Gracy Chen, Managing Director of Bitget, on Copy-Trading, Derivatives Trading, Managing Crypto Exchanges, and Q4 2023 Predictions | Ep. 270
In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Gracy Chen, Managing Director of Bitget, talks about AI-based trading tools, derivatives trading, and Q4 market outlook.
About Gracy Chen
Gracy Chen is the Managing Director of the top crypto derivatives and copy trading platform Bitget, where she oversees market expansion, business strategy, and corporate development. Under her leadership, Bitget’s user base has quadrupled, propelling the exchange to the top five positions among crypto exchanges in terms of crypto derivatives trading volumes.
Before joining Bitget, she held executive positions at the fintech unicorn company Accumulus and Foxconn-backed VR startup XRSPACE. Gracy was also an early investor in BitKeep, Asia’s leading decentralized wallet.
In 2015, Gracy was honored as a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum. She graduated from the National University of Singapore and is currently pursuing an MBA degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gracy Chen gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview, which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication, provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- AI Tools and Strategies: Bitget has become a leading provider in not just digital asset copy trading but also AI-powered crypto trading
- Partnership with HELLO Labs: Discuss Bitget’s partnership with HELLO Labs for the web3 entertainment show “Killer Whales,” showcasing the exchange’s dedication to promoting web3 adoption
- Bitget’s Market Position: Highlight Bitget’s strong market position as a leading crypto derivatives and copy trading platform, with impressive trading volumes and user growth
- Nansen H1 CEX Landscape report
- Derivatives trading 101
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We are buzzing as always and I’m super pumped to have the one and only Gracy Chen coming back on the show for round two, the Managing Director of one of the top crypto derivatives and copy trading platforms. That is the one and only Bitget. Gracy oversees market expansion, business strategy and corporate development. Under her leadership, Bitget user base has quadrupled, not a big deal, propelling the exchange to the top five positions among all other crypto exchanges in terms of crypto derivatives trading volumes. Before that, she held executive positions at the Fintech Unicorn Company Accumulus and Foxconn backed VR startup XRSPACE. Gracy was also an early investor in BitKeep Asia’s leading decentralized wallet. She’s also been honored by the World Economic Forum, graduated from the National University of Singapore and is currently in the one and only Dean Town, Boston, Massachusetts, where she is pursuing an MDA degree at the one and only MIT. What a bio, Gracy, super pumped to have you on. Welcome back on the show.
Gracy Chen
Thank you, Matt. Always happy to be on this show.
Matt Zahab
Great to have you back on. You are in Boston right now. Such a good city. I mean, I have a love hate with Boston. I love Boston because the vibes are great. I think the people are very animated, very funny. They all, you know, where their heart on their sleeves and I love that grit that’s in Boston. It’s also very beautiful city. You have all the incredible universities like the Harvard’s and the MIT’s. But then you have the sports teams, Gracy. And it seems like Boston kicks the shit out of Toronto sports teams every year. And that is something that breaks my heart time after time. Boston wins everything, whether it’s the Bruins or the Celtics or Ton Brady winning, you know, five chips in New England. What is life like in Boston right now? Give me some good stories at MIT. How much are you enjoying the one and only Beantown?
Gracy Chen
Okay. Sadly, I don’t watch sports that much other than football. I mean soccer, because I love Leo Messi. He’s our ambassador, the one and only ambassador that we really love. So other than, I guess, football team or soccer team that I can talk about my past work cup experience, I can’t really chat that much about, you know, Boston sports teams. But for the life in Boston, it’s getting cold. It’s raining right now and it’s just like a great season. I mean, I like actually autumn and fall and spring, not that cold. You live in Toronto, so you know what I mean with this winter. So it’s a great city and it’s very intellectual, especially in MIT. I have a few friends who are very like postdocs and doctors in various fields. AI is a very hype word right now. And I’m also studying something about AI Web3 in general. So one great experience I just had last week was when I was visiting a friend at MIT and we were playing with his dog, which is a robot dog. We’re chatting about AI and robotics, and that’s a quite interesting experience.
