Q&A: Is the link between crypto and financial markets getting stronger?

After a dramatic 12 months, the state of the cryptocurrency sector now is vastly different to where it was a year ago.

We’ve seen crypto exchanges list on stock markets, massive companies buy vast amounts of Bitcoin, and a number of banks start to handle cryptoassets.

But challenges remain — including debates over regulation. Here, Bitget CEO Sandra Lou reveals how her exchange is spurring adoption of digital currencies — and explains why she believes regulation is inevitable and essential.

1. Hello Sandra! Tell us about yourself.

Hi! I have been working in the traditional financial industry for nearly a decade and was specialized in operations management, including growth of market share and user base.

I entered the cryptocurrency industry approximately four years ago and started focusing on investment in that field. I am very optimistic about crypto and strongly believe that the industry will bring about a significant change in the way money is handled and new opportunities.

I joined BitZ exchange in 2018 as the CEO, after which I started to delve deeper into the market and developed a strong interest for derivatives. Due to that, I joined Bitget, in no small part thanks to the team of amazing and very creative people that I saw in the company. I’m now very happy to be part of the family and hope to build Bitget into a first-class trading platform.

2. So how did Bitget start?

Bitget was founded in July 2018. We position ourselves as an all-in-one global cryptocurrency trading platform and have users in over 46 countries and regions including Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Russia and Turkey. At this stage, Bitget provides its users with services including derivatives trading, spot trading, and a fiat gateway to purchase cryptocurrencies.

In July 2019, we began to plan our derivatives roadmap, to become the world's first platform to provide inverse contract trading and USDT contract trading at the same time. In addition, many users choose to trade on Bitget mainly because of the two popular products that are exclusively launched on our platform: Copy trades and Quanto Swap contracts. There are more than 8,600 elite copy traders registered on our platform that regularly use these features, and they have filled over seven million copy trades.

Consistent innovations in our product have helped us build a strong user base. On CoinMarketCap, our derivatives trading volume regularly ranks among the top five in the industry, with an average daily trading volume exceeding $5.6 billion. Bitget has achieved rapid progress in the past three years by persistently doing the right thing for our users.

3. What are the problems that your new product solves?

Good products will favor users. The Quanto Swap contract launched on our platform is an incredible problem solver for many trading pain points.

Firstly, it reduces costs involved when exchanging cryptocurrencies and benefits from earning more from the desired cryptocurrency. When a user uses a Quanto Swap contract to open a position, the existing cryptocurrency can be used as a margin for profit and loss in the settlement, and the user ended the trade with their desired cryptocurrency.

Secondly, profits are gained from the rise of the cryptocurrency used as margin. For example, when you trade ETH, using BTC as the margin. If the BTC rises, you will benefit from both the profit earned in trading ETH and the price increase in BTC.

Thirdly, the Quanto Swap contract solves the hassle of transferring cryptocurrency between accounts and gives the ability to do internal hedging. Bitget supports BTC, ETH, XRP, EOS and other stablecoins as margin for multi-contract trading pair transactions. This means that users can be more flexibly in open positions based on trading strategies and real-time market conditions.

Lastly, the fund utilization rate is high, with zero mortgage and zero interest. When a user opens a position, real-time exchange rates will be applied for calculation, no staking is required, and there is no interest fee, allowing users to maximize the margin.

4. How does Bitget stand out in the competitive derivatives market?

Product innovation, user services, globalization, and compliance in operations are our four major advantages.

In the derivatives market, most platforms are actively improving trading experience and services. One of the biggest problems in the current derivatives market is the homogeneity of products. Constantly innovating products is the key to Bitget being able to overtake in the derivatives race.

In terms of user service, users are our foundation. The values ​​of our platform are putting customers first, integrity and collaboration. Our product design, customer service system, user welfare and other supporting facilities are all top ranked in the industry.

In terms of globalization, our headquarters are in Singapore and face the entire Asia-Pacific region, meaning users in Japan and South Korea represent 50% of our total customer base.

