How Bitget Is Merging AI, Crypto & TradFi in Universal Exchange Push

Transcript

Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Thanks for joining this livestream. Before we get started, a quick reminder, nothing you hear on Unchained is investment advice. This show is for informational and entertainment purposes only, and my guest tonight may hold assets discussed on the show. For more disclosures, visit unchainedcrypto.com. Quick note before we get into today's episode. [music] Bits and Bits now has its dedicated feed. We're spinning off from the Unchained feed and moving to a new podcast and YouTube channel. So, if you want [music] to keep up with our weekly livestreams and macro meets crypto breakdowns, make sure to subscribe to Bits and Bits directly. We won't publish there [music] until March, but subscribe today so you can be ready for launch. Be sure to subscribe to the new feeds at

unchainedcrypto.com/bitsandbits. [music] Today's topic is the crypto markets. Here to discuss are Rob Hadock, general partner at Dragonfly Capital, and Grace Chen, CEO at Bitget. Welcome, Rob and Grace. >> Thanks for having me, Laura. >> Hi, everyone. >> So, in 2025, we saw fintech and crypto start to converge on the same competitive space. There's been a few attempts to create an everything app, and we're already seeing um some of the players maybe pivot away from that, while others are continuing in that track. This is a concept that's actually mostly from Asia. Uh we know WeChat is probably the most commonly cited example of that. And meanwhile, we

are seeing others like Bitget, Robinhood, just merging crypto and tradfi. And Bitget is a prime example with its universal exchange. So, Grace, I um you know, would love to hear more about the universal exchange and what your vision is for that. >> Sure. Yeah, in crypto world, we're very familiar with the term um CX and uh DX, centralized exchanges and uh decentralized exchanges. Uh after FTX collapsed, there were a lot of uh uh debate on whether there should be more DeFi trading, DEX, and maybe CEX have too much power because we are the custodial platform together with a trading platform, and some users also

have their assets CEXs doing some earning, etc. I think after 3 years after FTX collapse, things cool down. Definitely, people still trust CEX. The DEX kind of market share went up about 20% from it was probably like 5 to 10% to where it is today, 20% in terms of a total trading volume market share. But for us, emerge or a trend a few trends that we observed from 2022 until maybe 2025, and that made us want to pivot to DEX. The trends being the first one, again, still DEX is becoming more popular, especially for new tokens. A

lot of people realize, you know, CEXs have a relatively tedious listing process, and we do have team, we do have resource. For example, we need to get the market maker ready when we need to list any centralized exchanges token. But still, there are only probably 600, 700 tokens available on CEX trading at Biget. Binance, Coinbase may have slightly smaller range of tokens. And then what what if people want to trade those tokens who are not listed, who are outside of this top 600, 700 tokens?

So, we embedded our ability from Biget Wallet, which has already enabled on-chain kind of swap and tradings. That means, again, outside of these 600 listed CEX tokens, people can trade them DEX or decentralized wallets. So, we embedded their ability into CEX and have our users be able to trade the decent decentralized tokens or slightly, you know, much more much more choices out there. So, that's the first trend, embedding or integrating CEX experience with the DX options the DX tokens.

The second trend that we saw, especially from 2025, is the race of is the rise of RWAs. For example, whole tokenized stocks, tokenized commodity like gold, silver, copper, oil, etc. These are becoming more popular and it is of course people talk about that for a long for a long time, but it's until 2025 that we see some good players in the space. For example, XAU and Ando, they both provide tokenized stocks with a relatively comprehensive structure of technology structure using like oracles to feed the price and then auditing process every single stocks the underlying there

is a a specific SPV that holds the the real stocks and then they mint and burn the tokens accordingly when the users needed to trade them. So, assets or players like this made RWAs and tokenized stocks and commodities more feasible and more popular. So, we also partnered with them to enable those assets on our platform. Um and then of course AI, we can share more on AI, but basically these are the trends that we realized as an exchange ourselves. It's not really accurate to call ourselves just CEX because now we we have all those DEX assets and we're not just serving crypto users, we're also serving some sort of like tradfi

users or at least users who maybe want to use stablecoin to buy tradfi assets. That's why we think calling ourselves a CEX is not accurate and and we pivoted to UEX, Universal Exchange, universally asset classes. Um we want to enable users to trade, to be able to trade again universally valuable assets. That includes forex, commodities, stocks, together with cryptocurrencies. Yeah, so that's a very important strategy we we shifted or we came up with in 2025.

End of 2025, around September in my seven year CEO letter, I wrote about the UEX for the first time. And of course, along the way, we also see some, I would say, great minds share great great minds alike. Coinbase and Brian Armstrong quit everything exchange. OKX is also, in my opinion, in my opinion, leading going to the same direction. Nasdaq last year also mentioned that they want to tokenize their US stocks and enable 24/5 trading hours. And NYSE this year January mentioned that they want to also head to that and enable 24/7, which is more aggressive in terms of

trading hours. So, we are all building towards this kind of trading platform that provide RWA assets, more tokenized options using blockchain to settle the the transactions and broker broker the unbrokered. I would I would call that maybe short in that. Yeah, so that's the the UEX world that we are building. >> And Rob, as an investor in Bitget, you know, what interests you about this vision or you know, why do you think this makes sense for the future of Bitget?

>> Yeah, I mean, I think Gracie she kind of talked about like the high-level trends that we're seeing, which we're seeing as well as investors. We, you know, talk to not just, you know, uh, you know, of the centralized exchanges, but also all of the decentralized exchanges as well, and the teams behind them. It's very clear when you look at just user behavior right now. Like users want a place to trade everything. They uh, we're seeing this a lot in the crypto space where people are talking a lot more about uh, trading equities. We're seeing this on things like um, Trade XYZ, who obviously has been offering perps on HyperLiquid for real world assets and commodities. We're seeing this and and you know, a lot of the call it the spot equities as well.