Matt Zahab
That’s wild. What are the people like at MIT? I’ve heard all these stories like on the internet and from the stories I heard and my apologies if I’m offending anyone here, but I’ve just heard it’s a bunch of nerds and it’s not a bad thing. It’s just again, you got to be a very smart cookie like yourself to get into MIT. Of course, it’s the one and only MIT where brilliant people go to school for post-secondary. What’s it like? Is that what the people’s like? Like the people party at all? Like what’s the lowdown on MIT?
Gracy Chen
We’re party like hell. So I work hard, study hard, and play hard is the key. So yes, there’s lots of stereotypes or saying MIT students are nerdy, which my experience is not really true. Like I said, we’re partying a lot. And also for gender ratio, I was surprised when I came and I realized that there are so many intelligent women and the students profile in the school in terms of gender and in terms of diversification like where we are from, international students, racialized, etc. Everything is so diversified. For example, at our MBA cohort, female to male ratio is like 45 to 55. So it’s quite neutral. Basically, I met lots of interesting intelligent people here and also we’re partying like hell.
Matt Zahab
I love that. I absolutely love that. I’m going to pop down and come come party for a week with you and the squad there. A couple more questions on the travel topics and then we’ll get into the crypto stuff. I mind you, this is crypto as well, but you just went on a crazy journey, obviously Boston, then over to Singapore for TOKEN2049, then you hopped on a jet went to Hong Kong and then flew back to Boston. That’s quite the rip. How was token? What was good in Hong Kong? What was the sentiment like in the biggest, I guess it is probably the biggest crypto conference in Asia. How was that?
Gracy Chen
Yes, so TOKEN2049, I had a keynote and a speech. We also organized a whole day event, which I call Bitget EmpowerX Summit. And we launched a fund called Bitget EmpowerX Fund that we can talk about later. So the event, our day, our summit, that’s actually the first time that Bitget is hosting a summit. We will sponsor some and we participated in a lot, but it’s the first time that we hosted an event. And the reason of us hosting this event is number one, we’re celebrating our fifth year anniversary. And then number two, we felt we are a leader in the space already. And we wanna provide the stage for our ecosystem to flourish. And also for us to connect to more people and more leaders in the space. And I had great conversations over there. As for TOKEN2049, this is my returning speech and panel already. I really enjoyed it. I had a panel with all major exchanges. There’s KuCoin, Bybit, OKX and us. So for big crypto exchanges and leaders from these exchanges, we had a great discussion around the most topics that people know or people interested in knowing how we do token listing, how are we ensuring more transparency and security for our users. And we always thought about starting up an exchange alliance. This is, by the way, still cooking. I will let you guys know if it’s confirmed. But there’s been some very interesting conversation. TOKEN2049 in general, I think we have fewer people this year, fewer participants or fewer audiences this year. Because I guess, bear market, last year TOKEN2049, that’s right before FTX. And there were still lots of hypes, lots of people from traditional finance industry or traditional tech industry, or just people interested in knowing the space. But right now, I felt there are less hypes or less window shoppers, but there are more builders and more Westerners traveling to Asia for TOKEN2049, I guess, due to regulatory reasons. So that’s my general experience in token. And then I went to Hong Kong for a closed-door event. It’s organized by Dragonfly Capital. They actually are investors and we’re their investors as well. So that’s a very interesting event. It’s like a 60 people closed-door. The founder of Dragonfly Capital literally hand-picked up everyone. I’m the only representative of Bitget. And I get to meet all the leaders, and they invited some very interesting speakers, and their portfolio company founders. And we had some further introduction and further conversation flowing. And I’m still meeting some of them online and offline right now to discuss further cooperation.
