Welcome to Slate Sundays, CryptoSlate’s weekly characteristic 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 effectively conscious of the challenges dealing with ladies leaders, and he or she’s decided to make use of her female wiles to her benefit. But, in contrast to 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 workforce 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 brilliant 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 he or she makes use of it usually to place individuals comfy, 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 out to be a number one change with the biggest copy buying and selling platform and 120 million customers globally.
“My objective is to deliver Bitget to the next degree, to amass 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 position 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 principally a Michelin-starred chef already. If a Michelin star means boiling on the spot 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 prepare dinner them your self.”
Whereas her mom didn’t cross on her culinary expertise, she did take Gracy to loads of eating places, and, having studied at the perfect college within the area, she imparted three invaluable classes:
“One: independence. Two: going after what you need. Three: how important it’s to get an schooling.”
Analysis has proven that educating ladies and ladies is essential to enhancing communities, Gracy explains, and even to rising a rustic’s GDP. “That’s why I used to be so excited to companion 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 schooling and gender equality by empowering ladies and ladies in blockchain and web3. Along with UNICEF, Bitget will present scholarships, mentorship, and academic packages to 300,000 individuals throughout eight growing international locations, together with Morocco, India, and Cambodia, with a long-term objective of reaching 1.1 million individuals throughout 12 international locations by 2027.
The initiative emphasizes constructing foundational expertise, supporting ladies as creators within the digital economic system, and growing a worldwide help community. With such lofty objectives, Bitget isn’t doing issues by half, however then, I reasonably doubt that Gracy would put her title on something much less.
“We all know that girls are underrepresented in our crypto neighborhood, however we need to rewrite the foundations of inclusion in web3. The Sport Changers’ Coalition is our subsequent step in doing that. If we need 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 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 essential
I inform Gracy a couple of reality I heard that girls CEOs usually must undergo much more postings than their male counterparts, and that girls in blockchain come up towards extra boundaries, equivalent 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 stable initiative, I say, however when boundaries 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 undoubtedly one of many objectives of Blockchain4her. It’s about constructing feminine position fashions and altering individuals’s views. We’ve a protracted line of feminine ambassadors… We need to arrange these examples for females to know which you can be one in all 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 numerous panels, particularly after I’m in a panel with 5 completely 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 stability work and life? I’m like, why don’t you ask them? In addition they have a household. Why don’t you ask them the best way to stability work and life? Issues like that about mindset altering are what we need to work towards.”
Are there ever occasions when Gracy feels she’s taken much less significantly as a feminine CEO or her opinion given much less weight?
“There could be circumstances the place I’m not taken significantly, 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 when it comes to advertising and marketing, the place being a lady turned a leverage, and a bonus.”
She provides the instance of a latest 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 business is each a blessing and a curse.”
Past the Arctic and Antarctica: Bitget’s quest for international 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 delivered to Bitget and what her aims have been approaching as CEO:
“My imaginative and prescient, and in addition a part of the founding workforce’s and better govt workforce’s imaginative and prescient, was to deliver the 2022 model of Bitget to a extra international platform.”
As a China-born change, Gracy was one of many “only a few” executives who spoke fluent English, and her position as Managing Director was to raise the Bitget model picture and affect globally. She affirms:
“Immediately, we’re certainly a worldwide change. We serve greater than 100 international locations. Our personal workers come from greater than 42 completely different international locations, and passport holders, and we have now 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 best way lined 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 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 known as their workers, or who didn’t outsource this process to their EAs. Appears, brains, wit, and respect for her fellow people. I feel I’m growing somewhat 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 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 a number of market makers, VCs, some tokenized cash market funds, and all the assorted institutional partnerships we’re constructing. Immediately, we’re extra centered on the institutional facet as a result of we have been lagging when it comes to institutional purchasers, perhaps earlier than final 12 months.”
If Bitget was lagging within the institutional race, the change 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 strategy?
“This afternoon, really, I would like to satisfy native regulators to speak about us getting completely different licenses. Dubai is one area. Truly, 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 in all them.” Bitget can be rolling out steady updates and tooling, equivalent to unified buying and selling accounts, to make institutional purchasers really feel at residence.
“Institutional purchasers want extra dashboards. They want greater, quicker strains. In any other case, they simply don’t need 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 strategy 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 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 effectively and thinks fondly of from her days boiling noodles and shadowing the footsteps of her superhero mother. I need 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 economic system on the planet 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 given loads 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 are going to 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 form of cooking, and we will’t make any resolution primarily based on assumption or hypothesis.”
And what are Gracy’s ideas in the marketplace at the 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 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 correct, I assume meaning Gracy expects Bitcoin’s worth to considerably rise. She nods her head:
“For my part, you realize, $100K, at the moment’s Bitcoin worth, remains to be a great buy worth or entry worth for individuals 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 “perhaps another cash,” Gracy says it’s not as simple because it was once to lift capital and construct a venture that draws and retains a significant person base.
“The very small cash are seeing a number of issues proper now, particularly the older tasks which were listed on many exchanges, however the venture workforce is just not doing very effectively… Immediately, it’s a lot more durable as a result of you actually need to construct an applicable product and have a number of customers. And I feel that could be a more healthy means of individuals coming into this business.”
Trying forward: What’s developing on Bitget’s horizon?
Past participating with regulators and rising its worldwide and institutional base, what else is within the pipeline for Bitget?
“We’re not simply constructing an change,” Gracy insists, “we’re extra thinking about the best way to serve our customers higher. What are their wants when it comes to buying and selling? What are their wants when it comes to 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’s, 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 typically it takes three to 4 days to simply settle a worldwide transaction. So a number of effectivity, and cash, and time may be saved in these transactions by stablecoins and PayFi.”
She’s fast so as to add that Bitget will, “in fact,” observe 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 laborious on is AI; the best way 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 kinds of issues. So, AI and PayFi are a few of the companies that we’re extra thinking about.”
Gracy has to satisfy 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 one of these 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 laborious 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 individuals consider me. It’s extra about what’s the correct factor and the best way to deliver this firm ahead.”