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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 nicely conscious of the challenges dealing with 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 group 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 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 typically get males protecting for ladies,” 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 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 trade with the biggest copy buying and selling platform and 120 million customers globally.
“My aim is to carry Bitget to the next stage, to accumulate 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 position 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 research, at 9 years previous, I used to be principally 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 like a mini MBA, the place MBA stands for Grasp of Fundamental Autonomy. Lesson one: if you would like noodles, you higher be taught to prepare dinner them your self.”
Whereas her mom didn’t go on her culinary abilities, she did take Gracy to a whole lot of eating places, and, having studied at the perfect college within the area, she imparted three useful 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 women is vital to enhancing communities, Gracy explains, and even to growing 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 ladies and women in blockchain and web3. Along with UNICEF, Bitget will present scholarships, mentorship, and academic packages to 300,000 contributors throughout eight creating international locations, together with Morocco, India, and Cambodia, with a long-term aim of reaching 1.1 million folks throughout 12 international locations by 2027.
The initiative emphasizes constructing foundational abilities, supporting women as creators within the digital financial system, and creating a world assist 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 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 ladies are given alternatives to study this new and paradigm-shifting know-how. “
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 buddy, 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 few reality I heard that ladies CEOs sometimes need to undergo much more postings than their male counterparts, and that ladies in blockchain come up in opposition to further obstacles, akin to widespread misogyny and stereotyping. On multiple event at a convention or facet occasion, I’ve been mistaken for the girl serving drinks.
In fact, educating ladies is a stable initiative, I say, however when obstacles 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 positively one of many objectives of Blockchain4her. It’s about constructing feminine position fashions and altering folks’s views. We now have a protracted line of feminine ambassadors… We wish to arrange these examples for females to know which you could 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 rather a lot in numerous panels, particularly after I’m in a panel with 5 completely different gents speaking about stablecoins or laws, 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? In addition they have a household. Why don’t you ask them how you can steadiness work and life? Issues like that about mindset altering are what we wish to work towards.”
Are there ever instances when Gracy feels she’s taken much less significantly as a feminine CEO or her opinion given much less weight?
“There is likely to 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 best factor for me and the corporate. Additionally, there are specific 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 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 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 targets have been approaching as CEO:
“My imaginative and prescient, and likewise a part of the founding group’s and better government group’s imaginative and prescient, was to carry 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 position as Managing Director was to raise the Bitget model picture and affect globally. She affirms:
“Immediately, we’re certainly a world trade. We serve greater than 100 international locations. Our personal workers come from greater than 42 completely different international locations, and passport holders, and we now have groups on each single continent aside from the Arctic and Antarctica.”
She unlocks her cellphone and holds it up. “Right here,” she says, “I can simply rapidly present you.” I’m 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 can 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 known as their workers, or who didn’t outsource this activity to their EAs. Appears, brains, wit, and respect for her fellow people. I feel I’m creating somewhat crush. She continues:
“Now, am I happy 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 raised serve institutional purchasers
Past onboarding worldwide customers and workers, a large chunk of Bitget’s progress this yr is pushed by establishments. Gracy says:
“I’m in conversations with a lot 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 by way of institutional purchasers, possibly earlier than final yr.”
If Bitget was lagging within the institutional race, the trade 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 method?
“This afternoon, really, I want to satisfy native regulators to speak about us getting completely different licenses. Dubai is one area. Really, it’s not simply Dubai, it’s additionally Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, completely different international locations and jurisdictions we’re 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 certainly one in all them.” Bitget can be rolling out steady updates and tooling, akin to unified buying and selling accounts, to make institutional purchasers really feel at residence.
“Institutional purchasers want extra dashboards. They want increased, quicker strains. 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 with the intention to higher serve our institutional VIP purchasers.”
Since no two purchasers’ 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 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 nicely 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 assist for crypto, we flip the dialog stateside. Crypto companies have been frozen out of Fortress America for much too lengthy, however with the biggest 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 a whole lot of thought to serving the U.S. jurisdiction, possibly beginning with a sure group of customers. However up to now, 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… laws round exchanges are nonetheless sort of cooking, and we will’t make any determination based mostly on assumption or hypothesis.”
And what are Gracy’s ideas in the marketplace 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 standard 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 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 best, I suppose which means Gracy expects Bitcoin’s worth to considerably rise. She nods her head:
“For my part, you already know, $100K, at this time’s Bitcoin worth, continues 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 “possibly another cash,” Gracy says it’s not as straightforward because it was to boost capital and construct a mission that draws and retains a significant consumer base.
“The very small cash are seeing a lot of issues proper now, particularly the older initiatives which were listed on many exchanges, however the mission group just isn’t doing very nicely… Immediately, it’s a lot tougher as a result of you really want to construct an applicable product and have a lot of customers. And I feel that may be a more healthy method of individuals getting into this business.”
Trying forward: What’s arising 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 trade,” Gracy insists, “we’re extra concerned with how you can serve our customers higher. What are their wants by way of buying and selling? What are their wants by way of every 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 virtually 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 a lot 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,” 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 exhausting on is AI; how you can 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 a few of the companies that we’re extra concerned with.”
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 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 exhausting 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 best factor and how you can carry this firm ahead.”
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