Matt Zahab
I mean, I absolutely love that. You gotta, Gracy, come on, break some news on the Cryptonews Pod. At least give us a little snippet. What’s going on with this exchange coalition or this exchange group that you discussed? Give us a couple details. Don’t let the cat out of the bag, but give us a little snippet here, Gracy. Come on.
Gracy Chen
Well this is hard because I literally, I think my PR people will scream at me because this again very un-started. But I’m happy to share a bit of at least what I’ve been thinking. Honestly, there are lots of issues that centralized exchanges are facing together, like number one, hacking and security things that we need to deal with. And number two, to build stronger standards amongst changes, such as when and why do we list a token and deal with the token and also among auditing, among proof-reserve, among protection funds that we have but some other exchanges may not. All these things that our users in the industry care about. So this again very preliminary discussion that I had with some of the exchange leaders that we thought it’s a good time to build an alliance so that we can battle some of those things together. And the reason that it took such a long time and it’s still, after two weeks, it’s still a preliminary discussion is that I do want this alliance to be meaningful and to be selective and to make real impact rather than just setting up an alliance and announce that and that’s it. I don’t want it to be just a PR thing and I really want it to be meaningful. So that’s why we want to take it slowly and talk about details and how to make it sustainable and how to make a real impact, things like that. But again, you are the first person that I talked to outside of Bitget and outside of other exchanges.
Matt Zahab
Of course. So folks, you heard it here. Nothing, this is obviously strictly preliminary and Gracy and the leaders of the exchanges might whip something together and create a potential crypto exchange alliance. But don’t look too much into it and potentially get your popcorn ready for the future, as this could be something very special. So we’ll leave it at that, c’est la vie. One topic I can’t wait to get into is everything AI related. A couple of minutes ago, you discussed how AI is the big buzz word at MIT right now. Seems like it’s the big buzz word everywhere still. The trend still definitely has legs. You guys and the team at Bitget are doing some incredible things in that regards the innovation zones expansion. You have the artificial intelligence based martingale, CTA and grid trading strategies. You guys have been released some incredible products to allow your users to become better traders by piggybacking off of AI. I’d love you could touch a little bit more on this subject and just sort of segue into how you see AI shaping the future of crypto.
Gracy Chen
Sure. So first of all, like we discussed, AI is a buzzword. And it’s not just a buzzword, it’s also a fundamental and very important technology that is changing and shaping how we live, how we work, how we interact with one another. Actually, we also invested in a virtual boyfriend, SocialFi company or GameFi company a month ago. And other than virtual boyfriend, they are also developing virtual girlfriend and virtual pets. So it’s all about emotions and taking care of the user but through AI. So it’s really different about, you know, it’s, and by the way, that company is called HIM. So if you have watched the movie, Her, it’s basically the opposite. And it’s the same idea. It’s just opposite gender that they are serving. But this aside, I felt in terms of trading, right? Because Bitget a crypto exchange and we look into how to use AI in crypto trading more. There are lots of positive aspects, obviously, like speed and efficiency can be increased. There is like powerful data analysis capability that we can talk about. For example, AI algorithms can, you know, analyze various data and a big set of data sources, including marketing trends, new sentiment and social media activities and historical price and then come up with certain pattern correlation trading opportunities, etc. And then there, we can also use AI in risk management because especially something like some strange behavior of like anti money laundering and trading like some, if we define the AI tool on some predefined risk parameters, then we can use AI to establish some stop loss order to determine like take profit levels and execute trades accordingly. So these are some great aspects that I kind of see in terms of applying AI to trading. But there are also lots of drawbacks. Number one, I will highlight is over reliance on historical data because AI narrates lots of by data, right, by history. And that’s quite dangerous. And then another thing is data security. What I mean is like data breach and cyber attack threats. So these are dangerous. And by the way, I experimented with ChatGPT the other day and I asked it to pick up 10 cryptocurrency that I should look into if I’m a risk averse investor. And in that 10 cryptocurrencies list, there is Terra Luna and that just happened a few months ago. So that’s what I mean by like historical data or data security concerns. And that’s just, you know, bad. And if you are relying your investment strategy things like ChatGPT, it can be very dangerous.