So, uh, Grace even mentioned uh, things like um, uh, XStocks, which which Kraken acquired. And so, there's a lot of demand to be able to trade cross assets, to be able to do complex arb, to be able to do um, you know, complex strategies that are only enabled on chain or maybe being on chain and off chain and having both the sex and and the dex opportunities like like Grace even mentioned, but doing it across different types of assets. And so, um, yeah, it makes complete sense that Grace and team were one of the first to really think through like what this could look like. A lot of the competitors are also thinking through, you know, being the everything exchange, but um, uh, generally in Asia, people have been quicker to adopt, you know,

kind of new digital technologies. We've just seen that over time. You see that with payments over time. And you know, Bitget's been at the forefront of that. So, we're super excited for for what they're building and we think it's going to be um, quite interesting to see kind of how this plays out. And I do also think the one really interesting piece that is true about being uh, in tokenized equities, tokenized stocks, tokenized commodities, and crypto together is that it allows you to serve a global audience in a different way than you can in the current structure of how things work from a regulatory perspective. And because of that, that means that you can bring these really awesome platforms that Bitget has, which primarily might have just been Asian, to a European audience or to a Latin

American audience, an African audience, an American audience even. And um you know, vice versa, you know, Coinbase is going to try to go international as well, but um I think historically you've seen that, you know, the a lot of the Asian exchanges, they understand customers a little bit better than than the US ones do. And so kind of that convergence and being able to go global uh provides a really interesting opportunity that just doesn't exist, you know, outside of of this space. >> Yeah, I was actually going to ask Gracie as my next question. So this is a perfect setup, you know, about Bitget's customer base because obviously, so it's non-US, is very global, but I'm sure you, you know, have certain regions that are more popular. And I was wondering, so first of all, you like who the

traditional customer base is, but then also now that you've rolled out these things like the tokenized stocks and the forex and all of that, if you're seeing that a different type of customer is either coming in for these features or if there's like certain geographies or certain types of customers that like were existing customers but are now, you know, taking taking up uh these more TradFi kind of investments. Um yeah. >> Yeah. So Bitget started off 7 years ago, 7 and 1/2 years ago, uh which was mainly based in Asia. Uh for that reason, even until today, we do have more than half of our users being Asians, East Asia, Southeast Asia, uh some areas that we

see a lot of growth for the past few years. Uh then I think in 2022, which is exactly the same year when I joined Bitget, well we started to globalization. So since then, we have more users um coming from the world, LatAm, Europe, uh we see some growth there. Um in 2022, we did struggle whether we should have a Bitget.US kind of setting uh in the United States, but uh that was still a question around the FTX time, but after that, we decided not to go into the US market. We even ended lots of collaborations and development in the US market with for example our partners or KOLs.

But this year, 2026, we are reconsidering entering the US. So hopefully there might be some interesting and good news coming up about the specific US market end of this year or later in the first half of 2027. But other than the US, we we are quite globalized, I would say. We serve more than 100 different countries and regions in terms of our users' profile. But again, Asia is a big base that we have. Then back to your second part of the question around the U exchange vision for users. I actually want to clarify because this could be a common misunderstanding that is Big Get still a crypto exchange or is

is Big Get like directly competing with companies like Robinhood or in or in Asia there's Futu, Moomoo. That's they they are they are the same company but with a different brands of the more local brands versus more global brands. But basically some traditional brokers, are they our direct competitors? I wouldn't say I wouldn't agree to that. We are still serving the need of our users who hold stable coin rather than fiat currency. Also, when they trade, even if it's traditional financial asset classes, for example US stocks, it is tokenized US stocks rather than direct US stocks because the traditional financial world has been

around for well, 400 years. I guess that that leads to the first first stock exchange in Amsterdam in Netherlands. But for the past, you know, less than a less than a century, uh the financial world isn't evolved a lot. It's still on the quite, you know, T+2 kind of settlement period. Um you need to um have a quite tedious process to open an account, etc. Um in our opinion, we don't want to go back to that old financial system. We think blockchain, um just like how stablecoin and cross-border transactions are much faster and cheaper than traditional

uh cross-border transactions, similarly, the current um tokenized stocks and uh tokenized world, um probably liquidity-wise, we can improve, but in terms of the settlement and the technology itself is just faster and cheaper and more advanced. So, we're still focusing on the enabling the crypto users. Uh it's the major difference is they used they used to use stablecoin, for example, USDT or USDC to purchase cryptocurrencies on us, but now we want them to uh use stablecoin to to trade many other asset classes. But again, uh want to clarify, it's still mainly crypto users and uh

uh um and the tokenized version of everything rather than go back going back to the traditional financial world of settlement, etc. Um and and then in 2024, oh sorry, 2025 and six, after we rolled out UEX, uh we did see a slightly uh structural shift in terms of wave have more VIP clients. We have more institutional clients interested in uh this goal. Still, again, still crypto users, but uh many VIP clients, you know, shifted some of their money at other exchanges or even at traditional financial brokers to Big Get because they can now trade all the different um

assets in under one umbrella, under one room. And and then yeah, it's just like slightly different over there in terms of selling more more valued assets, more valued clients, and more VIP clients. >> I know, I just want to follow up on what you said about entering the US. So, are you would you do like a typical kind of create a US entity to do that? Um and then, you know, so it's similar to like a Binance Binance US is type situation. Is that how you would do that?

>> Um well, honestly, it's not because it's not what that I don't want to tell you. It's It's indeed we haven't decided. We're still in the period of of time of acquiring some licenses and talking to our local partners. That's why I estimated this will only be done later, end of this year or earlier in 2027, maybe after a year later. Right now, in Q2 and Q1, our key focus in terms of client compliance and global expansion is actually to get the Mika license and the Dubai VARA license.

