Welcome to Listing Sundays, CryptoSlate's weekly feature showcasing in-depth interviews, expert analysis, and thought-provoking content that goes beyond headlines to explore the ideas and voices shaping the future of crypto.
Gracy Chen makes a lasting impression. As the only female CEO among the top 10 crypto exchanges, she's acutely aware of the challenges facing women in leadership, and she's determined to leverage her unique perspective as an advantage. Unlike some counterparts who focus solely on personal advancement, Gracy believes in elevating others as she climbs—half of Bitget's executive team consists of women. As she humorously notes:
"That's like finding a Bitcoin wallet that wasn't lost in a shipwreck—rare, but remarkable."
Making a grand entrance at the Bitget for UNICEF press conference in Dubai, wearing a bright blue UNICEF cap, her charisma illuminates the room. Two male representatives from UNICEF Luxembourg are present, though their innovation lead, Sunita Grote, couldn't attend due to disrupted travel plans from rising regional tensions. "You don't often see men covering for women," Gracy laughs with a playful twinkle in her eye.
Gracy's humor serves as a powerful tool in her arsenal, which she uses frequently to put people at ease, along with a captivating smile and sharp intellect. Underestimate her at your peril. With an MBA from a prestigious university and a GMAT score in the top 1% nationwide, Gracy's intellect is razor-sharp.
Under her leadership, she has transformed Bitget from relative obscurity into a leading exchange with the highest derivatives trading volume and 120 million users globally.
"My goal is to elevate Bitget to new heights, attract more users, and build stronger partnerships," she says.
If Gracy's chosen career path is exceptional, her background is equally fascinating. Growing up in South Korea with a strong female role model, she shares:
"I was deeply inspired by my mother, who was a single parent and also an MBA graduate. Because she was busy with work and studies, by age nine, I was already quite the chef. If a Michelin star means cooking instant noodles without burning the house down, then I'd earned it."
She smiles:
"My childhood was essentially like a mini MBA, where MBA stood for Master of Basic Independence. Lesson one: if you want noodles, you'd better learn to cook them yourself."
While her mother didn't pass down exceptional culinary skills, she did expose Gracy to numerous restaurants. Having studied at the region's finest law school, she imparted three valuable lessons:
"One: resilience. Two: pursuing what you want. Three: how accessible education can be."
Research demonstrates that educating women and girls is crucial to advancing communities, Gracy explains, and even to increasing a nation's GDP. "That's why I was so excited to partner with UNICEF and launch the Game Changers' Alliance," she enthuses.
The Game Changers' Alliance aims to address digital inclusion and gender inequality by empowering women and girls in blockchain and Web3. Together with UNICEF, Bitget will provide scholarships, mentorship, and educational programs to 300,000 participants across eight developing countries, including Morocco, India, and Cambodia, with a long-term goal of reaching 1.1 million people across 12 countries by 2027.
The initiative emphasizes building foundational skills, positioning girls as creators in the digital economy, and developing a global support network. With such ambitious goals, Bitget isn't taking half measures—something Gracy would never attach her name to.
"We recognize that women are underrepresented in our crypto community, but we want to rewrite the rules for women in Web3. The Game Changers' Alliance is our next step in that direction. If we want genuine equality, it's essential that these women are given opportunities to learn about this innovative and transformative technology."
This isn't Gracy's first initiative focused on mentoring and empowering women. Bitget launched its Blockchain4her program, spearheaded by Gracy, in January 2024, which focuses on "elevating, empowering, educating, and connecting" women and preparing them for leadership roles. Among its inspiring ambassadors are Gracy's close friend, Solana Foundation's Lily Liu, and Lightning Labs' founder and CEO, Elizabeth Stark.
I mention to Gracy a statistic I came across: that women CEOs typically go through significantly more job postings than their male counterparts, and that women in blockchain face additional barriers, such as widespread skepticism and stereotyping. On more than one occasion at a conference or side event, I've been mistaken for the woman serving drinks.