We have begun to implement localized operations in each region. At present, the proportion of users in our English community has increased significantly. We also launched a global partner recruitment plan, enabling them to share in platform growth dividends.

From a compliance perspective, Bitget has established a strict Know Your Customer process for users. The public listing of Coinbase stock can be seen as a recognition of the industry, which fully demonstrates that compliant exchanges can go further. At present, we have established a compliance team, introduced high-end talents in the field of law and financial supervision, and actively contacted various regional regulatory authorities to help facilitate platform compliance.

5. What are the main trends that you’re seeing in the crypto space right now?

I have to admit that the link between the crypto market and the global financial system is getting stronger. For example, after the price of Bitcoin plunges, the price of some government bonds will rise significantly. The crypto market is slowly spreading from the digital asset to the financial sectors, and even accepted into people's lives resulting in mass adoption.

Digital assets will give users more choices. For example, diversified digital asset trading forms such as NFTs, decentralized trading forms such as DeFi, and even users' criticism or pursuit of some meme coins are conducive to consolidating the digital asset trading system.

Furthermore, the crypto market will eventually move towards compliance and regulation. The current scale of the crypto market is too small, and it is not difficult to find that some personal comments can easily cause violent fluctuations in currency prices. Supervision is of great significance to stabilizing the financial market and avoiding overwhelming and excessive fluctuations we’ve seen. Compliance will regulate the operators in the crypto ecosystem.

6. How is Bitget lowering the threshold for contract trading?

Our research concludes that many users only participate in spot transactions, with little or no contract trades experience. An obvious reason is that the threshold for contract trading is relatively high.

As a result, we developed and launched copy trading last year. For beginner who started with zero knowledge, the learning cost is low. Users can simply just follow a trader without needing to research market movements themselves.

Trading tutorials were made for users on our official website and social media, including graphics, videos and comics, allowing users to choose their favorites learning portal.

In addition, we offer multi-language customer service 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Users who encounter various problems during their trades can get in touch with an online representative without suffering a long wait after sending an email.

7. Tell us more about your copy trading feature. How is it performing?

Many users love to copy trades at Bitget, not only because we have lots of top traders to choose from, but mainly because copy trading at Bitget is free.

The core idea is to solve the pain points of both users and traders. Users can select and follow trades with a single click, emulating a trader’s opening and closing positions automatically without needing to keep an eye on the market all the time. Users can select traders based on eight filters, and it’s available on PCs and as a mobile app.

Copy traders in Bitget platform can earn 10% of profit sharing from their followers. There is also the opportunity to obtain media resources on the platform to increase popularity and accumulate fans. We also offer social media exposure to draw in new followers.

8. Are there any partnerships you’d like to highlight?

In the development of Bitget, we have always worked hand in hand with our partners in various fields.

For example, our investors, SNK and Anlan Capital, being the world's top gaming company and China's largest asset allocation platform. Their strong financial support and good branding help us gain trust from the public.

From a security standpoint, we collaborate with top security service providers such as Armors, Heap, Shentu Technology, and Qingsong Cloud Security to ensure user assets remain safe.

At the business level, we also cooperate with TradingView, Gunbot, CCXTC and others to enrich the trading tools of the platform.

A strong partner sharing mechanism has also been established, and the world's best KOLs have been onboarded on Bitget’s platform.

9. What are your plans for the coming 12 months?

Derivatives trading is our forte. In the future, we will continue to focus on this roadmap and do our three best contract products: USDT-paired contracts, copy trades and Quanto Swap contracts. At the same time, we will keep developing our offering and will launch at least one innovative product every year.

As well as being determined to offer the best customer service — constantly collecting feedback on our users’ needs — we’re committed to compliance and globalization. Bitget will continue to expand the market share globally and carry out localized operations in various countries, project user value, and continue to explore the boundaries of blockchain technology to promote the accelerated arrival of inclusive finance.

Learn more about Bitget

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