Actually, the Dubai VARA license was supposed to be done in Q1, but given the the the war in the region, it's definitely delayed to Q2. But for the first first half of the year, those are the key things. But if if we what I would what I am able to share is that what we are thinking about the US strategy, we don't necessarily plan to do it just by ourselves. We will definitely do it with some partners, whether it's a joint venture kind of setting or we acquire some partners, etc. to to build that foundation. Both are feasible. So, rather than, you know, ourselves applying all the licenses by ourselves, I think it would take a much

longer time uh not a lot of one more money as well. Uh but yeah, that's the roughly the current plan. >> Okay. So, um I do also want to ask about one other new feature that um is, you know, really tapping into kind of like what's happening in the wider world of crypto, which is you built this AI agent hub and obviously right now everyone's wondering how it is that crypto and AI are going to intersect. It's very clear that this is going to be probably one of the biggest new areas of crypto. So, you know, tell us what the AI AI agent hub is and um you know, what how it works.

>> Yeah, uh you are very updated because we just uh announced our Beget Agent Hub, I think within 24 hours uh for for for today. >> [laughter] >> Thank you for doing that. Um yeah, so so a key thing is we do see AI evolve a lot for the past uh what, 20 since 2022, end of 2022 when ChatGPT came out, right? From the stage of, you know, only chatbot to start with, then to more uh kind of like protocol like Anthropic MCT, uh and then to more things like ClawHub and GPTs that that provide uh skills, uh

some domain expert skills and reusable capability modules to where it is now. Uh what that's that's why OpenClaw is so popular because OpenClaw has the persistent memory, uh have like the active um kind of more active and multi-agent collaboration cross platform collaboration. Uh so, in my opinion, OpenClaw is probably the first um open source framework that can successfully integrate all these abilities of chatbot, MCP, skills, agent, etc. That uh um can be can be included into one deployable system. And then we see a lot of potential in that

in terms of helping our users uh make better investment decisions or trading decisions because uh those um Open Claw or this kind of operating system, agent OS we call it, agent OS kind of setting can uh really understand our users' own portfolio, goals, uh behavior, habits, etc. So that um help them make a better decision. Uh that's one thing. Uh we are heavily investing and then uh very very I would say pretty fast in terms of rolling out our Open Claw platform as well as integrating uh many abilities to and to help our users trade

better. Um another thing is um our AI team which was formed last earlier last year actually uh rolled out more than 25 different scenarios within Big data where AI are used. Um for example, customer service, translation, um those are you know, simple things that you can anyone can think of. Uh but maybe more subtle kind of applications of AI in terms of a CX or or UX kind of setting uh could be know your transaction, KYT, uh in order to detect fraud or any potential uh risk from hack or from sanctioned accounts, etc. Uh KYT, that's

one thing. Um lot of uh marketing campaigns that that uh they actually just rolled out a Grace AI uh a few weeks ago. And and that was just a fun experimental project that AI'd me. Um put me in you know, a cute avatar and and they detected they collected my voice and made an AI voice of my and some some also the the whole memory of Gracie AI was built on my past interviews and my opinions.

You know, not just for crypto but also for something like personal growth, career advice, etc. Anyway, it's some fun project that we rolled out and then Gate Agent is a more serious kind of chatbot that help our users make better trading decisions. You know, all these things that that we realized we have accumulated a lot a lot of a lot of ability and it's time to share with our clients what all these different AI tools can do and that's why we pulled out all the I think we published 60 50 58 tools in nine major different modules to cover the whole trading life cycle in terms of different products like spot products,

futures products, copy trading, earn, P2P, etc. And using all these different skills that we mentioned earlier, MCP, API, chatbot etc. >> And Rob, I'm sure Dragonfly is looking into this area in a big way. You guys just raised your $650 million fund, congrats. And I heard Haseeb talking on Bankless about how he thought the unique use case for AI agents that humans can't do is crime. I'm sure you you're not investing in that but talk a little bit about, you know, how you think crypto and AI will come together and you know, how you think Bitget or other centralized exchanges or just like existing, you know, crypto entities will begin to

adopt more AI. >> Yeah, we're definitely not investing in crime. So, I appreciate you saying that. I So, right now it's still very much it's very early today, right? And so there's a lot of conversation online about, okay, well, you know, what role will AI and AI agents play relative to you know, crypto, whether it's permissionless crypto, whether it's you know, obviously permissioned or centralized exchanges, etc. You know, a lot of what Gracie's talking about or just you know, really interesting modular tooling that people can use for trading, which are better than you know, the things that have existed before, but are not necessarily um what I would say, you know, agents in the way that you know, most of the conversation that we

talk about agents when you can let them go free and you can let them go and kind of learn and constantly learn and do new things and to um be able to you know, potentially see them go in really weird directions as we've seen with things like Mo Bot and you know, etc. And so it it's where those two will play in the intersection, I think it's still actually very much up in the air. We've seen a little bit of interesting, you know, kind of work around things like um you know, decentralized inference and training. Some of a lot of these things have not worked, but we're seeing a little bit of signs of life in a few different parts of the market right now.

