Bitget CEO Gracy：AI倒逼Crypto去泡沫化，交易所进入全资产竞争

Throughout June, major exchanges have been intensively rolling out US stock products. As the earliest and most aggressive player in this track, Bitget has also launched its own RWA platform, Reality, and made major upgrades to its US stock products. Today, we invited Bitget CEO Gracy to discuss this trend and other hot industry topics.

Bitget previously integrated stock token solutions like Ondo. Now, with US Stocks 2.0, you've chosen to switch to Reality. What's the biggest difference between the two? What are the main problems this upgrade aims to solve?

Gracy: We started collaborating with Ondo in Q3 of last year, at one point accounting for nearly 90% of the market share of stock tokens they issued. We didn't just work with Ondo; we also launched US stock tokens in partnership with xStocks. However, throughout this process, the most common feedback we heard from users was: liquidity wasn't good enough, and the settlement mechanisms for dividends and stock splits weren't clear or transparent enough.

So, we decided to tackle this problem ourselves directly. Reality is the compliant RWA protocol we launched. Its biggest difference lies in directly connecting with the US-licensed broker Alpaca, allowing orders to be routed directly to NASDAQ and the NYSE. Simply put, when trading Reality's US stock rTokens, the price you get for Apple or Tesla is exactly what the market price is in the US stock market. Liquidity is directly benchmarked against traditional brokerages.

Furthermore, Reality solves the pain points of dividends and stock splits. Cash dividends are automatically converted to USDT and airdropped to users. Stock splits are also synchronized 1:1, eliminating the disconnect between the token price and the actual stock price.

In the future, can users use stock tokens like NVIDIA or Tesla as margin to continue trading BTC, ETH, or other contracts?

Gracy: This feature was already launched on June 4th. This is also the core reason we insist on tokenization, rather than just being a "direct brokerage connection." The rNVDA (NVIDIA rToken) that users buy can be used directly as contract margin on Bitget, or transferred out via public chains like Arbitrum and Morph for use in DeFi scenarios. What we want to do is to truly activate the US stock tokens held by users and improve overall capital efficiency.

Recently, many exchanges have been upgrading their US stock-related products. What are the core differences in Bitget's latest upgrade compared to the stock products on other platforms?

Gracy: Indeed, many platforms are laying out US stocks recently, but looking around, most competitors are still caught up in the "direct brokerage connection" model. That means users deposit stablecoins, then open accounts and trade with traditional brokers. Bitget recently launched US Stocks 2.0. A key upgrade point is that we chose a more crypto-native path, namely RWA stock tokens.

The core difference is that stocks bought via "direct brokerage connection" usually just sit in the user's US stock account. But on Bitget, rTokens issued through Reality are genuine on-chain assets, currently already integrated with Arbitrum and Morph public chains. This means users can not only use them as margin within Bitget but also withdraw them to their own wallets. In the future, they can even enter DeFi protocols for staking, yield generation, and other operations.

We specifically solved two problems that the industry hasn't addressed well for a long time. First, liquidity: our orders go directly to NASDAQ and NYSE. Prices, order books, and depth are synchronized with the real market. Second, dividend distribution and stock splits: Cash dividends are directly converted to USDT and automatically airdropped; stock splits are also synchronized 1:1, avoiding the disconnect between token price and actual stock price.

More importantly, in the UEX environment, these rTokens can truly achieve higher capital efficiency. For example, a user holding rNVDA (NVIDIA rToken) can use it directly as margin to continue trading BTC or ETH contracts, allowing the same asset to function in two markets simultaneously. This is the true native on-chain experience, something a traditional direct brokerage connection cannot achieve.

A long-standing criticism of stock tokens is: what are users actually buying – a tokenized representation of genuine stock rights, or just a price tracking tool? How will Reality prove to users that the underlying stocks are real, auditable, and traceable? Will you provide things like proof of reserves, custodian disclosures, audit reports, and broker structure explanations in the future?

Gracy: That's an excellent question. Indeed, if it's just a "synthetic asset" tracking a price, it has no soul. Reality's rTokens are backed by tangible underlying assets. Our underlying stocks are custodied by the US-licensed broker Alpaca and held in an independent SPV, completely segregated from the platform's own assets. We achieve 1:1 full reserve backing.

Simultaneously, we undergo daily audits by a third-party US-licensed auditing firm. The Reality official website has launched a real-time audit dashboard where users can check the reserve ratio anytime. We expect to add their audit reports to this dashboard by August once the CPA-licensed audit firm is prepared. Coupled with Bitget's User Protection Fund of over $300 million, you could say users have a triple layer of protection.

(Source: Screenshot of Reality PoR dashboard on June 12, 2026, 2:00 PM GMT+8)

How will Reality handle corporate actions like stock splits, reverse splits, special dividends, mergers & acquisitions, or delistings for a particular stock?

