Bitget’s fifth anniversary: a Messi-like victory, the mysterious founder and the wolfish culture
If you attended Singapore Token 2049, it’s hard not to notice the big Bitget logo at the check-in desk and the “Messi Shot” at the Bitget booth.
How did Bitget get started?, Who is the boss behind Bitget?, What is the relationship between Bitget and Foresight?... We can always hear such questions from time to time in Singapore. People are very interested in this issue in Singapore. The trading platform that was born in the bear market of 2018 and will rise strongly in the bear market of 2023 is full of curiosity.
In September this year, Bitget celebrated its fifth anniversary. With some curiosity, we communicated with several current and former employees of Bitget, as well as relevant investors, trying to partially restore the story behind Bitget’s five-year journey.
A Messi-like victory
When we talk about Messi, what do we think of?
7 Golden Globes? Lead Argentina to the World Cup?
Sorry, I unconsciously associate Messi with Bitget. The photo of Messi holding a mobile phone and showing the Bitget App comes to mind.
In October 2022, Bitget signed a contract with Messi for a price of more than 100 million yuan. On the one hand, Messi has global influence and can help Bitget better establish its brand overseas. On the other hand, Bitgets decision-making executives believe that Bitget and Messi have a mutual relationship. There are too many similarities, or in other words, Bitgets today is a Messi-style victory.
Messi, who grew up eating potatoes and carrots, was malnourished as a child and was diagnosed with growth hormone-deficient dwarfism at age 11. On the day he got the results, he walked with his father on the cold streets. Although he knew deep down that his family had no money to treat him, he still felt extremely calm.
Although he was injected with growth hormone for three years with the help of Barcelona, his height of 1.69 meters still made him look like an easily bullied child on the court. However, as an adult, Messi combines fragility and strength to stand alone in the world.
A reporter once asked Messi, Who are you most grateful to?
Messi said, They are those who once looked down upon me. Without those ridicules and contempt, I would always consider myself a genius. Argentina has never lacked geniuses, but in the end there were only a few who truly became usable talents.
The beginning of Bitget seemed to be the same. It was established in May 2018 and was unknown. At that time, everyone was talking about Fcoin, which later became FTX. No one noticed Bitget, which was developing and working silently in the corner.
Without the endorsement of celebrity investors, the creation of a founder’s persona, and the lack of massive funds for publicity, all Bitget could do in its early days was bottom-up and hard work. “Private messages to some community KOLs one by one, but what they usually received was neglect.” and ridicule”.
An employee who joined Bitget in the early days once said that when she jumped from an exchange to Bitget, people around her questioned her, Why should I go to a small exchange?
As Messi said, being underestimated is the fate of growing up.
Messi is almost the player who runs the least on the court. Over the years, shots of Messi walking on the court have often been made into funny highlights. His seemingly weak temperament conceals his killer nature.
In a certain World Series, Messi only ran 5 miles in 90 minutes, walking 83% of the time and sprinting only 1% of the time, but he achieved 1 goal and 1 goal. assists.
This is Messis strength and wisdom. He does not make unnecessary runs for the process, but is responsible for the results. He can kill with one hit.
The well-known blogger Lonely Brain summarized Messis playing style on the football field and abstracted the football philosophy:
The first step: scan the entire site and draw a value map;
Step 2: Wait in the value zone;
The third step: Black into the micro-gap of space and time;
Step 4: Pursue maximum offense through diversification;
Step 5: Score a goal.
Messi’s football philosophy on the court is also a personal and corporate survival philosophy, and Bitget is a staunch implementer of Messi’s philosophy.
1. Focus limited resources on high-value areas;
2. No matter how big the market battle is, you must find the most important point of effort. There is often only one most important point of effort;
3. Often the best points of effort and specific actions are based on certain basic elements. The key lies in discovering the key points rather than a whole bunch of complicated methodologies.
In 2019, Bitget made a decision to cut off the spot business, retain only the futures business, and transform into a focused contract trading platform. This is how Bitget focuses its limited resources on high-value areas. So how to exert its strength?
Bitget keenly discovered that in the contract market, investors not only need a trading platform, but also a trading strategy. Bitget chose to innovate at the product level. In July 2019, it launched the USDT forward contract, the first in the world, and later took the lead in launching one-click tracking. Single function and hybrid contracts.
Like Messi, Bitget did not run rampant on the encrypted court, but stuck to the high-value area, innovating where it mattered most, and everything served the results.
KOL and overseas markets
When we asked industry insiders out of curiosity, How did Bitget rise and what did it do right?
Most of the interviewees will tell us two pieces of information, Bitget operates a huge KOL network, and one KOL may bring more than 300 million US dollars in transaction volume to BG and Bitgets early rise relied on seizing some core Asian markets. .
Today, we find that Bitget is expanding its KOL network from within the industry to outside the industry, attracting a large number of non-crypto industry KOLs to join it. Among them is Cao Ye, the host of the Taiwanese Youtube channel Mimosa Diary with millions of subscribers. One person.
In 2021, Mr. Cao invested tens of millions in Bitcoin mining. He tasted the benefits at first, so he doubled his investment. Unexpectedly, the market took a turn for the worse and the mine entered a period of losing money. After two years of persistence, Mr. Cao announced the closure of the mine.
At the bottom of his life, Cao Ye received the support of Bitget and created the Cao Coin Champion incubation center teaching platform to cultivate novices interested in cryptocurrency.
In September 2023, Mr. Cao received the “Bitget Hero Award” at the Bitget fifth anniversary starlight party.
Mr. Cao said emotionally on the stage, Its hard to imagine that I, a person who fell hard while mining a year ago, could stand up again.