So so far, it's definitely, you know, net worse than we're seeing call it and you know, our non-decentralized counterparts. We've also seen things like you know, there's BBV which is Eric Voorhees' project right now. You know, they're doing you know, sort of a permissionless you know, sort of I guess like private wrapper of a lot of the models on top where you can get access to both, you know, call it the models that you and I maybe use every day like you know, a Claude and and and Opus and and and and Open AI, etc. But also to some of the like you know, permissionless models that you know, don't have the same rules that allow you

to do things like you know, you know, potentially you know, create you know, people's likeness that you can do otherwise or something that allow you to do with porn and and things like that which you can't do and you can't do if you use open AI. And so we've seen some, you know, kind of this what I would say is like cypherpunk ethos in some parts of the market right now really start to to pop up. And then of course there's this long conversation around, okay, well, you know, agents will need to pay with stable coins or crypto to be able to do agentic payments. I think there's a there is a part of the market where that will definitely be true. There's some conversation around microtransactions, but it is also true today that you know, you can do kind of one-time

use tokenized credentials and a tokenized credit card and you can bring those costs way down and the networks can kind of sit on top of some sort of like you know, stablecoin infrastructure. And so where I actually believe and I actually think receive and I disagree on this. So if he was on this podcast he would start arguing right now. But I actually think what we're going to see a lot of is we're going to see a lot of this you know, stablecoins replace call it the settlement infrastructure for what it still exists underneath like a Visa network. And a Visa network will still actually be quite you know, useful in and things like agentic payments. And so what we're there's a lot of these areas where we're seeing a lot of I would say just you know, sort of experimentation today and there's a lot

of tooling that can help you be more efficient. It can help you do really interesting stuff on the trading side, but it's really really early days today. I think Bitget again is you know, kind of at the forefront of experimenting around this and providing access to their their customers. And it's going to get a lot better a lot very quickly. We're seeing that that you know, kind of iteration cycle speed up. So that is exciting. And I think it's one thing that the markets will tell you right now if you look at how volatile the equity markets are, look at how volatile some of these other the crypto markets are. I think the number one thing that you is being is being said and being expressed is that nobody actually knows what AI is doing and where it would where it will be in a year from now or even sooner.

So, I think it's a as exciting time as any to to to be playing around and experimenting and trying to be on top of everything that's going on. >> Okay, last question that I have about Bitget before we dive into the wider markets is just about the integration with Morph Chain, which is an L2 that has ZK fault proofs, but of course as many L2s have a centralized sequencer. So, to start the partnership Bitget transferred all of its BGB tokens to Morph and 50% were burned immediately and the rest are going to be gradually released for liquidity incentives, you know, other types of initiatives.

So, Gracie, why don't you tell us why you decided to do this integration with Morph Chain? >> Sure, yeah. Morph Chain, we know the team for a long time. We were initially their investor um for I think two two three years ago. Um and and basically last year when we were navigating our strategy for global globalization and probably for potentially um you know, it's it's probably not a secret anymore, but it's also not highlighted that in the upcoming maybe two three years, we are looking for potentially getting get listed in the US. So, BGB became a

and it was a platform token for a long time even before I joined the company, but if we have a token ourselves, it could be a little bit of conflict of interest if we also looking for an IPO plan. So, that's that's part of the reasons that we thought about transferring the ownership of BGB, but even if we transferred all the BGB to Morph Foundation, Biget Biget Wallet and Morph, we are still supporting BGB as ecosystem providers, especially us as the as exchange where we have lot of BGB used scenario for launch pool,

launchpad, for VIP users to get a discount, etc. Those things remain unchanged. Yeah, but but the the key thing is we do want to separate BGB from Biget and we thought holding it to Morph Foundation is is a good plan because we know the layer two very early. We are one of the investors and incubators. I think I think Dragonfly backed them up as well and along the way supported us many of the important decisions we made, including this one.

>> Okay. So, before we dive into, you know, all the things going on in the markets, there's just this last question that I have, which is about, you know, your your you have a big user base in Asia and obviously Dragonfly invests in both the Asia and the West. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how you think crypto differs between East and West. Um you know, and and this question is for either one of you. >> Um Rob, do you want to go ahead? >> Yeah, I'm happy to start. I think So, as you mentioned, Laura, you know, Dragonfly, we've got offices in New York and Singapore. We've got teams in on both continents. We've been investing, you know, I think

globally and far more globally than any of our competitors for, you know, call it eight years now. And our perspective has always been, like, what does this technology do? And I talked a little bit a little bit about this. I'm like, what does tokenized stocks allow? What do tokenized commodities allow? What do these these types of products allow? They allow you to go more global. They allow you to meet a global audience wherever they are. And they allow people access to things that they might not have in traditional technology infrastructure that exists today in these normal markets. And so our perspective has always been that to understand where crypto is going, you have to understand the end user. The end user today is a global citizen, right? For a long period of time, uh most of the end users of crypto were actually much more

likely to be Asian than they were to be US or much more likely to be on that continent than they were to be uh here. And so our perspective was when you're going to launch a new protocol, you have to understand that your customer base is going to sit in all of these different countries and you want to understand their user behavior. And what we see in especially in Asia is the customer base is far more digitally native. In some parts of Asia, Alipay has a 98% penetration rate. Right? You do not see that type of digital money and that type of comfort with digital money anywhere else in the world, right?

You do not the how comfortable people in the region are at things like trading different types of asset classes across I mean you you you know, like my mother has never put in a trade in her life, I don't think. And but the you know, the moms in Asia are often managing finances that way, right? They're often managing complex you know, different types of investments, right? You know, the the dads are as well. The the the whole family is like it's a it's much more ingrained when you think about how people um how people just work through their financial life and how they work through their investing um interests, right? And you just don't see that exist in other parts of the world in the same way and mass.