Matt Zahab
Such a good point. I mean, I haven’t, to be honest, Greece, I haven’t really thought about the lack of qualitative, the lack of emotion and empathy that AI has, you know? Like in trading, you obviously, there’s a lot of qual that goes into it as well. And when these AI algos are simply looking at, you know, previous historical data, like just like you said, they’re gonna spit out stuff like Terra Luna, which is wild to think about. It’s very interesting. Another topic that we gotta get into before we get into some more Bitget stuff. Obviously I lurk all of my guests Twitter before every single show. And a couple of days ago, it was actually yesterday, you had a great little tweet on some end of 2023, crypto trends, insomation, or some crypto predictions, rather, insomation, you put three points and these are great. We’re gonna attach this in the show notes. Number one is that high interest rates might not make crypto go to the moon right away. And I can’t wait to get into that one because that is definitely a bit of a hot take. Bitcoin ETFs could be like a superheroes arrival. I definitely agree with that one. And number three, more regulation could mean more people discovering crypto’s magic. Also agree with that one. The only one that I don’t fully agree with is high interest rates might not make crypto go to the moon right away. What is your take on that? Why do you not think that’ll make crypto rip if the gov continues to rise interest rates?
Gracy Chen
Okay, this requires a little bit explanation of how finance world works. I personally love to do this analogy of traditional financial world such as equity and bound market and monetary market. They are like a big pool, so swimming pool, like big pool, and crypto where like a small pool. And when money flows out from big pool, it flows to small pool. And vice versa, when the big pool is like pumping the so called inflow of cash or of investment fund, it’s also taking lots of effect on the small pool. Then why this relates to interest rates? So when interest rate is high, people will want to put more money in the bond market. So that’s exactly what we saw in NASDAQ, in NYSE, in the equity market. It’s also going down in general in terms of those market index. But that also has strong effect from crypto because when interest rate is high, people will be less willing to invest in alternative asset classes such as cryptocurrency. So what I meant is because FED and FOMC, the very last meeting that they had, they kind of indicated that there will be another interest rate rise end of this year. So because of this, crypto can very hard enter a bull market right away. That’s what I meant. I mean, very hard to do it right away. And by right away, I mean this year or earlier last year, due to this high interest rate and this strong correlation of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices versus the interest rate.
Matt Zahab
Well said. And are you in the camp that a Bitcoin ETF is still the absolute best thing that could happen to the market right now?
Gracy Chen
Yes, I am. And I also think it’s not about whether or not, it’s more about when. So I’m a strong believer that Bitcoin spot ETF will be improved, likely earlier next year.
Matt Zahab
The only issue I have next year is the election. And it seems like in election years, a lot of big financial events often get pushed after the election just to see which party gets in. So, I mean, I’m hoping that doesn’t cause any issues, but we’ll definitely have to see. Last question before we get back into the Bitget stuff. What are the areas of crypto are really tickling your fancy at the moment? Obviously you are a leader of one of the best exchanges in the world. I’m sure you get asked this all the time, but what areas of crypto excite you, get you going, have you and the team, you know, putting eggs in that basket?
Gracy Chen
Right now I’m studying and looking into some projects in the so called new public chains, especially the Layer-2s. And then another thing that I’m studying recently a lot is TG bots. We see lots of growth on TG bots and the users. And you probably have heard that TG Telegram user has been reaching an all time high recently. And there are lots of TG bots working on Telegram. And also Telegram they issued a token talk to you. Although it’s like a little ambiguous, they don’t really say it’s their token, but everyone thinks it’s their token.
Matt Zahab
Which token is this?
Gracy Chen
TON.
