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 prime 10 crypto exchanges, she’s properly conscious of the challenges dealing with 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 method 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 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 typically 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 typically to place individuals 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 prime 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 trade with the most important copy buying and selling platform and 120 million customers globally.
“My purpose is to convey Bitget to a better stage, 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 powerful feminine function mannequin. She shares:
“I used to be so impressed by my mother, who was a single mom, but additionally 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 instantaneous 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 Primary Autonomy. Lesson one: if you need noodles, you higher study to cook dinner them your self.”
Whereas her mom didn’t move on her culinary expertise, she did take Gracy to numerous eating places, and, having studied at the perfect college within the area, she imparted three priceless 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 women 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 accomplice 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 women in blockchain and web3. Along with UNICEF, Bitget will present scholarships, mentorship, and academic packages to 300,000 contributors throughout eight growing nations, together with Morocco, India, and Cambodia, with a long-term purpose of reaching 1.1 million individuals throughout 12 nations by 2027.
The initiative emphasizes constructing foundational expertise, 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 moderately doubt that Gracy would put her identify on something much less.
“We all know that ladies are underrepresented in our crypto group, however we wish to rewrite the principles of inclusion in web3. The Recreation Changers’ Coalition is our subsequent step in doing that. If we wish to have true equality, it’s important that each one these girls are given alternatives to find out about this new and paradigm-shifting know-how. “
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 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 few truth I heard that ladies CEOs sometimes need to undergo much more postings than their male counterparts, and that ladies in blockchain come up towards further boundaries, equivalent to widespread misogyny and stereotyping. On multiple event at a convention or aspect occasion, I’ve been mistaken for the girl serving drinks.
After all, educating girls is a stable initiative, I say, however when boundaries 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 undoubtedly one of many objectives of Blockchain4her. It’s about constructing feminine function fashions and altering individuals’s views. We now have an extended line of feminine ambassadors… We wish to arrange these examples for females to know that you would be able to be one in all them… if they’ll do it, you are able to do it.”
She continues:
“The opposite factor about altering the mindset is, I truly say this quite a bit in numerous panels, particularly once I’m in a panel with 5 completely different gents speaking about stablecoins or laws, or exchanges, or enterprise, et cetera. Folks 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? Additionally they have a household. Why don’t you ask them learn how to stability 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 is perhaps 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 particular different circumstances, particularly by way of advertising, the place being a lady turned a leverage, and a bonus.”
She offers the instance of a latest characteristic in Coindesk’s prime 50 most influential girls 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 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 dropped at Bitget and what her aims have been approaching as CEO:
“My imaginative and prescient, and in addition a part of the founding staff’s and better govt staff’s imaginative and prescient, was to convey the 2022 model of Bitget to a extra international platform.”
As a China-born trade, 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:
“In the present day, we’re certainly a worldwide trade. We serve greater than 100 nations. Our personal staff come from greater than 42 completely different nations, and passport holders, and we’ve groups on each single continent apart from the Arctic and Antarctica.”
She unlocks her cellphone and holds it up. “Right here,” she says, “I can simply shortly present you.” I’m a display 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 must know the place everyone seems to be and if I must have a gathering with them, what’s their time zone, what’s my time zone? Issues like which might be a great way of 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 believe I’m growing slightly crush. She continues:
“Now, am I happy with all the outcomes? Are we international sufficient? I believe there are nonetheless methods to work and to enhance.”
A case-by-case foundation to raised serve institutional shoppers
Past onboarding worldwide customers and staff, 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 varied institutional partnerships we’re constructing. In the present day, we’re extra targeted on the institutional aspect as a result of we have been lagging by way of institutional shoppers, perhaps earlier than final 12 months.”
If Bitget was lagging within the institutional race, the trade 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 method?
“This afternoon, truly, I would like 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 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 all them.” Bitget can be rolling out steady updates and tooling, equivalent to unified buying and selling accounts, to make institutional shoppers really feel at house.
“Institutional shoppers want extra dashboards. They want greater, quicker 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 in an effort to higher serve our institutional VIP shoppers.”
Since no two shoppers’ 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 they usually 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 wish 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 help for crypto, we flip the dialog stateside. Crypto companies have been frozen out of Fortress America for much too lengthy, however with the most important financial system on the 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 now have given numerous thought to serving the U.S. jurisdiction, perhaps beginning with a sure group of customers. However to this point, 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… laws round exchanges are nonetheless sort of cooking, and we are able to’t make any resolution based mostly on assumption or hypothesis.”
And what are Gracy’s ideas available on the market immediately? 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 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 fitting, I assume which means Gracy expects Bitcoin’s value to considerably rise. She nods her head:
“For my part, you already know, $100K, immediately’s Bitcoin value, remains to be a very good buy value or entry value for many 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 to lift capital and construct a venture that pulls and retains a significant consumer 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 staff just isn’t doing very properly… In the present day, it’s a lot tougher as a result of you actually need to construct an applicable product and have a number of customers. And I believe that may be a more healthy method of individuals getting into this business.”
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 trade,” Gracy insists, “we’re extra curious about learn how to 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’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, “after all,” 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 onerous on is AI; learn how 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 types of issues. So, AI and PayFi are among the companies that we’re extra curious 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 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 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 individuals consider me. It’s extra about what’s the fitting factor and learn how to convey this firm ahead.”
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