And so that comfort, that focus, that interest uh means that we've seen uh higher rates of adoption more quickly across different types of products and asset classes in Asia than you have seen in the US. And so, when we think through, okay, well, this consumer application, especially on the consumer side, or this DeFi application, this financial product, we want to go launch it. How does this, you know, application, how does this product, how does it going to resonate in places in Asia, as well as the US, as well as Europe, as well as Latin America? Is it going to be built in a way that can be multilingual, that can be under easily understandable, that will appeal to these different parts of

the world? Or is it also true that this is a founder who understands how to reach types of customers, and that's really important as well. And so, these are the types of things that we are focused on when we want to invest. But it's also true that we're seeing a lot of growth now in the US as it's become more acceptable here, and as we've seen the tailwinds behind the administration and from a regulatory perspective. And so, um the idea is that, you know, crypto is really just different across regions in the way that user behavior is different across regions and the customer is different across regions. But so, when you invest, you have to invest with the mindset and the understanding of how those customers behave in these

different places of the world, and how much adoption has taken places in those different places in the world. And so, that's the way we like to think through. >> Gracie, what would you say? >> Um Uh instead of Gracie, I actually just wrote out uh Gracie AI and asked the asked the my AI the same question, like how is crypto uh users diff differ from each other in terms of West and the East side of uh the market. Uh well, Gracie AI said there are a few key differences. First one, investment philosophy and time horizon, uh where Western users tend to have a longer-term investment perspective, view crypto more as source store value or

portfolio diversification while Eastern shows any more trading or speculative behavior. Second thing race appetite leverage use third thing asset preference for regulatory mindset that that Rob boss emission. Fifth thing community and social influence. I find it interesting that some sometimes I also forget how many interviews I've done in the last four years and how Gracie I just collected all those information which I I actually agree. So to build on what Gracie AI shared the real AI sorry the real Gracie um I I would think be before before before crypto sorry when we were only doing

crypto the major difference that we saw I very much very much aligned with what Gracie AI was sharing for example um some some you know social file or tap to earn kind of game file kind of activities were much more active in Asia. For example we all know actually Infinity was highly was a very successful project at that time where users came a lot of most of the users came from South Asia and tap to earn telegram kind of era end of 2024 we also saw a lot of users from Asia and even Africa. Um

but tap to earn is you know relatively easier but of course it's not that popular nowadays especially with introduction of AI. Um but basically these kind of trends are quite obvious when we only serve crypto market but now adding the the the RWA markets or the unify sorry the universal exchange kind of version Uh in terms of RWA uh or TradFi assets, I kind of see at least the users who are trading RWAs, for example, tokenized stocks, um um be get whether they come from east or west doesn't make a huge difference. Uh by default, our RWA, especially tokenized

the US stocks, do attract more uh Asian users than western users because western users probably have already have very good access to some uh US US-based brokers or European-based brokers, such as Robinhood. Uh but many Asian clients, they especially uh based in uh East Asia, some of them have very limited access due to uh capital control or due to um the to it's hard to open an account, etc. So, they tend to trade a lot of uh tokenized uh US stocks with us. Um but but the trading behavior is a little bit similar in terms of uh the winner takes it all. The M7 stocks or some more ETF-kind of stocks, such as

like QQQ, um are are taking the the major share of those trading. Probably top 10 tokenized stocks on Bitget take about 80% of the total trading volume, although we provide more than 200 stocks to our users, for example. Um yeah, so so in terms of the RWA-kind of asset classes, I so far uh we don't see that much kind of uh difference in west and the east. But when it was only purely crypto users, uh I would say I agree, generally agree with what Grayscale I said, and it's uh probably quite comprehensive and uh thorough um coverage of how the two markets can

be different. >> All right, so in a minute we're going to dive into what's hitting the crypto markets today, but first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Quick note before we continue with today's episode. Bits and Bips now has its [music] own dedicated home. We're spinning off from Unchained and launching a standalone podcast and YouTube channel focused on the Fed, macro, AI, and how it all collides with crypto. If you want to keep up with our weekly live streams and macro meets crypto breakdowns, make sure you're following Bits and Bips directly. We won't start publishing until March, but getting set up now means you'll be ready on day one. You can find the new Bits and Bips channels at unchainedcrypto.com/bitsandbips.

You can also find us by searching Bits and Bips on YouTube, [music] Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Back to my conversation with Gracie and Rob. The US and Israel have been engaging in war in Iran for a couple weeks now, and we're now seeing the price of oil just shoot through the roof. Um, and that's because the Strait of Hormuz, which um, is where a fifth of the world's oil passes, is uh, closed. So, you know, a few days ago we saw oil trading or or about a month ago we saw it trading at about $70. Earlier today it spiked to past $110 a barrel, and I wondered, you know, do you think that crypto right now is just going to be at the whim of these

macro trends or, you know, what do you see affecting the price of crypto? >> I don't think there's any doubt that, uh, macro's going to continue to play a big role in crypto, right? And this is true across all risk assets. It It's It's unavoidable that, you know, this conflict in Iran and in the Middle East is going to continue to drag on risk assets generally, right? Uh, there's I think a broader conversation around, okay, well, what is your time horizon and how do you think through, you know, the structural backdrop of like what is happening in in crypto. We've talked a lot about this, you know, even through this podcast, which is, you know, okay, and will stablecoin uh, usage continues to grow uh, very very quickly and significantly, especially across a lot of institutional

use cases. Tokenized equities and tokenized real assets continues to grow. We've seen a a real excitement around, you know, getting, you know, kind of this regulatory backdrop in in the West to be more conducive to using, you know, crypto in a bunch of different ways. And we've seen just like mass adoption you know, like tokenized rails for a lot of these, you know, fintechs, etc. And so, like when you put all that together, you and a lot of what Grace has talked about with what Bitget's doing really well, which is bringing this kind of everything exchange to the market and bringing it more global, you know, it's a really exciting time for this space.