Of course, educating women is a solid approach, I note, but when barriers like these exist, what else can we do to change these deep-seated perceptions? She sits quietly for a moment, thinking before responding:
"That's definitely one of the goals of Blockchain4her. It's about building female role models and changing people's perspectives. We have a long lineup of female ambassadors... We want to establish these examples for females to know that you can be one of them... if they can do it, you can do it."
She continues:
"The other aspect of changing mindsets is something I actually say quite often in various panels, especially when I'm in a panel with five gentlemen discussing stablecoins or regulations, or exchanges, or investing, et cetera. People frequently ask me: You're a female CEO. How do you balance work and life? I think, why don't you ask them? They also have families. Why don't you ask them how to balance work and life? Things like that about mindset changing are what we want to work toward."
Are there ever times when Gracy feels she's taken less seriously as a female CEO or her opinion given less weight?
"There might be cases where I'm not taken seriously, and in those cases, I don't really care. I'll just prove myself and do the right thing for me and the company. Also, there are certain other cases, especially in terms of marketing, where being a woman became an advantage, and a plus."
She gives the example of being featured in Coindesk's top 50 most influential women in Web3 and AI, alongside figures like Cathie Wood and Cynthia Lummis. She shrugs:
"It just gives me more marketing opportunities. That's what I mean by saying being a woman in this industry is both a blessing and a curse."
Gracy started at Bitget in 2022 as Managing Director and was promoted to CEO in May 2024. I ask what vision she brought to Bitget and what her objectives were coming on as CEO:
"My vision, and also part of the founding team's and senior executive team's vision, was to transform the 2022 version of Bitget into a more global entity."
As a China-founded exchange, Gracy was one of the "very few" executives who spoke fluent English, and her role as Managing Director was to elevate Bitget's brand presence and influence globally. She affirms:
"Today, we are indeed a global exchange. We serve more than 100 countries. Our own employees come from more than 42 different countries, and token holders, and we have teams on every single continent except the Arctic and Antarctica."
She unlocks her phone and holds it up. "Here," she says, "I can quickly show you." I'm looking at a screen with clock faces of key destinations. She says:
"I literally have Los Angeles all the way covered to Auckland in New Zealand. So I need to know where everyone is and if I need to have a meeting with them, what's their time zone, what's my time zone? Things like that are a great way of looking at how global we are."
This is the first time I've encountered a CEO or founder who gave a thought about what time they called their employees, or who didn't outsource this task to their assistant. Charisma, intelligence, humor, and respect for her colleagues. I think I'm developing a bit of a crush. She continues:
"Today, am I satisfied with all the results? Are we global enough? I believe there are still ways to improve and to grow."
Beyond onboarding international users and employees, a significant portion of Bitget's growth this year is driven by institutions. Gracy says:
"I'm in conversations with lots of market makers, VCs, some tokenized money market funds, and all the different institutional partnerships we're building. Today, we are more focused on the institutional side because we were lagging in terms of institutional clients, maybe before last year."
If Bitget was lagging in the institutional race, the exchange has quickly caught up: 80% of Bitget's spot volume now comes from this group, and 80% of crypto quant firms are using Bitget to trade. What attracts them to the platform specifically, and how does this affect the company's approach?
"This answer, actually, I need to meet local regulators to talk about us obtaining various licenses. Dubai is one location. Actually, it's not just Dubai, it's also Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Korea, various countries and jurisdictions we're looking to have conversations or we've already had some conversations."
She says that Bitget has modified its strategy to attract institutional clients in several ways, but "formality is definitely one of them." Bitget is also rolling out continuous updates and tooling, such as unified trading accounts, to make institutional clients feel at home.
"Institutional clients need more dashboards. They need higher, faster connections. Otherwise, they just don't want to partner with you. Unified trading accounts is a new product we are launching just to better serve our institutional VIP clients."
