Bitget, a cryptocurrency exchange that has grown rapidly in recent years to one of the largest, is considering partnerships with U.S. firms to gain a foothold in America, encouraged by the incoming Trump administration’s likely pro-crypto stance.
Some of the largest crypto exchanges such as Binance, ByBit, OKX and Bitget are prohibited from serving U.S. citizens. Binance.US, the American arm of the largest exchange, has been all but squeezed out as part of a bruising $4.3 billion settlement between its parent company and U.S. authorities.
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In early 2022, Bitget, which has daily trading volume of around $8 billion, considered starting the process of acquiring U.S. state licenses, said the exchange’s CEO, Gracy Chen. But after the collapse of FTX, the climate didn’t look favorable, not to mention the “ridiculously high” legal costs, combined with the prospect of competing directly with Coinbase, Chen added.
Even with the regulatory clarity for crypto in the U.S. that Trump might bring as president, a tangle of state-based licenses and various federal authorities await new entrants. That said, Bitget has experience forging mutually beneficial relationships: A recent partnership with U.K. trading firm Archax enabled Bitget to become compliant with British financial promotions rules.
“We are revisiting a U.S. strategy, although we have not decided on anything yet,” Chen said in an interview. “If we had a local partner who has many of those licenses already, then we could do a joint venture, for example. So we don’t need to go through all the applications. We might take that approach, but it’s not decided yet.”
Following the collapse of FTX and the regulatory clampdown on Binance, opportunities opened up for rival exchanges to pick up customers around the globe. Mobile app downloads tracked by business intelligence firm Sensor Tower and web traffic researcher SimilarWeb show big growth areas for several top exchanges in places like Russia, India and Nigeria, for instance.
Chen said her firm may have picked up some business that previously belonged to Binance. However, customer growth didn’t just fall into Bitget’s lap, she said — it was won over by being sharper and more innovative than the competition.
For example, Bitget made a $30 million investment in TON, the token of the blockchain network linked to the popular messaging app Telegram, which in turn led to a surge in Nigerian users. Many customers in the African country play games using TON and get tokens airdropped to their wallets, Chen said, and they needed easy access to deposit and trade these on an exchange. This was something Bitget was able to provide for Nigerians, Chen said.
“We wanted to gain some of the TON users obviously, and this strategy worked really well from the Nigeria side,” Chen said. “There was a period of time when we had more downloads in Nigeria than Google or TikTok.”
Nigeria is a country Chen has yet to visit, and because of the detainment of Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan, she won’t be doing so for the time being.
“There are some countries where we feel the government is perhaps not stable enough and for reasons of security no one from our team would fly there,” she said.
Chen said she was aware of some rival exchanges aggressively courting Russian users and influencers in the period after the Ukraine war began, especially during conferences in Dubai, for example. (Data from Sensor Tower shows Bybit had more than a million monthly active users in Russia in August.)
Bybit did not immediately reply to requests for comment about the number of Russian users on its platform.
Chen said Bitget had held back when it came to Russia. “Strategically, we thought we should stay away from the Russia/U.S. argument because sanctions were being imposed,” she said.
India, a market where Binance is re-established after receiving a fine this year, has not been a growth region for Bitget, mainly because of the lack of a clear regulatory framework, Chen said. “We are working with the government and we have a few team members looking at India right now,” she said.
Large crypto exchanges do what they can to stop customers from restricted territories such as China or in some cases the U.S. from trading on their platforms illicitly. But it’s often the case that users in these excluded regions find ways to get around know-your-customer (KYC) checks, and may use virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent IP-blocking measures.
This type of activity happens a fair bit in China, Chen said, where users may have a passport or drivers’ license attached to another country.
“I think all the major exchanges have business that comes from certain countries, such as China,” she said. “Because it’s such a big economy with so many retail users, it’s just very hard to avoid all of them.”
Chen, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate who was promoted from managing director and head of marketing to CEO of Bitget this year, is one of several Asian or Asian-American women steering the largest crypto companies; others include Binance co-founder Yi He, the partner of its former chief CZ; OKX President Hong Fang; and Helen Liu, the chief operating officer of Bybit.
In fact, Binance’s He is an old friend who introduced Chen to crypto back in 2015.
“I know her pretty well. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding. But today it’s kind of like a friend-enemy situation,” Chen said.