Gracy: Handling Corporate Actions is another area where we are much stronger than many products on the market. Take stock splits for example. When Netflix underwent a 1-for-10 split last year, some platforms' tokens didn't rebase synchronously, causing certain stock token prices to differ by a factor of 10 from the actual stock price, which confused users. But with Reality, stock splits are synchronized automatically. One token held by a user increases to ten tokens, the unit price benchmarks against the real stock price, and the total asset value remains unaffected.

Cash dividends are also directly converted to USDT and airdropped automatically to the Bitget account, ensuring clarity and transparency. For both individual retail investors and institutions we support in the future, especially participants needing hedging, valuation, liquidation, and portfolio management, having a "price stays price, dividends stay dividends" structure is much closer to the habits used in the traditional financial system.

In recent years, the main narratives for crypto users were BTC, ETH, DeFi, NFTs, Memes, L2, and public chain competition. But recently, it's clear that assets and companies like AI, US stocks, NVIDIA, OpenAI, and SpaceX are absorbing significant capital and attention.

Have you observed this migration in your platform data? What is the current proportion of non-cryptocurrency trading on Bitget? How fast is it growing?

Gracy: We have indeed observed this trend. As early as late 2024 and early 2025, we noticed altcoins performing weakly while users' enthusiasm for assets like AI, US stocks, gold, and silver began to rise. That's why I proposed the vision of UEX (Universal Exchange) back in September last year.

In December last year, the cumulative trading volume of our US stock perpetual contracts exceeded $10 billion, ranking second globally. At the beginning of this year, our TradFi sector, including gold and forex, saw its daily trading volume surpass $2 billion for the first time. Currently, 40% of Bitget's trading volume comes from non-crypto assets.

The reason is simple: capital is profit-seeking. Where there is more certain growth and wealth effects, funds flow there. The AI giants in the US stock market deliver tangible revenue and profits, while many Crypto projects are still in the story-telling phase.

As for whether this will reverse in the future, I don't see it as a zero-sum game. Crypto assets, like BTC as digital gold, and US tech stocks can absolutely be complementary components of a user's investment portfolio. What we need to do is to allow users to seamlessly buy different asset classes within one account using stablecoins like USDT and USDC.

Looking at the macro environment, US stocks, especially AI-related assets, have seen significant gains in the past six months, with many multiplying tenfold. For many crypto users, they might only start paying attention to US stocks after the profit-making effects in the crypto market declined. Entering the market at this point might actually mean facing the risk of buying at the top.

What's your take on the current position of US stocks? For users just transitioning from crypto to US stock trading, what's the most common mistake they need to avoid?

Gracy: The biggest pain points for crypto users are capital efficiency and asset fragmentation. Leaving funds idle on an exchange for interest might mean missing out on stock market gains. Going to open an account with a traditional broker makes it hard to get the funds back to an exchange to trade contracts. Our rToken product is designed to solve this: while users buy US stocks, their holdings can still be used as contract margin, keeping the capital active.

Whether US stocks are expensive or not depends on the user's investment time horizon. When crypto users participate in US stocks, they first need to realize that the US stock market, like crypto assets, is not a one-way street upward. Especially for hot areas like AI, semiconductors, and tech stocks, the gains over the past period have been substantial. Short-term volatility and valuation pressures need comprehensive assessment.

Stepping out of my CEO role, as an investor managing my personal account, I recently shared some judgments on X (Twitter) regarding the potential bottom price of Bitcoin this cycle, which was questioned by many: "As an exchange CEO, you shouldn't short your own industry." But I want to say, any industry has cyclicality. I'm only presenting the data and logic, pointing out possible cyclical changes. Of course, we are long-term bullish on the crypto industry and believe tokenized assets will bring new opportunities. But being "long-term bullish" doesn't mean "always shouting bullish." Trading opportunities come from volatility, and for increasingly mature investors, both ups and downs present opportunities.

From a technical perspective, the current market shows some extreme deviations. Bank of America (BofA) reports and related charts show that the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) has risen 62% above its 200-day moving average. Historically, at the peaks of major market bubbles, the average deviation of related market indices from their 200-day moving average has been about 35%. The current deviation has already exceeded the level of the Nasdaq index relative to its 200-day moving average (55%) before the burst of the internet bubble in 2000.

(Source: BofA's "The Flow Show" report on May 14, 2026, 10:45 PM EDT)

Furthermore, the current US stock rally is extremely dependent on a few tech giants. If super IPOs like SpaceX and Anthropic hit the market soon, they could further divert market liquidity.

Crypto users are accustomed to high volatility, high leverage, and short-term trading. While US stocks have volatility too, they rely more on fundamentals, earnings, valuations, interest rates, and macro cycles. What trading habits do you think they most need to change?

Gracy: For users just moving from crypto to US stocks, my most important piece of advice is: Don't treat US stocks like Meme coins. In the crypto world, users might be used to following sentiment, community hype, and going all-in on high-leverage short-term trades. But the US stock market is a highly institutionalized market that focuses on earnings reports, EPS (Earnings Per Share), interest rate environments, and macro cycles.