Matt Zahab
Oh, yeah. I just looked it up. Telegram is the fourth most popular messaging app globally. After WhatsApp, we chat in Facebook Messenger with an estimated 1.068 billion total users and 700 million monthly active users. That is insane, Gracy. In North America, you’re in North America now, more specifically in Toronto. Unless you’re in crypto, you don’t use Telegram. Like I don’t speak to one friend on Telegram who is not in crypto. And so it’s crazy to think that there’s that many active users, 700 million active users on Telegram in 2023.
Gracy Chen
Yeah, exactly. So you will be surprised. I agree. I also use Telegram mainly for crypto community and talking to some of our partners. Maybe WhatsApp is more used for friends and then looking for social network career wise. But you will be surprised to see how many people are joining Telegram. Like lots of crypto friends that I saw because I had their numbers saved earlier. So when they joined Telegram on vacation and I saw a lot of those recently.
Matt Zahab
So, sorry, why are you guys going so hard on the bots then? You just because of the influx of telegram users, you guys wanna be more efficient and more proper with the bots? Is that the whole ordeal there?
Gracy Chen
Not really. We are still operating mainly on our exchange and our app. The reason that I brought up Telegram bots is not because of Bitget. It’s just because I saw lots of trends and all these tokens like TON, Unibot, Banana Gone, that’s another crypto TG bot project. And we just listed their token, by the way. So all these companies or these projects, these tokens have been quite strong recently. And that’s why I’m studying. So I didn’t do it just because we at Bitget, we are doing something around. Not really a lot. And you will be supporting like TON. I think TON is like number 12 token right now. I would say the valuation is really high. Market cap is 7 billion for that token.
Matt Zahab
That’s crazy. Yes, 7.3.
Gracy Chen
Yeah, you don’t know TON at all, like a couple.
Matt Zahab
Interesting, crazy volume on it too. I assume it’s listed on Bitget.
Gracy Chen
Uh, yeah.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, of course, I love that. Grace, you’ve got to take a quick break, give a huge shout out to our sponsor of the show, PrimeXBT, and when we get back, we are going to dive in to a couple of super fun things. Bitget’s EmpowerX Fund, some community engagement, and the big rebranding, which even the team, absolutely crushed. And before that though, got to give a huge shout out to PrimeXBT, longtime sponsor of the show, longtime friends of cryptonews.com. PrimeXBT offers a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet, you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also running an exclusive promo for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast. After making your first deposit, you get 50% of that first deposit, that is 50% of that first deposit, credited to your trading account that can be used as additional collateral to positions. The promo code is CRYPTONEWS50, that’s CRYPTONEWS50, all one word, to receive 50% of your deposit, credited to your trading accounts, and now back to the show with Gracy. Let’s get right into the rebrand. I’m a marketer, I love rebrands. I think unless you have a brand that is so cliche, like McDonald’s or a BMW or a Mercedes Benz, where everyone knows your logo and you’ve been established for dozens of years, I love a good rebrand. It gets the people going. It’s good to bring some new blood on the front end. Why did you guys rebrand? Was it just, oh, we’re getting sick of it? Was it we did some, you know, community studies? What was the purpose behind it? I love it, but I’m always curious to know why you chose to do it.
Gracy Chen
Yeah, so the rebrand, we started that earlier this year. The main reason was number one, it’s been a while that we used our logo and our UI, UX, all these color things that we felt some user might be a little bit tired of it. It was mainly blue, black, and white that we were using. And right now, if you see our brand image, it’s much more colorful, with steel blue being the thin color, but there’s lots of purple, green, even pink, red, etc. to supplement blue. And we want to indicate that we are a careful, colorful brand, and with some new filling and new images. And also for the slogan, we used to call it, our logo used to be “Better Trading Better Life”. It was still like, what do you mean by Better Trading Better Life? Why Better Life? Yeah, so we want to be very straightforward, to be smart, and we want to define what is smart and have Bitget as a smart platform for our users, because it’s all about making wise and smart decisions. And again, another thing is five years. So Bitget was established in 2018. Many people were not aware of that. So we want to use this rebrand as an opportunity to emphasize that Bitget is a wood exchange also. Not a nobody who just came up on the street one or two years ago. Although we did become much more famous since one or two years ago, because the team, honestly, before, I wouldn’t say it’s my credit, but honestly, my team, before I joined, it’s a bunch of people from product, technology, and operation. And they are so down to ground and get hands dirty kind of person. And they don’t really do much marketing before I came in. So while we signed up, Leo Messi last year, and we did this rebranding, we had lots of things flowing. Our team also grew tremendously within the one and a half year, for the past one and a half year, from 200 to right now, 1,500. So there’s been lots of growth in the company, and we just want to use rebranding as an opportunity to showcase that we’ve been here for a while and let people know what we are focusing on. And we want to continue being this great platform with tools and knowledge to help our users confidently navigate the world of crypto.
