Welcome to Slate Sundays, CryptoSlate’s weekly characteristic showcasing in-depth interviews, skilled 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 girls 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 approach 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 vibrant 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 girls,” 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 folks 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 into a number one alternate with the biggest copy buying and selling platform and 120 million customers globally.
“My aim is to carry 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 examine, at 9 years previous, I used to be mainly 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 similar to a mini MBA, the place MBA stands for Grasp of Primary Autonomy. Lesson one: if you’d like noodles, you higher study to cook dinner them your self.”
Whereas her mom didn’t cross on her culinary abilities, she did take Gracy to lots of eating places, and, having studied at one of the best college within the area, she imparted three helpful classes:
“One: independence. Two: going after what you need. Three: how important it’s to get an training.”
Analysis has proven that educating girls 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 associate with UNICEF and be part of the Recreation Changers’ Coalition,” she enthuses.
Gracy’s rewriting the principles of inclusion in web3
The Recreation Changers’ Coalition seeks to advance digital training and gender equality by empowering girls and ladies in blockchain and web3. Along with UNICEF, Bitget will present scholarships, mentorship, and academic applications to 300,000 contributors throughout eight creating nations, together with Morocco, India, and Cambodia, with a long-term aim of reaching 1.1 million folks throughout 12 nations by 2027.
The initiative emphasizes constructing foundational abilities, supporting ladies as creators within the digital financial system, and creating a worldwide assist community. With such lofty targets, 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 ladies are underrepresented in our crypto group, however we need to rewrite the principles of inclusion in web3. The Recreation Changers’ Coalition is our subsequent step in doing that. If we need to have true equality, it’s important that every one these girls are given alternatives to find out about this new and paradigm-shifting expertise. “
This isn’t Gracy’s first foray into mentoring and supporting girls. Bitget launched its Blockchain4her initiative, spearheaded by Gracy, in January 2024, which focuses on “elevating, empowering, educating, and embracing” girls 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’ll do it, you are able to do it: Why altering perceptions is essential
I inform Gracy a few truth I heard that ladies CEOs usually need to undergo much more postings than their male counterparts, and that ladies in blockchain come up towards extra obstacles, reminiscent of widespread misogyny and stereotyping. On a couple of event at a convention or aspect occasion, I’ve been mistaken for the woman serving drinks.
In fact, educating girls is a stable initiative, I say, however when obstacles 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. Now we have an extended line of feminine ambassadors… We need to arrange these examples for females to know you can be one in every of 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 rather a lot in numerous panels, particularly once I’m in a panel with 5 completely different gents speaking about stablecoins or rules, or exchanges, or enterprise, et cetera. Individuals ask me rather a lot: 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 the best way to steadiness work and life? Issues like that about mindset altering are what we need to work towards.”
Are there ever instances when Gracy feels she’s taken much less severely as a feminine CEO or her opinion given much less weight?
“There may be circumstances the place I’m not taken severely, 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 particular different circumstances, particularly when it comes to advertising, the place being a lady grew to become a leverage, and a bonus.”
She provides the instance of a latest characteristic in Coindesk’s high 50 most influential girls in web3 and AI, among the many likes of Cathie Wooden and Cynthia Lummis. She shrugs:
“It simply provides me extra advertising 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 international progress
Gracy began at Bitget in 2022 as Managing Director and was promoted to CEO in Could 2024. I ask what imaginative and prescient she delivered to Bitget and what her goals have been approaching as CEO:
“My imaginative and prescient, and likewise a part of the founding workforce’s and better govt workforce’s imaginative and prescient, was to carry 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:
“At present, we’re certainly a worldwide alternate. We serve greater than 100 nations. Our personal staff come from greater than 42 completely different nations, 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 screen with the clock faces of a number of locations. She says:
“I actually have Los Angeles all the way in which 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 are 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 staff, or who didn’t outsource this job to their EAs. Appears, brains, wit, and respect for her fellow people. I feel I’m creating 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 progress this yr 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 present, we’re extra targeted on the institutional aspect as a result of we have been lagging when it comes to institutional shoppers, perhaps earlier than final yr.”
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 corporations 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 want to fulfill 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 nations 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 certainly one in every of them.” Bitget can be rolling out steady updates and tooling, reminiscent of unified buying and selling accounts, to make institutional shoppers really feel at dwelling.
“Institutional shoppers want extra dashboards. They want greater, sooner strains. In any other case, they only don’t need to be part of you. Unified buying and selling accounts is a brand new product we’re launching with a purpose 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 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 properly 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 can 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 the planet nonetheless leagues forward of China and a crypto adoption fee round 28%, does Bitget plan to pursue this profitable market now? Gracy pauses and measures her response.
“Now we have given lots of thought to serving the U.S. jurisdiction, perhaps 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 turning into extra crypto-friendly, passing the stablecoin invoice… rules round exchanges are nonetheless form of cooking, and we are able to’t make any determination based mostly on assumption or hypothesis.”
And what are Gracy’s ideas available on the market at this time? 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 essentially pushed by macroeconomic elements, together with M2 provide, like quantitative easing, and completely different fiscal and financial insurance policies all over the world, 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:
“For my part, you recognize, $100K, at this time’s Bitcoin worth, continues to be 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 straightforward because it was to lift capital and construct a challenge 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 challenge workforce isn’t doing very properly… At present, it’s a lot more durable as a result of you actually need to construct an applicable product and have plenty of customers. And I feel that may be a more healthy approach of individuals coming into this trade.”
Trying forward: What’s developing 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 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 rather a lot 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 belongings (RWAs). Gracy explains:
“What we see proper now could be, all the worldwide bank card networks have nearly a 3% to six% price 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 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 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 onerous on is AI; the best way to have AI bots and utilizing AI to streamline a few of our providers to detect fraud, or to serve our customers for efficiencies, these kinds of issues. So, AI and PayFi are among 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 emblem 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 onerous 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 correct factor and the best way to carry this firm ahead.”
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