, and growing a world assist community. With such lofty targets, Bitget isn’t doing issues by half, however then, I slightly doubt that Gracy would put her identify on something much less.
“We all know that girls are underrepresented in our crypto group, however we wish to rewrite the foundations 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 find out about 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 getting ready them to take management roles. Amongst its inspiring ambassadors are Gracy’s good pal, Solana President Lily Liu, and Lighting Labs’ founder and CEO, Elizabeth Stark.
If they will do it, you are able to do it: Why altering perceptions is vital
I inform Gracy a couple of truth I heard that girls CEOs sometimes should undergo much more postings than their male counterparts, and that girls in blockchain come up in opposition to further limitations, akin to widespread misogyny and stereotyping. On multiple event at a convention or facet occasion, I’ve been mistaken for the girl serving drinks.
After all, educating ladies is a stable initiative, I say, however when limitations like this exist, how else can we go about altering these lingering perceptions? She sits for a second in quiet thought earlier than answering:
“That’s positively one of many targets 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 that you may be one in every of them… if they will do it, you are able to do it.”
She continues:
“The opposite factor about altering the mindset is, I really say this quite a bit in varied panels, particularly after I’m in a panel with 5 totally different gents speaking about stablecoins or rules, or exchanges, or enterprise, et cetera. Individuals ask me quite a bit: 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 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 may 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 correct factor for me and the corporate. Additionally, there are specific different circumstances, particularly by way of advertising, the place being a girl turned a leverage, and a bonus.”
She offers the instance of a latest function 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 offers me extra advertising alternatives. That’s what I imply by saying being a girl on this trade is each a blessing and a curse.”
Past the Arctic and Antarctica: Bitget’s quest for international development
Gracy began at Bitget in 2022 as Managing Director and was promoted to CEO in Could 2024. I ask what imaginative and prescient she dropped at Bitget and what her aims had been approaching as CEO:
“My imaginative and prescient, and in addition a part of the founding crew’s and better government crew’s imaginative and prescient, was to convey the 2022 model of Bitget to a extra international 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:
“Right this moment, we’re certainly a world alternate. We serve greater than 100 international locations. Our personal staff come from greater than 42 totally different international locations, and passport holders, and we’ve got 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 shortly 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 best way 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 might be a great way of taking a look at how international 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 staff, or who didn’t outsource this process to their EAs. Appears, brains, wit, and respect for her fellow people. I feel I’m growing just a little crush. She continues:
“Now, am I glad with all the outcomes? Are we international sufficient? I feel there are nonetheless methods to work and to enhance.”
A case-by-case foundation to higher serve institutional shoppers
Past onboarding worldwide customers and staff, a large chunk of Bitget’s development 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. Right this moment, we’re extra centered on the institutional facet as a result of we had been lagging by way of institutional shoppers, possibly earlier than final 12 months.”
If Bitget was lagging within the institutional race, the alternate has shortly 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 strategy?
“This afternoon, really, I would like to fulfill native regulators to speak about us getting totally different licenses. Dubai is one area. Really, it’s not simply Dubai, it’s additionally Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, totally 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 shoppers in a number of methods, however “compliance is unquestionably one in every of them.” Bitget can be rolling out steady updates and tooling, akin to unified buying and selling accounts, to make institutional shoppers really feel at residence.
“Institutional shoppers want extra dashboards. They want increased, quicker traces. In any other case, they simply don’t wish to be part of you. Unified buying and selling accounts is a brand new product we’re launching as a way to higher serve our institutional VIP shoppers.”
Since no two shoppers’ wants are equal, Bitget takes its institutional strategy on a case-by-case foundation. Gracy explains:
“Even when they’re all market makers, they’ve totally different preferences. Some need this, some need that. So what we do is rather like working 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 grasp properly 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 an alternative.
Regulation, market cycles, and ballooning M2 provide
With a change of guard in Washington and a groundswell of assist for crypto, we flip the dialog stateside. Crypto companies have been frozen out of Fortress America for a lot too lengthy, however with the biggest financial system on this planet nonetheless leagues forward of China and a crypto adoption charge round 28%, does Bitget plan to pursue this profitable market now? Gracy pauses and measures her response.
“We’ve got given lots of thought to serving the U.S. jurisdiction, possibly beginning with a sure group of customers. However thus far, 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 type of cooking, and we are able to’t make any choice primarily based on assumption or hypothesis.”
And what are Gracy’s ideas in the marketplace right this moment? 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 conventional 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 elements, together with M2 provide, like quantitative easing, and totally different fiscal and financial insurance policies around the globe, particularly within the U.S., Europe, and China.”
With U.S. M2 provide sustaining its agency trajectory of up and to the correct, I suppose meaning Gracy expects Bitcoin’s worth to considerably rise. She nods her head:
“In my view, you already know, $100K, right this moment’s Bitcoin worth, continues to be an excellent buy worth or entry worth for many who don’t have any Bitcoin. I feel we’re in a supercycle. However supercycle for Bitcoin doesn’t imply supercycle for altcoins.”
Past Ethereum, Solana, and “possibly another cash,” Gracy says it’s not as straightforward because it was to boost capital and construct a venture that pulls and retains a significant consumer base.
“The very small cash are seeing plenty of issues proper now, particularly the older initiatives which have been listed on many exchanges, however the venture crew will not be doing very properly… Right this moment, 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 feel that may be a more healthy means of individuals coming into this trade.”
Trying 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 serious about serve our customers higher. What are their wants by way of buying and selling? What are their wants by way of day by day actions? So we’re embedding quite a bit 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 could be, all the worldwide bank card networks have nearly a 3% to six% value per transaction that’s taken from merchandise and from the retail customers, and generally it takes three to 4 days to only settle a world 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, “in fact,” comply with all the required procedures, together with Anti-Cash Laundering (AML), Know Your Buyer (KYC), and Know Your Enterprise (KYB). She provides:
“One other factor we’re working exhausting on is AI; have AI bots and utilizing AI to streamline a few of our companies to detect fraud, or to serve our customers for efficiencies, these kinds of issues. So, AI and PayFi are a few of the companies that we’re extra serious 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’m wondering if this 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 exhausting as a person. She replies:
“Being a girl 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 correct factor and convey this firm ahead.”
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