Since no two clients' needs are equal, Bitget takes its institutional approach on a case-by-case basis. Gracy explains:
"Even if they are all market makers, they have different preferences. Some want this, some want that. So what we do is just like running a restaurant, we give them a menu and they can choose this and that."
She smiles as she returns to a restaurant analogy, a business she seems to know well and thinks fondly of from her days cooking noodles and following in the footsteps of her superhero mother. I want to ask if that's where Gracy would be if she hadn't fallen down the crypto rabbit hole, but I know she doesn't have much time, and we move on swiftly instead.
With an increase in support in Washington and a groundswell of backing for crypto, we turn the conversation stateside. Crypto businesses have been frozen out of the United States for far too long, but with the world's largest economy still leagues ahead of China and a crypto adoption rate around 28%, does Bitget plan to pursue this lucrative market now? Gracy pauses and measures her response.
"We have given a lot of thought to serving the U.S. market, perhaps starting with a certain group of users. But so far, we haven't decided whether we will enter the U.S. market. I don't see that happening soon. Even if the U.S. is becoming more crypto-friendly, passing the stablecoin bill... regulations around exchanges are still kind of cooking, and we can't make any decision based on speculation or assumption."
And what are Gracy's thoughts on the market today? With Bitcoin grinding slowly up, then trading sideways, and altcoins notably moving, are we in a bull or a bear? For that matter, are we even in a traditional cycle, or does Gracy subscribe to the supercycle theory?
"My personal opinion is that we don't have the four-year bull-bear market cycle anymore. We are in a supercycle, and this supercycle is largely driven by macroeconomic factors, including M2 supply, like quantitative easing, and various financial and monetary policies around the world, especially in the U.S., Europe, and China."
With U.S. M2 supply maintaining its characteristic trajectory of up and to the right, I guess that means Gracy expects Bitcoin's price to substantially rise. She nods her head:
"In my opinion, you know, $100K, today's Bitcoin price, is still a great entry point or buying opportunity for those who don't have any Bitcoin. I think we are in a supercycle. But supercycle for Bitcoin doesn't mean supercycle for altcoins."
Beyond Ethereum, Solana, and "maybe some other coins," Gracy says it's not as simple as it used to be to raise capital and build a project that attracts and retains a dedicated user base.
"The very small coins are facing lots of problems right now, especially the older projects that have been listed on various exchanges, but the project team is not doing very well... Today, it's much harder because you really need to build a useful product and have lots of users. And I think that is a better way of people entering this industry."
Beyond engaging with regulators and growing its international and institutional base, what else is in the pipeline for Bitget?
"We're not just building an exchange," Gracy insists, "we're more interested in how to help our users better. What are their needs in terms of trading? What are their needs in terms of daily activities? So we're embedding a lot around PayFi."
PayFi is Bitget Wallet's blockchain-based approach to simplify crypto and real-world payments and finance by integrating DeFi and real-world assets (RWAs). Gracy explains:
"What we see right now is, all the global credit card networks have almost a 3% to 6% cost per transaction that is taken from merchants and from the retail users, and sometimes it takes three to four days to just settle a global transaction. So lots of efficiency, and money, and time can be saved in those transactions by stablecoins and PayFi."
She's quick to add that Bitget will, "of course," follow all the necessary procedures, including Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know Your Customer (KYC), and Know Your Business (KYB). She adds:
"Another thing we are working hard on is AI; how to implement AI bots and using AI to streamline some of our services to detect fraud, or to help our users for efficiencies, those sorts of things. So, AI and PayFi are some of the businesses that we are more interested in."
Gracy has to meet with another journalist before her response appointments, but she's not too busy to insist on a photo with me in front of Lionel Messi's signed football shirt with the Bitget logo emblazoned on the front.
I wonder if this type of interaction comes naturally to Gracy or whether she's had to work at it; and, for that matter, whether she's had to work at it twice as hard as a woman. She replies:
"Being a woman is who I am and what I was born with. I don't really care what people think of me. It's more about what's the right thing and how to move this company forward."
