8th Anniversary CEO Open Letter: Trading Extremism

Today marks Bitget's 8th anniversary. Standing at this point in time and looking back on the past year, I want to share some honest thoughts with you. When we first made decisions about many of our products, we simply believed the direction was right, but we weren't entirely confident about how users would respond. From earlier conversations with some users, I learned they had plenty of frustrations with the current state of trading—they wanted more assets, for instance. But we couldn't predict whether these former crypto users would try trading traditional assets once we launched Pre-IPO or tokenized stocks. What I didn't expect was that once these products actually launched, the market's response far exceeded our expectations.

Last September, we announced our transformation into a UEX—Universal Exchange. There was no shortage of skepticism from the outside. Some said it was just a marketing concept for our anniversary, others said we were jumping on the RWA bandwagon. We didn't respond to each one individually, because the most powerful answer has never been pale explanations, but real action that delivers.

Bitget's transformation over the past 12 months wasn't about responding to industry competition—it was because we genuinely saw the situation users were in: fragmented assets, fragmented accounts, fragmented time, fragmented geographies. For a person to manage their crypto assets, US stocks, commodities, and forex positions in one place is still a hassle. It's 2025, 2026 already—how is trading still this fragmented? It doesn't make sense, and we wanted to change it.

Today, nearly every leading exchange has started offering traditional financial trading services. This direction is one that Bitget pioneered. From 2025 to 2026, this is the inaugural year of multi-asset trading that we've built and witnessed together.

From Follower to Product Innovation Leader

For a long time, Bitget played the role of a follower in the industry.

We didn't have the earliest brand accumulation, the largest traffic gateway, or the first-mover advantage and early dividends of industry veterans. Precisely because of this, we understood better than anyone that the only way forward was to focus on "being the best trading platform" itself—no internal friction, no chasing short-term hype, putting every ounce of effort into products and users. This follower mentality of doing things seriously actually became our most important competitive asset.

At the same time, we were seriously thinking about a most fundamental question: what exactly should this "small matter" of trading be made into?

We clearly saw that: as technology evolves, the simple dichotomy between CEX and DEX has become outdated, and both are trapped within the boundaries of the crypto world; for users who want to simultaneously allocate US stocks, gold, and forex, they need a new type of trading platform.

So, we proposed the UEX product form—allowing users to participate in global asset trading using stablecoins as the medium within one account, one experience, and one liquidity infrastructure, breaking down asset boundaries and continuously iterating.

One year after proposing UEX, Bitget is no longer just a follower. We've created many industry-first products:

The first mainstream crypto exchange to launch stock perpetual contracts; the first to support direct on-chain token trading through spot accounts via Bitget Onchain; the first mainstream crypto exchange to offer both primary subscription and secondary trading of Pre-IPO tokens; the first to launch a cross-asset unified account supporting US stock tokens as margin; the first mainstream crypto exchange to support US stock options trading; the first to list Hong Kong stock Quanto contracts; and the launch of GetClaw, the world's first installation-free autonomous AI trading agent.

Behind every "first" is our belief that users shouldn't pay for the industry's structural flaws. The follower mentality keeps us hungry, but the underlying drive behind everything we do has always been the same thing: to push trading to its absolute limit.

The Report Card for the Inaugural Year of Multi-Asset Trading

This year, Bitget was named "Best Global Multi-Asset Trading Platform" at the Online Trading Expo. This is the first industry award we've received in the traditional finance space. Its significance isn't in the award itself—but in what it demonstrates: an exchange that started from crypto is now being recognized by the traditional financial world.

I gave a keynote speech at the venue, with traditional finance professionals, crypto-native users, and many people still watching from the sidelines of both worlds in the audience. I shared a conviction I firmly believe in: "The future of finance will not be built around a choice between traditional assets and digital assets, but around making access to all markets more convenient, efficient, and interconnected. The role of blockchain is not to replace existing financial markets, but to improve how they operate."

The data is already confirming this judgment. This year, our report card looks like this:

Non-crypto asset trading volume peaked at 40% of Bitget's total trading volume. TradFi futures and CFD daily trading volumes both exceeded $10 billion, covering stocks, gold, crude oil, forex, and other assets. rToken cumulative transactions exceeded 3 million, with 1 in every 4 new Bitget users starting their trading journey with rToken.

In terms of product coverage, rToken supports 1,000+ assets, TradFi futures cover 300+ instruments, CFD covers nearly 100 trading pairs—industry-leading asset coverage. In terms of liquidity, Bitget rToken liquidity is the best in the industry, M7 stock contract near-depth liquidity ranks first across the industry, and liquidity for mainstream commodity contracts like gold, silver, and crude oil ranks first across the industry. In terms of asset efficiency, Bitget UTA is the first cross-asset unified account on the market to support stock tokens as margin—the same asset can simultaneously be a position, margin, and still earn yield. In terms of trading tools, from GetAgent to AI Playbook, AI assists execution while traders focus on judgment.

Our goal has never been to pile up products, but to let global users access the market opportunities they truly want in one place, and enjoy the ultimate trading experience.

Trading Extremism

I like a line from the Book of Songs: As cut, as filed; as carved, as polished. Jade crafting requires four processes—cutting, filing, carving, and polishing—each one a deeper level of refinement. Building a trading platform is the same—there's always another layer where the product can be made better.

Trading extremism, in our view, means the ultimate utilization of capital efficiency, the ultimate freedom of time and geography, the ultimate equality of opportunity, and the ultimate efficiency of decision-making. Bitget is using blockchain technology to redo global financial trading from scratch—these four points are the anchor for every product decision we make.

On the client side, we will continue to upgrade our service capabilities for professional trading institutions, optimize API trading performance, deepen onboarding mechanisms for institutional brokerage and quantitative teams, and provide dedicated service response and operational support for institutional clients. For high-net-worth users, we will establish an independent VIP service channel. At the same time, we will continue to serve every ordinary user well, bringing truly equal market opportunities to more people.

On the product side, we will upgrade API performance and quantitative trading experience, improve the full chain of rToken services including dividends, recurring investment, and lending, and advance the deep integration of the UTA cross-asset account. Let "global opportunities, one-stop allocation" continue to deepen into a reality within reach for every user.

Strategically, institutional business is Bitget's core focus for the next phase. As of Q2 2026, institutional client net asset scale has grown 45% cumulatively compared to Q3 2025, with core active market makers growing from 90 to 248, an increase of 176%. Next, we will continue to invest around the things institutions care about most: optimizing trade execution quality (matching latency, slippage levels, system availability), asset security and isolation mechanisms, and a more complete institutional service chain—from FIX/API access, sub-accounts and portfolio margin, to OTC quoting and credit support.

My son is also turning eight this year. He's becoming more and more independent—packing his own backpack, preparing his own snacks, no longer needing me to guide him at every step. I see a reflection of Bitget in this. A few years ago, we were still feeling our way forward, searching for our own voice; today, we stand on the global stage as an industry leader, having earned recognition from institutional clients and the entire financial industry, and steadily advancing toward a clearer future.

Our growth didn't happen in a vacuum. What we're experiencing isn't just the growth story of an exchange—it's a real process of financial democratization. Billions of people around the world are still locked out of the traditional financial system, without proper financial accounts, without proper tools, without access to global asset markets. We know this needs to change. Bitget's building of a universal exchange is precisely about opening a door for these people.

"Pursuing the ultimate in trading" has no completion—only continuous progress.

Thank you to every user who has walked this path with us, and thank you to everyone who still trades seriously amid the noise. The era of multi-asset trading has only just begun.

Gracy Chen

Bitget CEO

September 2026