Welcome to Slate Sundays, CryptoSlate’s weekly function 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 prime 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 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 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 typically get males masking for girls,” 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 typically 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 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 into a number one change with the most important copy buying and selling platform and 120 million customers globally.
“My objective 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 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 instantaneous 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: if you’d like noodles, you higher be taught to cook dinner them your self.”
Whereas her mom didn’t move on her culinary expertise, she did take Gracy to quite a lot of eating places, and, having studied at the very best college within the area, she imparted three precious 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 women is vital to bettering communities, Gracy explains, and even to growing a rustic’s GDP. “That’s why I used to be so excited to companion with UNICEF and be a 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 schooling 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 nations, together with Morocco, India, and Cambodia, with a long-term objective of reaching 1.1 million folks throughout 12 nations by 2027.
The initiative emphasizes constructing foundational expertise, supporting women as creators within the digital economic system, and growing a world help 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 Sport Changers’ Coalition is our subsequent step in doing that. If we need to have true equality, it’s important that each 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 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 vital
I inform Gracy a few reality I heard that ladies CEOs sometimes must undergo much more postings than their male counterparts, and that ladies in blockchain come up towards further limitations, resembling 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 undoubtedly one of many targets of Blockchain4her. It’s about constructing feminine position fashions and altering folks’s views. We have now an extended line of feminine ambassadors… We need to arrange these examples for females to know you could 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 really say this rather a lot in varied panels, particularly once I’m in a panel with 5 totally different gents speaking about stablecoins or rules, or exchanges, or enterprise, et cetera. Folks 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 occasions when Gracy feels she’s taken much less significantly as a feminine CEO or her opinion given much less weight?
“There may 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 proper factor for me and the corporate. Additionally, there are particular different circumstances, particularly when it comes to advertising and marketing, the place being a girl grew to become a leverage, and a bonus.”
She offers the instance of a latest function in Coindesk’s prime 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 and marketing 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 Might 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 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 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:
“As we speak, we’re certainly a world change. We serve greater than 100 nations. Our personal staff come from greater than 42 totally different nations, and passport holders, and we’ve groups on each single continent aside 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 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 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 activity to their EAs. Seems, brains, wit, and respect for her fellow people. I believe I’m growing slightly crush. She continues:
“Now, am I glad 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 purchasers
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 numerous market makers, VCs, some tokenized cash market funds, and all the assorted institutional partnerships we’re constructing. As we speak, we’re extra targeted 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 shortly 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 would like to fulfill native regulators to speak about us getting totally different licenses. Dubai is one area. Truly, it’s not simply Dubai, it’s additionally Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, totally 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 purchasers in a number of methods, however “compliance is unquestionably one in all them.” Bitget can also be rolling out steady updates and tooling, resembling unified buying and selling accounts, to make institutional purchasers really feel at residence.
“Institutional purchasers want extra dashboards. They want larger, quicker traces. In any other case, they simply don’t need to be a part of you. Unified buying and selling accounts is a brand new product we’re launching to be able 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 totally 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 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 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 a lot too lengthy, however with the most important economic 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.
“We have now given quite a lot of 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 changing into extra crypto-friendly, passing the stablecoin invoice… rules round exchanges are nonetheless type of cooking, and we will’t make any choice primarily based on assumption or hypothesis.”
And what are Gracy’s ideas in the marketplace at present? 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 totally 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 proper, I assume which means Gracy expects Bitcoin’s value to considerably rise. She nods her head:
“For my part, you already know, $100K, at present’s Bitcoin value, remains to be 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 straightforward because it was to lift capital and construct a undertaking that pulls and retains a significant consumer base.
“The very small cash are seeing numerous issues proper now, particularly the older initiatives which were listed on many exchanges, however the undertaking staff will not be doing very effectively… As we speak, it’s a lot tougher as a result of you actually need to construct an applicable product and have numerous customers. And I believe that may be a more healthy method 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 change,” Gracy insists, “we’re extra fascinated by 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’s, 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 generally it takes three to 4 days to simply settle a world transaction. So numerous effectivity, and cash, and time might be saved in these transactions by stablecoins and PayFi.”
She’s fast so as to add that Bitget will, “in fact,” observe 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 arduous 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 fascinated by.”
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 such a 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 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 proper factor and the best way to convey this firm ahead.”
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