At an overseas blockchain event, we met KIM, a practitioner in the encryption industry. He was a supplier of Bitget. He recalled a past cooperation with Bitget. Due to accounting problems, there was an undercount of US$500,000. Later, after Bitget discovered the problem, it took the initiative to find him and settled the US$500,000. This moved him very much and recommended Bitget to more cooperative communities.
However, such a model may also have undercurrents beneath the brilliance of the data.
Industry insider King pointedly pointed out that KOL can bring users or take away users, which tests whether Bitget can truly retain users.
Behind the cooperation of KOL is often a game between human nature and interests. Just like the live broadcast on the short video platform, the video platform will support the anchor, and will also suppress the anchor when he is restless. It is difficult for the platform to truly restrict the anchor to find another job or start his own business. .
Therefore, it is foreseeable that conflicts between Bitget and some KOLs will be rare and common events in the future.
The founder and wolf culture
When we tried to explore Bitgets management team and corporate culture from the outside in, we encountered an information barrier - the founder of Bitget was extremely mysterious, had retreated behind the scenes, and barely spoke to the outside world.
So, we turned the microphone to Bitget’s current/former employees and industry veterans. Some people avoided talking about it, while others praised it. One current employee said that she would try her best to avoid direct communication with the big boss at work; some former employees said , the founder of Bitget is a strong capitalist and everything is result-oriented...
All kinds of fragmented information are spliced together to gradually restore the acting style of the founder of Bitget - act vigorously and decisively.
This style also shaped Bitget’s corporate culture, a company full of wolfishness.
Wolf nature is not a derogatory term, nor is it 996/007 in the public eye. Here, I prefer to quote Ren Zhengfeis explanation of wolf nature:
One is a keen sense of smell. In extremely harsh living environments, wolves have evolved some kind of prophet-like perception and design awareness;
The second is the indomitable offensive spirit, that is, the heroism of an organization;
The third is the wolf pack spirit, which is unyielding in the face of setbacks.
Wolf culture is often based on utilitarian principles and pragmatism, and results always come first.
Those who have results will be fully empowered and rewarded; if there are no results in the short term, you must use your attitude to fight for opportunities; if you have neither results nor attitude, you will be eliminated resolutely, Bitget employee A concluded.
Personal A very much recognizes this result orientation, which allows him to focus on the work itself and obtain rewards for completing the results, instead of wasting energy on upward management, internal public relations and sophistication, and there is no internal intrigue and mutual infighting. report.
Wolf nature does not mean involution and requires results rather than meaningless internal friction. He likes such simple and direct work.
Industry investor Candy believes that Bitget is quite united internally, while the biggest problem of another trading platform that started out as a derivatives company in the industry is the internal strife within the management team.
Talent
Huawei does not reserve dollars, but reserves talents. This sentence also applies to Bitget.
Why did they join Bitget?
A simple answer that is consistent with human nature is, Its just too much.
It is understood that there is no upper limit on the commissions of Bitget BD and other employees. Due to the historical process of rapid development and personal efforts, some overseas employees received bonuses of US$200,000 a month.
Im not afraid of being tired at work. What Im afraid of is repeating meaningless work, without a sense of accomplishment, and without making any money. Yi, who joined Bitget today, said that compared to his previous job, Bitgets work is a lot more tiring, but there is no painting. The style of paying the money directly made him feel that the fruits of his labor were respected.
Yi told us that despite the bear market in the crypto market in 2023, Bitget still paid mid-year bonuses to everyone.
In the development process of Bitget, some key talents have played an important role. Some people have helped Bitget build an investment, media, incubation and other ecosystems; some have helped Bitget conquer overseas markets...
In a Bitget culture manual displayed by Bitget employees, there is a dedicated page discussing the talent strategy: respect, empowerment; meritocracy; personnel iteration; inclusiveness.
Currently, Bitget has more than 1,500 employees worldwide and continues to expand and recruit new talents this year.
Another truth about Bitget is that Bitget does not deliberately cultivate talents, but selects them. Excellent talents are selected, not cultivated.
Ecology takes another step forward
In addition to the rise in transaction volume, what everyone clearly perceives today is that Bitgets entire ecological linkage has greatly enhanced its brand potential, which is inseparable from the support of its investment and media brand Foresight.
According to Bitget’s fifth anniversary open letter, Foresight Ventures has invested in 77 projects, including well-known companies such as Space and Time, WalletConnect, Sei Network, Gitcoin, Shardeum, etc., with a total investment amount of more than 60 million US dollars; Foresight X has incubated 12 early-stage projects, covering AI +Web3, Bitcoin Ecology, LSDFi and other tracks.
On August 10, Web3 multi-chain wallet BitKeep was officially renamed Bitget Wallet. It still exists as an independent APP and is not integrated into the trading platform.
Exchange, investment, media, incubation, wallet... The Bitget ecosystem has covered five major territories. Is there still one missing piece?
Perhaps you have already thought of the public chain. According to the information we obtained at the Bitget event in Singapore, Bitget is also continuing to support some emerging Layer 2 networks and explore more efficient and secure solutions.
At this point, the Bitget ecosystem has made another breakthrough, with six major sectors converging.
at last
On September 11, Gracy Chen, Managing Director of Bitget, released an open letter Written on the Fifth Anniversary of Bitget - In every era, someone has to look up at the stars. There are two sentences in it that are impressive:
Bitget was born from a unique belief——"Be the 10% who stick around after the tide ebbs"。
Unlike those exchanges that rise quickly and die quickly, we are more like a marathon runner.
In the crypto industry, success may not be that complicated. Keep running and don’t make mistakes, because your opponents will always make mistakes or quit on their own initiative. Marathon runners dont care about temporary gains and losses. All they run is just for the moment towards the finish line.
