Crypto exchanges that focus only on digital assets are approaching a structural ceiling, according to Bitget CEO Gracy Chen, who said platforms must expand into traditional assets and compliance-driven models to remain competitive.
“I do think that if a centralized exchange, or crypto exchanges in general, only look at crypto, it’s going to be challenging in the next few years,” Chen told Yellow.com in an interview.
While she expects Bitcoin (BTC) prices and stablecoin adoption to continue rising, she was cautious about altcoins. “I don’t think the pure crypto-native altcoin market is going to grow that much,” she said.
Her comments reflect a broader industry pivot, as exchanges rebrand themselves as “Universal Exchanges,” integrating stocks, real-world assets and on-chain trading under one platform.
Chen said the crypto market “has been growing a lot,” but warned that the pace may moderate as ETFs and platforms like Robinhood absorb incremental demand.
“It’s a pie that has been growing a lot, but now it may not grow that much bigger,” she said.
At the same time, traditional banks are entering 24/7 settlement and tokenized deposit markets, challenging exchanges’ historical liquidity advantage.
“The liquidity model that centralized exchanges had is now kind of evaporating,” Chen said, referencing institutions such as JP Morgan and Citi building around-the-clock dollar infrastructure.
In her view, exchanges that fail to diversify into new asset classes and financial products risk stagnation.
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Bitget has repositioned itself as a “UEX,” or Universal Exchange, offering crypto alongside U.S. equities and other global assets tradable via stablecoins.
“If Robinhood is capturing Coinbase’s market, I don’t see why Coinbase shouldn’t do the reverse,” Chen said. “We are partnering to offer U.S. stocks to our crypto users and enabling people to use USDT to trade global asset classes.”
She stressed that the transition is operational, not cosmetic.
“We are not talking about UEX as just a marketing term,” Chen said. “We are positioning the whole company from talent acquisition to product building to compliance in the same direction.”
Chen acknowledged that pursuing compliance requires trade-offs.
Bitget has exited France and Germany and stepped away from the U.S. in 2022 due to regulatory complexity, though it is reassessing potential re-entry through partnerships.
“We choose to be compliant,” she said. “It is a hard choice.”
She added that the U.S. remains “a very hard market,” citing state-level licensing, federal approvals and high compliance costs.
Chen also addressed stablecoins’ geopolitical impact, noting that more than 99% are pegged to the U.S. dollar.
“I wrote last year that I think the Genius Act is helping the U.S. strengthen USD dominance,” she said.
Rather than weakening the dollar’s role, she argued that stablecoin regulation may reinforce it by tying issuance to U.S. Treasuries.