But in the near term, you know, the Iranian conflict is going to be the most important topic that is that we continue to talk through, especially you know, when you think about like knock-on effects. So, you know, the price of oil as you mentioned, right? You know, how does that affect well, you know, relative growth in in GDP? How does that affect inflation? How does that affect, you know, the excess capital that, you know, households have the ability to to continue to invest and, you know, consumer sentiment. All of those are going to be negatively affected by, you know, a sustained conflict in the Middle East. And it's also, you know, it's not just the Strait of Hormuz as you talked about Laura, but you know, we're seeing attacks on different oil refineries

outside of the Strait of Hormuz. We're seeing, you know, 70% of the world's oil comes from the region, even if it doesn't pass through the strait, right? And so, we're going to continue to see concerns there. I think it's also just true that the risk of, you know, call it you know, like the risk of terrorism has gone up in in the US as well, you know, based on this we've seen. I think it was the Kansas City Airport or St. Louis Airport, one of them was was had a risk of a terrorist attack over the weekend and had to be shut down. Right? These types of things are broadly going to affect the consumer. And so, you know, the the and shorter that this conflict is, the you know, more likely that the

that the markets can find their footing. But, when you take that into account with a little bit of what we talked about earlier, which is just all of this I think just uncertainty around how AI is going to affect the market. And, you know, we saw Block, you know, lay off 40% of their of of their employees and the Citron report a couple weeks ago and the market sold off quickly that the day after. And, I think it's literally just like science fiction. And, you know, but, you know, we still see this a lot of this, you know, discomfort in in in the markets. And, so, it's a bit of a an odd time, but I think if you have the right, you know, long-term understanding and the right long-term conviction, like both crypto and non-crypto risk assets are, I think, you

know, very have very good backdrops for growth in what is happening in our market, what's happening in AI, and what is happening, you know, more broadly in technology. And, so, I'm excited about the future, but it's it's short-term. It's it's it's it's really tough, I think, to be, you know, really long any sort of asset risk asset right now. >> Gracie, what do you think? >> Uh agree. >> [gasps and laughter] >> I I think that right now, um First of all, I would say the the the tension in the Middle East actually feels very very personal to me because we do have an office in Dubai and I've been to all these uh places that was affected during the war. Um

Bahrain Dubai Qatar um actually, you name it, just every single country. Uh and then, even in Dubai, all these places that were were hit. For example, uh 3 months ago, I was just walking on Jumeirah Beach with my 7-year-old son and my mother, and we just passed the Fairmont Hotel every day admiring the palm tree and pool, and now the same uh hotel is was was hit from the the had a had a had a fire at the courtyard um because of the debris from the intercepted missile. So, the whole kind of instability or geopolitical tension feels extremely real, and it of course

it's impacting the global market. Um and and this directly affects how I invest um um in general because right right now I would say risk off sentiment and diversification is no longer just a buzzword, it's a necessity. You can't put all your faith in one region or one asset, and uh and and of course for for us we we are quite convinced that our users should diversify, and they should look for different asset classes, not just crypto, and especially Bitcoin is more of a risky asset today than a risk off asset. Um but but also diversifying to some some

other global asset classes including commodity. And then back to Bitcoin itself. Uh sorry, um do do you have a follow-up question Laura? >> Um no, well I was going to ask about Kevin Warsh, but if you want to talk about Bitcoin specifically, please do. >> Okay. Okay, sure. Yeah. Uh yeah, so so for Bitcoin itself, I I would say right now, you know, 60K to 70K kind of price range is actually a good time to do dollar cost averaging. Um and I do think everyone should have a personal goal for Bitcoin accumulation, you know, buy buy one Bitcoin if if they just started off or or or 10 or 50 or 100. Um although Bitcoin wasn't

outperforming gold last year, nor right now, I do believe it it it It is the millennials digital gold and it is a pure capture or reflection of liquidity. So if well well we'll chat more on on on Warsh, but basically if the new Fed in terms of the monetary and physical policy, if we have more QE, quantitative easing and the interest rate cut, I think Bitcoin will catch up with with gold etc. So I personally believe still highly believe in Bitcoin's growth trajectory and think it's worth the

investment, especially if you have a relatively long time horizon. 3 3 to 5 years etc. But if you're waiting for Bitcoin to you know just go up right away very short term, if you're very impatient, I would say it's probably a an asset class that will take a little bit time. >> Okay, so I hinted at what my next question was going to be, but it was about Kevin Warsh and I just wondered, you know, how you saw it. He might um kind of handle what the Fed will be doing this year and how you thought that would affect the outlook for the crypto markets.

>> I'll say well I want Rob to to cover this question more because I think he he knows the US market and he probably have some access to to some some policy makers and and deeper views than than I am for sure. But my my my my you know, quick three cents would be I feel the market has already priced in the the fact that Warsh is is a hawk and that that that's probably the main reason that drove Bitcoin down from where it was 65k to where it is now 60 sorry 95 K to 65 K. That's a huge job.

Uh of course, when liquidity was pretty weak after 10/10 last year, the largest single-day liquidation, um the the any kind of uh bad news could be pretty bad. But similarly, any kind of good news could be pretty good, and uh uh the the the the market could be quite volatile. But I don't have very strong opinion uh or anything sort of like insight on uh the new Fed chairperson other than what the market already knows.

>> Yeah. So, uh I think my take is a little bit is a little more nuanced, which is because I think the market doesn't know what to make of Kevin Warsh right now. So, he's a uh to to Grace's point, he's like very clearly a hawk and like, you know, the things that he says and the the writings that he's put out and the way he's acted before. There uh there's also a lot of conversation is you know, Warsh was handpicked by President Trump, and I I think as all of us can kind of, you know, surmise over the last, you know, uh two terms of President Trump is what the thing he typically seems to care most about is loyalty.

