Five Questions with Gracy Chen from Bitget
Five Questions with Gracy Chen
We are excited to ask Gracy Chen, managing director at Bitget, 5 questions. Chen was named a Global Shaper by the World Economic Forum in 2015. Chen is also pursuing an MBA degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Get to know a little bit more about Bitget and Gracy in this edition of "5 Questions".
Questions & Answers
Q: You travel and talk to a lot of people, companies, and projects in the crypto fintech space. Are there any specific trends that have stood out over the past year?
Gracy Chen:
Talent migration from Web2 to Web3:
In October last year, Facebook changed its name to Meta, attracting huge attention from social media, as Metaverse is gaining more public notice. Since then, more and more traditional Web2 companies have begun to transform or set foot in Web3-related fields, and employees of traditional game companies or financial investment banks are starting their own businesses and companies.
Web2 has been witnessing slowing growth and focusing on fierce competition. While on the other hand, Web3 provides more opportunities for growth, for individual staff and the companies as well, a higher potential for a business boom with the next trend of technology. In the future, with the blessing of capital and increasing involvement from Web2 enterprises, we will see more higher-quality employees are more willing and interested to join Web3.
The fast development of Defi ecosystem, Dapp and improvement of capital efficiency
Before August 2020, the total market TVL was less than 1 billion USD, the current market total locked position was around 53 billion USD, and the high point was locked at 180 billion USD. Defi dapp, such as Uniswap, aave, has gradually become the underlying infrastructure of the Defi ecosystem. Based on the huge supporting capital in the system, how to effectively make use of and improve capital utilization efficiency and other solutions will be the source of continuous iteration and innovation of the Defi ecosystem in the future.
Q: What do you think are the biggest challenges your team expects to face in the upcoming new year, and how do you plan to overcome them?
Gracy Chen: I can share that in four aspects (with some comparison between 2018/19, when we started, and today):
How to serve users from different regions
We mainly served east Asia in early 2019 and have now expanded to servicing over 200 million users in over 50 countries around the world. This achievement has required global insights curated to different regional market strategies, a robust and localized platform, and product offerings catering to the demand of various users around the world.
How to manage the team while growing fast
From a small group to, right now, over 800 staff - and soon to be over 1000 - the task of managing a global team and realizing their potential is challenging yet rewarding. It involves a balance of understanding each team's needs, cultivating their own skills while being cognizant of a larger purpose, and bridging the gap with strong lines of communication from reporting managers all the way up to C-suite.
How to make a sustainable and compliant business
The crypto world was going through its Wild West days back in 2019, so the industry players at that time could grow savagely without control. However, as global regulation on cryptocurrency continues to improve, we need to make greater efforts on licensing and compliance to align with the regulations of different markets and sustain our growth.
How to differentiate ourselves
Crypto exchanges offer more or less similar products. So, how does Bitget stand out? We identified the power of social trading and made it our differentiating factor.
Q: How do you see our industry has developed over the past couple of years? What areas do you think are ripest for expansion?
Gracy Chen: Working in a leading crypto exchange, the major trend I want to share is that we have seen increasing passion for the crypto world from traditional finance peers, and the maturation and sophistication of the crypto market, to a large extent, brought by the increasing institutional participation.
While the global quarterly spot trading volume grew sevenfold to $3.2 trillion in the two years to the first quarter of 2022, crypto derivatives trading expanded twelvefold to $6.3 trillion in the same time frame. (where is this data from, pls quote properly)
Institutional investors, mostly prop trading firms, are drawn to derivative trading mainly because of the flexibility to apply more trading strategies, higher capital efficiency, better risk management as well as tax efficiency.
Q: What are new upcoming or current features, products, or services that Bitget offers that you're most excited about?
Gracy Chen: I am really excited about our new feature, Bitget Insights. The feature serves to integrate social media with crypto trading via the Bitget exchange. The launch signifies the next stage in Bitget's crypto social trading initiative, benefiting both new retail investors as well as seasoned traders.
With Bitget Insights, new traders will have the opportunity to glean insights from experienced traders. Compared to existing social media platforms, Bitget guarantees that all shared insights come from verified and credible traders, thus saving new traders time, resources and potential losses resulting from cryptocurrency 'shilling', false endorsements or other crypto scams.
The launch of 'Bitget Insights' exemplifies our long-term endeavors to build an inclusive, robust and flexible platform and make social trading more accessible to everyone.We believe in the power of social trading and make it our quintessential feature, allowing us to differentiate among exchanges such as Binance and FTX, offering users valuable services.
Q: Could you shed light on your creative process for conceptualizing and executing new growth projects? How have these processes been adjusted or optimized over the last year?
Gracy Chen: While we would like to be as creative as we can be, we pay close attention in protecting our investors and the industry when considering listing a token on Bitget's platform. As a crypto exchange, we serve as the gatekeeper for our community and are responsible to maintain a healthy ecosystem in the industry. Therefore, we always conduct detailed research on every to-be-listed project, mainly focusing on three criteria: 1) tokenomics, 2) their team and investor background, and 3) their users' demographic and community. To sum it up, we only list high-quality projects that have the potential to positively impact our community, as well as the crypto industry at large. This process wasn't adjusted much, though we made some minor optimizations in terms of our internal process to have more communication built in between different departments facing the projects so that we can have more symmetric information to make better decisions.
About HaasOnline
HaasOnline Software® and their signature HaasBot® empower cryptocurrency traders to increase profit margins, reduce human errors, and increase trade efficiency. HaasOnline TradeServer is on-premise non-custodial trade automation software that executes strategies for thousands of cryptocurrency hobbyists, professionals, and speculators worldwide.
For more information, visit https://www.haasonline.com
About Bitget
Bitget, established in 2018, is the world's top five leading cryptocurrency exchange with innovative products and social trading services as its key features, currently serving over 8 million users in more than 100 countries around the world.
The exchange is committed to providing one-stop and secure trading solutions to users and aims to increase crypto adoption by collaborations with creditable partners, including Argentinian legendary footballer Lionel Messi, Italian leading football team Juventus, PGL Major's official esports crypto partner, and the leading esports organization Team Spirit.
To learn more about Bitget, please visit: https://www.bitget.com