Users accustomed to the crypto market need to learn to closely monitor treasury yields and inflation data. For instance, when the 10-year US Treasury yield approaches 5%, it can put pressure on high-valuation tech stocks.

Additionally, users transitioning from the crypto [to US markets] need to change another habit: lower leverage and lengthen their time horizon. Blue-chip US stocks have real earnings, cash flow, and economic moats behind them. They are more suitable for asset allocation and long-term dollar-cost averaging, rather than expecting to go all-in today and double their money tomorrow like trading a shitcoin. Be patient, be a friend of time. To help crypto users better adapt to the rhythm of US stocks, Bitget will continue to launch educational content related to US stocks. Stay tuned, and let's learn together to become "respectable US stock traders."

In the past, crypto was one of the areas with the highest concentration of young talent, venture capital, tech narratives, and speculative capital. But now AI is clearly the stronger narrative: top talent goes to AI, VCs invest in AI, secondary market funds chase AI, and US tech giants deliver real revenue and growth.

How big do you think the impact of AI on crypto is? What is the internal usage of AI at Bitget? Is it mandatory or included in performance reviews? Which AI products do you use?

Gracy: The impact certainly exists, but I prefer to see it as a "de-bubbling" touchstone for the Crypto industry. In the past, making money in Crypto was too easy. Now, AI is draining capital and talent, which conversely will force the Crypto industry to consolidate and find genuinely valuable real-world applications, such as stablecoin payments and RWA.

Internally at Bitget, we require all employees to fully embrace AI. AI-driven innovation is one of our three core strategies for 2026. We don't rigidly make AI usage a mandatory KPI because if tools are good, people will naturally use them. For instance, I frequently use tools like Manus and NotebookLM for summarization and research – they are indeed addictive.

Simultaneously, we support employees in using AI at an organizational level. Bitget has purchased enterprise-level Claude access for all 2,167 employees, costing $200 per person per month. This isn't due to external pressure but because we observed significant productivity improvements after employees started using AI tools, and we want to ensure our team doesn't fall behind in the AI application wave.

Even our design team, which lacks a technical background, has learned to use tools like Google AI Studio and developed 6-7 AI tools to assist with business tasks, like automatically reviewing UI compliance issues in external-facing materials. On the product side, we have also launched dedicated AI tools for traders, like GetAgent and GetClaw.

We have AI-related training almost daily. Just this week, I attended the "Data Team AI Product Themed Sharing Session" and the "Digital Employee Plan & BG Agent Platform Introduction Sharing Session."

AI is a productivity multiplier. Those who use it well will move faster in the next cycle. Now and in the future, it will definitely be an era where silicon-based and carbon-based life work together.

More and more crypto exchanges are now offering US stocks, gold, forex, stock tokens, and Pre-IPO products. Optimistically, this is the expansion of crypto infrastructure to global assets; pessimistically, it might mean crypto itself lacks quality assets, so exchanges have to bring US stocks in to maintain growth.

How do you see this issue? When crypto exchanges are all integrating US stocks, is it enhancing the value of crypto's financial infrastructure, or is it funneling crypto user traffic towards traditional finance, eventually making it a market outsourcing liquidity for US stocks?

Gracy: I don't see this as a black-and-white issue. When crypto exchanges integrate US stocks, gold, forex, and Pre-IPO products, on the surface, it looks like "moving traditional financial assets into Crypto." But looking deeper, it's testing a fundamental question: Is Crypto just an asset class, or is it a new set of financial infrastructure?

My judgment is that the answer depends on *how* the exchange does it. If it simply packages a price exposure to a US stock as a trading product, then yes, it might just become a distribution channel for traditional financial liquidity, or even just channeling Crypto user traffic towards US stocks.

But if it can reorganize asset issuance, trading, clearing, custody, and risk management based on stablecoin accounts, on-chain settlement, global accessibility, fractional trading, and 24/7 markets, then it's not enhancing any single US stock; it's enhancing the value of Crypto as the next-generation financial infrastructure.

Moreover, anyone who has used many traditional financial platforms knows the high barriers to entry: difficult account opening, high thresholds, slow capital movement. Our goal is to break through the underlying assets through stablecoin settlement and on-chain RWA protocols, allowing Bitget's 120 million global users to trade top global assets with just a phone and an email.

I don't see this as outsourcing; it's using Crypto's high efficiency and low friction to disrupt and improve the traditional brokerage experience. We aren't losing users; instead, through tokenization solutions like Reality, we are pulling real-world assets onto the chain, making them part of DeFi. This is expanding Crypto's territory. I believe that as the industry develops, the definition of Crypto is also evolving. Initially, Crypto only represented Bitcoin. Later, Crypto became the hotly discussed memecoin. In the future, a lot of Crypto will be RWA. Regardless of the asset, the underlying blockchain technology is the cornerstone driving this new financial system. Our long-term bullishness on the industry partly stems from our confidence in the technology itself.

Bitget proposed UEX, essentially allowing users to trade crypto, stocks, gold, forex, ETFs, and other assets within a single account. This sounds like an expansion of exchange