8th Anniversary CEO Letter: 8uilt for Perfect Trades

As we celebrate our eighth year, I find myself reflecting back on the genesis of some of our most successful moves of the last twelve months. We had ideas that I believed would be successful, but we didn’t know yet. I had many in-person conversations with clients that were frustrated with the limitations of the status quo — but I could not say for sure that our users would, for example, buy pre-IPO stocks or be interested in trading tokenized equity. What I could never have predicted was that the execution of these ideas would surpass all of our wildest expectations.

We weren’t the only ones who were blown away; last September, when we announced our transformation into a UEX — Universal Exchange — the skepticism was immediate. Some called it a marketing stunt for our anniversary. Others said we were chasing the RWA trend. We didn't respond to any of it, because we know the most powerful answer is never explanation. We prefer action.

Bitget’s evolution over the last 12 months was never about reacting to competitors. It was about something we saw clearly: users were stuck in a fragmented world — fragmented assets, fragmented accounts, fragmented by time zones and geography. Wanting to manage crypto, US equities, commodities, and forex in one place was still, somehow, an unreasonable ask. That didn't make sense to us. So we changed the landscape.

Today, nearly every major exchange has begun rolling out traditional finance trading services. That direction? We pioneered it. 2025 to 2026 marks the first era of true multi-asset trading — and Bitget helped define it.

From Challenger to Industry Innovator

For a long time, Bitget played the role of the challenger.

In the early days, we didn't have the earliest brand recognition, the largest traffic channels, or the head start of legacy players. That's precisely why we understood, more than anyone, that the only path forward was to focus on building. No internal politics, no chasing short-term hype, just every ounce of energy directed at products and users. That challenger mentality became our most important competitive asset.

At the same time, we kept asking a more fundamental question: what should trading actually look like?

As technology evolved, the answer became clear. The simple binary of CEX versus DEX was already outdated. Both were still trapped within the boundaries of the crypto world. For users who wanted exposure to US stocks, gold, and forex alongside their crypto holdings, neither offered a real solution.

So we built UEX, a product model where users can access global asset trading through a single account. It is a unified experience, one liquidity infrastructure, all within the crypto rails they already know. One account, with no boundaries that’s continuously improving.

One year after introducing UEX, Bitget is no longer just a challenger. We’ve delivered a series of industry firsts:

We were the first major exchange to launch stock perps. The first to offer on-chain token trading directly from a spot account through Bitget Onchain. The first to provide both primary subscription and secondary trading for Pre-IPO token offerings. The first to launch a cross-asset unified account supporting US stock tokens as margin collateral. The first crypto exchange to offer US stock options trading. The first to list Hong Kong stock Quanto contracts. And the first to introduce GetClaw — the world's first installation-free autonomous AI trading agent.

Every one of these firsts came from the same conviction: users should not have to pay the price for the industry's structural failures. The challenger mindset keeps us hungry. But the deeper motivation behind everything we build has always been the same: to pursue perfect trades.

The Multi-Asset Era: Our Report Card

This year at the Online Trading Expo, Bitget was named Best Global Multi-Asset Trading Platform — our first major industry award in the traditional finance space. The award itself isn't the point, it’s what it signals: an exchange that started in crypto is now being recognized by the traditional financial world.

At the event, I delivered a keynote to a room that was a mix of TradFi professionals, crypto-native traders, and many people still watching from the sidelines of both worlds. I shared a belief I hold deeply: "The future of finance will not be built around choosing between traditional assets and digital assets. It will be built around making access to all markets simpler, more efficient, and more connected." Blockchain's role is not to replace existing financial markets, it's to help them work better.

The data is already supporting this. Here is what our first year looked like:

At peak, non-crypto assets accounted for 40% of Bitget's total trading volume. TradFi perps and CFDs each surpassed $10 billion in daily trading volume, covering equities, gold, crude oil, and forex. rToken recorded over 3 million cumulative transactions — and 1 in every 4 new Bitget users now begins their journey with rToken.

On product breadth, rToken supports 1000+ assets, TradFi contracts cover 300+ instruments, and CFDs span nearly 100 pairs — the widest asset coverage in the industry. On liquidity, Bitget's rToken liquidity leads the industry; M7 stock contract order book depth ranks first globally; and gold, silver, and crude oil commodity contract liquidity also tops the industry. On capital efficiency, Bitget UTA is the market's first true cross-asset unified account supporting stock tokens as margin — the same capital can serve simultaneously as a position, margin collateral, and a yield-generating asset. On trading tools, from GetAgent to AI Playbook to GetClaw, AI handles execution while traders focus on judgment.

Our goal has never been to pile up products. It is to give users around the world access to the markets they want, in one place, with the execution quality they deserve.

Built for Perfect Trades

There is a line from The Book of Songs, one of China's oldest classical texts, that has stayed with me: "Cut and filed, chiseled and polished." It describes the making of jade — each step not a repetition of the last, but a deeper refinement. Building a trading platform works the same way. There is always another layer to get right.

At Bitget, we believe in being “built for perfect trades”. To us, this involves four principles: ultimate efficiency of capital utilization, ultimate freedom from time and geography, ultimate equality of opportunity, and ultimate clarity of decision-making. Bitget is rebuilding global financial trading from the ground up on blockchain rails. These four principles anchor every product decision we make.

On the client side, we will continue strengthening our institutional offering. That means upgrading API performance, deepening prime brokerage and quant team onboarding, and providing dedicated service and operational support for institutional clients. For high-net-worth users, we will build a dedicated VIP service channel. And we will keep serving every retail user with the same commitment: bringing genuinely equal market access to more people.

On the product side, we will upgrade API infrastructure and quantitative trading capabilities, complete the full rTOKEN financial services chain including dividends, recurring investment, and lending, and advance the deep integration of the UTA cross-asset account. The vision of accessing global opportunities from a single account should become more real and more accessible for every user.

The institutional side is Bitget's core strategic priority for the next phase. As of Q2 2026, institutional client net assets have grown 45% compared to Q3 2025. Core active market makers have grown from 90 to 248 firms — a 176% increase. Going forward, we will invest consistently in what institutions care about most: execution quality, meaning matching latency, slippage, system uptime; asset security and segregation; and a complete institutional service stack, from FIX/API connectivity and sub-accounts with portfolio margining, to OTC RFQ and credit facilities.

As my son turns eight, he is becoming much more independent. He organises his own schoolbag, packs his own snacks and no longer needs me to guide his every step. I see the parallels with Bitget as we also celebrate eight years on this earth. We’ve gone from the early days of finding out our direction and our voice, to becoming an industry leader on the world stage, with our VIP and institutional clients and within the entire finance industry. All the while paving that clearer path towards our IPO.

Just like my son, we’re not evolving in a vacuum. What we’re living through now is not just the growth story of one exchange. It is a genuine democratization of finance. Billions of people around the world are still shut out of the global financial system. They have no suitable accounts, no proper tools, no pathway into global asset markets. We know that needs to change. UEX exists to open that door.

The pursuit of perfect trades has no finish line. Only the next trade to get right.

Thank you to every user who has been on this journey with us, and to every trader who keeps doing the work seriously, even through the noise. The multi-asset era is just beginning.

Gracy Chen

CEO, Bitget

September 2026