Matt Zahab
Well said. Another thing we have to get into is the Bitget EmpowerX Fund. You guys did a nice, fat, $100 million fund, not a small amount. 100 big tickets, 100 mil, dedicated to fostering the platform’s ecosystem development, and the fund seeks investment opportunities in regional exchanges, data analytics firms, media orgs, other entities. Is this just we’re taking some of the profit slash rev that we have and investing it in our whole ecosystem to grow all legs, all verticals of Bitget? Is that the sort of the TLDR, the summation of it?
Gracy Chen
Yes, correct. And the reason that we are most interested in these sectors, such as regional exchanges, data analytics firms, and media organizations, are twofold. Number one, they are actually two sets of companies. Like regional exchanges, it’s just like our smaller competitors that in some regions, they are stronger. But we have a global and famous brand that with that acquirements or investment, we can each leverage on the small exchanges can leverage on our platform, and we can leverage on their local experience and localization and their user and maybe license as well. And then media analytics firms and data analytics firms and media organizations, this I call it a whole group, like consider it being together because these are for mass adoption and or drive mass adoption and for us to grow with ecosystem synergies. And there will be a very big announcement coming up soon, maybe a few, within a few months or even faster, a few weeks that we get to acquire a major media firm, a top one. Yeah. So basically,
Matt Zahab
Like crypto media?
Gracy Chen
Don’t bite me into this. You want more it’s because they’re just so many names out there, right? There isn’t many big crypto media.
Matt Zahab
Yeah. Well, I mean, you’re talking to the biggest right now. You’re talking to the one only cryptonews.com. So, you know, I’m joking, but you know what I mean? Well, hey, we’re top eight. You know, we’re usually, we range between five and 12, depending on the month. So, but that’s awesome. I mean, that’s just gonna, you know, that’s just gonna increase the scope. And you’ve seen this happen time after time, all the big business leaders and companies always end up buying media companies because it just expands your reach. Like you saw Jeff Bezos by the Washington Post, right? For Amazon, not for Amazon, but I mean, if you have the money, why wouldn’t you? Especially in today’s day and age, where every company needs to be a media company, right? Like you either pay for media or you create media. It’s pretty binary. And if you can have an entity, it does both. I mean, that really does move the needle.
Gracy Chen
And also we felt right now it’s a bear market. The valuation is relatively low. I keep saying that bear market or crypto winter is the golden window for growth, while also people don’t really believe so. Still, I’m a strong believer that when valuation is low, you should invest and be greedy when others are fearful and be fearful when others are greedy. And I think right now it’s generally people are more fearful and we are being quite aggressive and greedy in this climate. So lots of investment, lots of acquirement. We just did our announcement of acquiring BitKeep. That’s one of the firms that I invested in early days as well. And that’s how I get to know the Bitgetting. So BitKeep was rebranded to Bitget Wallet and we acquired BitKeep actually last year, but we just did announcement this year during the Paris Blockchain Week. So all these are activities that we have been doing and we are continually doing in order to strengthen our competitive edge in this centralized exchange domain because the competitions between exchanges for us is not just about DAU trading volumes. As the last cycle, right now it’s a lot about ecosystem and how we can have synergies among the whole supply chain and how we kind of help each other grow stronger.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, well said. Gracy, this has been a treat. We are getting tight for time. Last topic that I really want to get into is Bitcoin. You always have a bunch of really good takes on Bitcoin as a leader of an exchange. What’s going on with Bitcoin right now? What key resistance level do we need to hit or surpass? What sentiment like is it different in Asia than it is across the pond in North America? Give me the quick sort of 360 degree birds-eye view on present day Bitcoin.