And you know, people who really want to try to enact his agenda. Very clearly, you know, he has been I I I I my opinion would be, and I think a lot of people would share this, that uh Jerome Powell has actually done a pretty tremendous job post um you know, 2021 and you know, uh and kind of managing the ship. The the Fed was a little bit late to uh the the the hiking cycle, but it wasn't um you know, it did it did a pretty good job during that period of time. And yet, you know, President Trump has been out there just lambasting uh Jerome Powell basically every chance that he gets.

Um uh and so, I I think there's something to be said about well, you know, what has the conversation been like between, you know, uh, Kevin Warsh and and President Trump and how might that affect, uh, the way that he, uh, actually does act, you know, going into, you know, post being, um, assuming that he's confirmed. That said, uh, the Iranian conflict, like we just talked about, has made this a tougher job than, uh, it it previously was going to be, especially if this sustains and uh, we I think I saw over the weekend that Goldman is expecting, based on how long this goes on, that the inflation will go up from 2.4% to 3% annualized.

Um, it's if this goes on for longer and oil continues to be constrained, inflation will go even higher. Uh, and if that happens, then it becomes significantly harder for, uh, for Kevin Warsh and or any sort of Fed chair to to decide to to cut rates. And so, I think it's very, um, it's very uncertain right now uh, on what exactly will happen. I would lean more towards the path that there it, you know, Kevin Warsh will want to work with the administration more than Jerome Powell wanted to. And but it it what that would probably entail would be more likelihood of of um, a cut cycle.

That said, you know, now with what's happened in Iran, I I I'm I can't be confident uh, what that will look like. >> All right. So, um, I did also want to ask, you know, we've been alluding to this throughout the conversation and I'm sure we all know that there's so many theories about this on Twitter, lots of podcasts about this, but the market, you know, in crypto hasn't been quite the same ever since 10/10. And I wondered if you had thoughts on kind of like what broke that day or do you think it was just the typical four-year cycle and we're going to, you know, be in a bear market for a while. I know I'm hearing other people say that they really think that this will be the year that proves that the four-year cycle is dead. So, yeah, curious for I guess your thoughts

on was it really 10/10? And if so, then what will kind of fix things or or what happened? Or is it just the typical cycle? >> I'll I'll start since since 10/10 kind of has a lot of issue to deal with one of the CX, >> [gasps] >> especially the technical glitch there. So, in terms of 10/10, what hap- what happened exactly we we kind of all know already. It was triggered by a sudden my my macroeconomic event when Trump mentioned that that he will start a new trade war with China. Although that kind of cooled

down later, but then the the technical glitch that happened mainly on Binance caused a lot of issue when doing By the way, it was also a liquidity vacuum, I will call because it was I think in Asia Saturday morning and then the US market is also closed. So, the the whole liquidity is very weak and it's mainly reflected on crypto since 20 crypto is a 24/7 market that that was one of the major asset classes that was still open.

And then a lot of high leverage in in CX or in in in certain DeFi protocols went went wrong, especially I would highlight um USDE, but USDE was mainly having a liquidity on Sorry, the the the so-called de-pegging on Binance rather than DeFi platform. I think Hass tweeted a lot that clarification, which I totally agree. But other than USDE, there were some you know, the WB or being so which are wrapped version of Solana and ethereum that were highly de-pegged from the original asset Solana

or ethereum and that caused some some more liquidity and then all coins were down. So so that was probably the the the main things that happened on 10/10 or 10/11 depends on your time zone but I would call it a series of things that triggered together triggered by the macroeconomic event together with the high leverage structure liquidity vacuum technical glitch on certain C X etc. So it's not just like one thing happened but yes the whole world looks very different from after 10/10.

>> I think maybe the high level point to make which is everything Grace said is true there's I guess two points to make. First is I think on a more micro perspective just how much it matters to be able to do appropriate risk management and to think through how you know, your Oracle setup what that looks like and you know, to make sure that you're able to appropriately you know, mint redeem different types of wrapped assets and bring them on platform and you know, etc. And so we've seen you know, obviously there was some infrastructure and risk management issues at some of these places as as Grace you mentioned.

I think the higher level point to make and you know, the fact that we look so different today than we did before then is it's not clear to a lot of people from the outside in but 2025 was awful year for the consumer in crypto. It was the we've probably never seen so much capital lost by the traditional consumer in the year as we did as in 2025 at a time when we saw institutional adoption picking up and we saw stablecoin adoption picking up, when there was a lot of excitement around, you know, what was happening, you know, in the space in terms of allowing it to enter the US market. Between, you know, what happened with the Trump and Melania meme coin,

what happened with the liquidations around the Terra of Tantrum, and then what happened on 10/10, it we saw more capital liquidated last year than we had seen basically in the entirety of crypto before. And so, it's been it's really hard to go to a consumer and say, "Hey, we know that you've lost a bunch of money, you know, in derivative products on on this in in this space, but, you know, you need to trust us and come back and to continue to invest." And so, we have to as an industry do a good job of, you know, explaining why people should continue to invest in this space. And this is obviously a trading point versus a "Hey, I have like a long-term buy and

hold" perspective on like what, you know, Bitcoin accumulation means and the dollar debasement story and and digital gold. And we need to continue to make those points. But when the consumer loses money, they don't come back. And, you know, you see the That's the thing that we have to think through around how do we get provide value to the consumer that isn't just, you know, trading capital that may or may not get, have them lose money over time. And you know, I think this is something we've seen like Robinhood do really well, right? Which is a lot of the criticism of Robinhood for many, many years was, "Hey, like this is just a, you know, gamifying, you know, gambling, right? Or speculation, right?" And, you know, something like 70% of options traded

today are zero-day options. A lot of that is the these retail bases in places like Robinhood, which are more speculative products. But what have they done as done well on the side of that is they provided, you know, a really broad set of now wealth management products and spending products for consumers that now see Robinhood as a place for their kind of financial future and now they can invest in across different asset classes, right? That gets back to how this podcast started, which is, you know, what is Bitget doing when they're they're launching their kind of unified exchange, is they're providing much >> universal exchange >> Universal exchange, not unified exchange.

