MinersMarket.ca - In an interview, Bitget CEO Gracy Chen surveys the geopolitics of the crypto exchange landscape, including contested territories like Nigeria, Russia and India.
What to know:
- Crypto exchange Bitget is revisiting a U.S. strategy, which may involve partnerships with American firms, said the exchange’s CEO Gracy Chen
- 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.
- Chen, an MIT graduate who was promoted to CEO of Bitget this year, has been driving customer growth at the exchange.
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.
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.”