Gracy Chen
That’s hard. And this is impromptu. You should give me more time to prepare. So that I can give it a more concise presentation on Bitcoin, hopefully a 360 degree, maybe a 180 degree.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, give me 180 or just the 90 or 90 degree works to just a nice little nice little Bitcoin snippet.
Gracy Chen
Okay yeah, so Bitcoin obviously there are a few things happening or going to happen that people care. Number one, halving. Halving is quite, is a certain thing, right? And it will happen next year, very likely March, April 2024. Why this is not an accurate day? Because you know, Bitcoin, so it’s all about when this blocks is built and the 3.5 to 4 year Bitcoin cycle or crypto cycle, bull market and bear market cycle is there mainly because of halving. But honestly, I myself don’t really think halving is that important. Because, well, right now the change, the marginal change is just not that much.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, it’s not as big as it was before. Every year it gets less and less. Well, not every year. Every halving it gets less and less. Yeah, good point.
Gracy Chen
Although next year might still be the year when we kick off the next bull market, but it may not be because of halving. It’s just a coincidence that all these things happened in 2024.
Matt Zahab
Same time.
Gracy Chen
Yeah, but it doesn’t really guarantee that halving will drive the same pattern that it saw before. However, other than halving, spot ETF, BTC spot ETF is something that I think more meaningful. So for some of our audiences who might not be like have a full picture, you probably have heard that BTC spot ETF, this was firstly initiated by BlackRock and then followed by WisdomTree, by Fidelity and some other institutions. So there’s like seven institutions earlier, which is perceived by the market that, at least by me, that the approval chance is pretty high. Yeah, so I think I also read, I listened to this interview of CNBC versus the former SEC Chairperson Jay Clayton, that’s like the first of September or something like just 20 days ago, that he said that an approval is inevitable because that could tell me between a futures product and cash product cannot go on forever. Yeah, so I mean, listen to him if you don’t believe in me, agree, I personally agree with him that BTC spot ETF is going to be approved. And once it’s approved, the core beneficiary would obviously be the price of BTC, but you will drive some of the sectors such as real-world asset, RWA and all the Altcoin, Ethereum coins together because BTC is like the index of our industry. So these are the two things that I think is going to happen around BTC.
Matt Zahab
I would love for all those things to happen. Might not be as big as everyone thinks.
Gracy Chen
Halving might not be bad.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, as impactful as everyone thinks. That’s honestly a really good take. I like that one. Last thing we didn’t touch, two huge things. The bread and butter of Bitget is obviously the derivatives platform and the copy trading. When I had you on last year on the pod, I think you were one of the first guests who talked about copy trading and I absolutely not fell in love. It’s definitely a bit of a boost, but I just went down a bit of a rabbit hole and saw how efficient and sweet that is. I’d love for our last sort of segment of the show, just give me the quick TLDR on what Bitget does in regards to derivatives trading and copy trading and how easy it is for traders or non-traders like myself who just want to come on, get started on the platform and use Bitget’s incredible features like derivatives and copy trading.