>> [clears throat] >> They that they're allowed to they're able to do all of these different things that affect their financial lives and that are allowed that are providing value to them. And so I think that we have to continue as an industry to focus on that versus, you know, just like the speculative, you know, trading products. >> So earlier we also talked about Bitget's new AI agent hub and, you know, given the state of the markets and I agree with you Rob that like when you have $19 billion in liquidations, the people literally don't even have the money to come back in, you know, so that might just be what's also going on in crypto, but when I look at the AI agent thing, that's kind of the one area where I'm like, well, that could pick up cuz I've

heard Gracie talk about before how she thinks all coins are just dead. Like she doesn't think there's going to be an all coin season coming and so, you know, that typical trend that we would see of all coins kind of having their season after the majors take off like it didn't happen this cycle, it may not happen again, I don't know, but when I look at the AI agent thing, that is kind of the one area where I'm like, well, this this is clearly something new that's blossoming in crypto. You know, I don't know. Do you think that we might see that materially impact the markets at any time soon and if so, like in what way?

>> I'll I'll just quickly build on what Laura mentioned around my very bold statement about all coins are dead. Yeah, of course it sounds a little bit extreme, especially as a CEO of one of the largest UEX or CEX crypto or all coins are are the foundation of our business. Uh saying they are dead is a little bit too much, I would say. Uh but but my point is, in general, investing in altcoins, it's on average on average it's harder to outperform Bitcoin. Uh still there will be a lot of altcoins that has uh uh growth opportunities.

They are seriously building on something. Uh Dragonfly should make a lot of investment into those those spaces well. Um and then in terms of uh AI plus crypto kind of altcoins, uh I do I do struggle with this. Actually, um a year ago, I made a prediction in January that uh with the develop of development of AI, that those AI altcoins could uh be a growth sector and even could be the only growth sector.

I was only half right about that. AI is growing very very fast, but the AI altcoins uh are not. If we compare, for example, CoinGecko uh AI sector kind of uh all the altcoins market cap, it's only half at end of the year than the beginning of the year in 2025. Uh so that kind of ties back to what I said altcoins are dead. Um it's very hard for for altcoins to to grow in terms of in terms of a um um market share. Bitcoin is becoming more and more dominant if you look at the total um ma- uh total market cap.

And then there are so many altcoins coming up every day, especially with platforms like pump.fun. It's so ea- easy to issue an token uh an altcoin token. So with the market total size being same or even shrinking since Bitcoin is more dominating, invest institution or institutional kind of adoption only go to the major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Uh the market of of all coins is shrinking, but the the quantity of the all coins is growing. So, each individual all coins just by mathematics itself should be shrinking, and that's what I mean by um all coins are dead or or it's harder to invest. Uh but now with AI, um I think again nobody will

doubt the trend of AI. Uh but I still doubt the trend of um AI tokens or AI all coins, whether uh first of all many very good AI products, you know, like Open Claw, like uh Open AI, they are not issuing a token. And then many so-called AI projects or AI all coins are not really doing a good job in terms of providing their AI services. So, that's what I struggle uh and I still remain very relatively negative towards that sector. But one sector that I am optimistic is uh we we touched upon that earlier in terms of uh how AI agents

kind of communication and growth can enable more cross uh cross agent transfer using stable coins or using cryptocurrency. So, that is a sector that I'm optimistic, but if we're talking about some, you know, some project that claims that they're building AI, the AI tool, AI agent, uh to me many of them look more like just a meme coin, just an AI meme. Um sorry if this kind of provokes some some arguments around all coins, around some projects um who are really building. I I I do again again think there are many good projects who are seriously building, uh but it's just harder and harder to find them out.

>> You know, the only thing I would add is I don't think all coins are as a as a rule. What I do think is true is that there more than ever there needs to be some story around why a token needs to exist, how it accrues value, and is this a protocol that's you know or a a token attached to a protocol that's actually you know worth owning over time. There's um you know, for long period of time and we've seen this in traditional markets there's you know, you shareholders care about how do you return capital? Is there dividends? Are there you know, buybacks? Like what does that look like in terms of you know, creating excess value for you know, that shareholder?

What ownership do I have of this company or over time and I I think it's very important that we get some version of a market structure bill that allows for more innovation at the token economic level and the token structure level which allows you know, investors to feel better about what they're actually buying. And this has really been underpinned I think by the fact that you've seen a couple of these M&A transactions. Uh Circle buying Axelar and um the uh I think it was Coinbase who bought the the Vector Dot Fund team or Tensor team uh where there was some capital that went to equity holders into the team, but the token holders uh basically got nothing and that really underpins this idea that you know, some of these tokens exist um maybe just as

meme coins attached to maybe a really good business or product, but um the tokens themselves just are are are are meme coins. And so what what we want to see is we want to continue to see you know, more innovation at that kind of token structure level. I think when you see that, you'll see people more excited about owning certain types of tokens and certain types of markets. And we're going to continue to see dispersion across you know, the the way some of these different tokens um you know, accrue value or not and and what performs well or not. In '21 and '22 you used to see everything go up and everything go down together.

Um that the sign of a maturing market is that that is no longer happening. That now that there is actual dispersion between the things that work and the things that don't. And so, that's a good thing for us. Uh even though I think it makes it harder than ever uh to invest in the space. >> All right. Well, it has been so fun chatting with you both. Thank you both so much for coming on Unchained. >> Thanks, Laura. >> Thank you. >> [music]