Gracy Chen
Yeah, so Bitget is number one in derivative trading, I mean, among all the crypto exchanges. Bitget is strong in derivative trading because we started off in 2018 and 2019 with derivative market, especially in East Asia. And then for copy trading, this is something we started in May of 2020. And there have been lots of users. I think there are 110,000 elite traders that we have. Elite traders are the traders who have strategies and have opened up their portfolio for sharing, for subscribing. And then the follower or other traders, they can just copy trade and subscribe to that trading strategy and then copy trade. So whatever the elite trader is doing, the followers will be copying that trade or strategy, will be making the same sailing or basically long and short positions. And also for copy trading, we used to have only derivative offered in this, but we also have spot copy trading earlier this year. And that’s quite an innovation that we had because we are probably one of the very first exchanges to offer spot copy trading. We have this because we realize some of the users might not be very comfortable with derivative trading because it’s leveraged. Many users just prefer to buy and hold and sell when the price goes up. And they just don’t like leverage. So we offer copy trading for a spot market as well. And also this year, we actually put lots of effort and resource into growing the spot market. Because like I said, we are stronger in derivative. If you look at data like CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap, we are top five in derivative market among all centralized exchanges, maybe top 10 around the spot market. So we are stronger in derivative market, but we want to use this crypto venture as a, again, golden window for growth to grow our spot market as well. Some of the strategies around that is to offer uniquely a valuable asset. And again, another thing is I have our research team monitoring the unchain data. And we want to offer some cryptocurrencies earlier than our competitors do so. So for example, we listed PEPE three weeks before Binance did that. And we also listed Bitron, ecosystem tokens, even before ARB was there. Because we realized that this loss of unchain data, like GMX has lots of volume, driving about 80% of the Arbitrum growth. And we talked to all those, like there were 10 plus crypto tokens that were ready before ARB launched, or Arbitrum had their airdrop, etcetera, March this year. So these are some of the actions that we are taking in order to grow our spot market, because at that time, users can only buy Arbitrum, ecosystem tokens, or only be able to buy PEPE at Bitget before our competitors do so. So our listing strategy evolves, and we want to make sure that we are working with the most legit, most wanted crypto projects as well.
Matt Zahab
Amazing. Gracy, always a pleasure. Love having you on. Hopefully we can meet in person one day and can’t wait for round three. We’ll have to do a little sooner this time. The whole year, hiatus is a little too much. So hopefully we can make that happen over the next couple of months. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much. And before you go, please let our listeners know where they can find you and Bitget online and on social.
Gracy Chen
So I’m very active on Twitter, now X, I still can’t get used to that name.
Matt Zahab
I call it Twitter. It’s still Twitter.
Gracy Chen
So @GracyBitget feel free to add me. I write daily financial and personal growth advice, and I’m very up to date about everything crypto, and of course, everything Bitget. So even if you are not a user, feel free to just to twin and know the space a little bit more. I do share lots of insights and research. No financial advice, but I hope you can do your own research. That’s very important in this space, but I do want to share our in-depth analysis on many things. So I’m very active on, again, Twitter, X @GracyBitget, and you can also find me on Instagram. I’m not really active, but I do have an Instagram account, also @ceogracybitget. I also have LinkedIn account, Gracy Chen. Maybe Gracy Chen Bitget, you should be able to find me. Yeah, but Twitter is my major battlefield that I share my opinions.
Matt Zahab
And folks, Gracy’s Twitter is fire. So do go check it out. Like she said, a lot of really good snippets of info. And always always do your own research. DYOR and Gracy is not a financial advisor. So like always, take it at face value. She’s going to give you some good alpha, but it’s your call at the end of the day. Gracy, thank you so much. Always a pleasure. Can’t wait for round three.
Gracy Chen
Thank you Matt and join me at Boston for parties.
Matt Zahab
100% you have my word. I will be there. Folks what an episode with Gracy Chen coming in hot from Bitget the managing director of Bitget one of the largest and best exchanges in the world. Huge shout out to Gracy’s team and my team for making this happen. Love everyone on my team. Thank you so much for everything guys, especially my guy Justas my amazing sound editor You are the GOAT and you know it the listeners. Thank you as always if you guys enjoyed this one I hope you did please do subscribe. It would mean the world to my team and I and guys as always, thank you for everything keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy wealthy and happy. Bye for now and we’ll talk soon.
