Why Altcoins Are Dead & What's Replacing Them with Bitget CEO, Gracy Chen

So the major shift that you are seeing here is less and less cryptonative, especially those altcoins that's not providing or producing real value, more and more mainstream assets. They are listed on NASDAQ and big ETFs and indices. They have much more fundamental value.

How do you see serving the golds, the bitcoins, the fixed income assets, the tokenized RWAs? Is this a priority for BitGet? Do you see Hyperlid as a big competitor or do you see it as good for the ecosystem?

Welcome back to the rollup. I'm Robbie. I'm Andy. Rob and I met at the University of Florida in 2017 where we first found out about digital assets. We learned a lot along the way and we're bringing you face to face with the leaders of our industry. Sit back, relax, and enjoy today's episode.

Gracie, how are you? Welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. Yes, it's great. I just landed in the US from yesterday. So now jet lagging, but having a great time.

Well, welcome. I'm in Hawaii. I jumped out of a plane yesterday and I survived and looks like the markets followed me today. Kind of saw that one coming.

Gracie, we're going to get into it. This is going to be spicy. Feel free to say no comment if you don't want to comment. But everyone is blaming CZ and Binance right now.

Binance just unloaded a massive clip on the market of spot bitcoin. You can literally see it in the flows. Every time Bitcoin dumps, Binance is unloading clips of Bitcoin. People are really pissed about CZ that they think that Binance is corrupting a lot of the market and that this market can't continue in a healthy way with them as number one exchange.

What's your take on the current market structure here with Binance leading the way in terms of their selling of Bitcoin? Where are you kind of looking at the broader crypto market structure as it lands today post 1010? I think a lot of people are upset. Gracie, we brought you on to get your market takes. Thanks so much.

Sure. Well 1010 I would say yes it started with a Binance technical slip, like a glitch. And then it followed with USD pegging on Binance a few of other wrapped coins in BTC and Ethereum also due to the kind of death spiral effect went down a lot.

And then largest liquidation daily liquidation happened on October 11th or 10th depends on your time zone. I was also traveling at that time and when I saw that happened it's just massive. Lots of I think that time Asia wasn't awake but that time I was in Dubai translating and I get to experience the whole thing more vividly.

What I would say is after October 10th liquidation the market especially the alcoin market is very very weak in terms of liquidity in terms of trading volume or just interest.

Well, people were talking about altcoin season, but even in early 2025, I've already said I don't think there will be an altcoin season at all. But liquidity on sorry, the largest crack liquidity crash on October 10th just made it more true and more magnified.

So, right now the market is still in my opinion kind of correcting and finding its balance later this year. I do think Bitcoin has still very strong fundamental because of the larger liquidity coming out of the market in 2025. They flow into gold and even US stocks like Nvidia.

These all these assets all hit their all-time high. But Bitcoin just fell from, you know, world's top five asset class to right now top eight or nine. I think Bitcoin should be is actually the best asset to reflect liquidity because of the fact that it doesn't really have like a pricing model.

So the price can be largely adjusted or affected by the should be should be a good reflection of liquidity. In 2025, we didn't see it happen because that year, gold went up 60%, but Bitcoin went down 6%.

Right now, today, like you pointed out, gold, silver went down, US stocks corrected, Bitcoin and all the altcoins also went down. But I actually think it's a little bit like panic due to the geopolitical reason or maybe some exchanges are selling.

We are not actually for the past 11 12 months we have been actually accumulating bitcoin rather than selling. But my point is in general my market take is this year shouldn't be too bad. Bitcoin still has a chance to hit 150K or so.

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Love it. Yeah, I think we had on for our 2026 crypto predictions. He thought the same with regards to ending this year.

One of the recent things that is happening as a result of this liquidity shift that you talk about with regards to metals, US stocks and others is people wanting to trade these assets in crypto rails. So whether it's onchain or on centralized exchanges, people are now wanting to trade stocks, they want to trade gold, they want to trade silver, copper, they want to trade all these assets on chain.

And the place dominating that is Hyperlid. Hyperlquid's HIPP3 has allowed them to basically create a way that they can trade pretty much any asset on onchain on Hyperlid. The daily volume has hit two billion as of today. The OI is clearing is almost at a billion and they're growing 100% week-over week over the last couple weeks.

This is like the biggest growth story right now in crypto. we think uncorrelated in terms of the rest of the market.

How do you think about the rise of stocks, gold, metals trading on chain as well as on centralized exchanges? Is this a priority for BitGet? Do you see Hyperlid as a big competitor or do you see it as good for the ecosystem?

How do you think about this entire new market of crypto traders and retail wanting to speculate on other asset classes but do it onchain or in the cryptonative friendly platforms that they're used to?

You may not realize we actually offer onchain asset trading as well as tokenized US stocks, tokenized ETFs, etc. Actually beget from September 2025 we call ourself UEX universal exchange rather than CEX or DEX because people used to think CXD they are they very different CX are very centralized the DEX are not and and then KYC like AML standard everything is different for CX and DX.

For us we are still holding a pretty high at least from a KYC AML point of view in terms of having all our users needs to do KYC that that's more like CEX but in terms of the asset offerings we are very you can call us DEX that's why we think none of these two words can define us well enough and we said UEX.

UEEX is a little bit similar to what Brian Amstrong call it everything exchange now we often offer tokenized assets on chain any any of the assets that's issued on five top publishings including Salana, Ethereum, BSC, Monad, Morph are all tokenized are all tradable on big you can just put your contract address and then trade and then tokenized US stocks is another big market that we're developing.

So back to your question I feel hype hyperlquid is I wouldn't call them a competitor because essentially the market that they are serving is a bit similar to what we were before being more compliant. There are users that we gave up when we said we need all of our users to do KYC. So they moved more some of them moved to per DAX or DAX in general.

And we as one of the largest centralized exchanges or universal exchanges we do need to be more compliant otherwise we can't go bigger. So so that's a little bit of a give up give and take kind of game in terms of who we are serving what we are offering. But in general I see lots of potential in trady in tokenized gold, silver stocks etc. And we see lots of attractions not attraction tractions over there since the last few months when we launched US tokenized US stocks and silver gold etc through some CFD platform.

So is that how you see the pers market and this and the trade market like playing out like you get like this kind of bifurcation of the more let's say not compliant borderline gray area exchanges or onchain venues that don't require KYC AML etc. And then you'll have like the much more compliant institutionally oriented exchanges that have all the checks and balances in place and you'll kind of see this split happening. And if you're kind of in the middle, you're kind of left in the middle without an edge. Is that how you think about the trading landscape evolving in crypto generally?

I think so. I think that's a good summary of how we look at the market. Actually last year we spent a lot of time strategizing and thinking about whether which way we should go you know whether we want to go for more compliant more mainstream market or continue in running an offshore exchange and in the gray area.

So we chose the first way and it doesn't mean that the second PLA path wouldn't be successful or wouldn't have a market. Actually there's a big market because we we we've been there in a in a sense that that we know the market is is very big and going the first path is probably the tougher but more correct choice for us.

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How do you see the space trajectory with respect to the assets that are coming on chain? It's no longer just Bitcoin and Ethereum. We've on this show we've said that there's sort of a lack of quality assets. But you mentioned like now we have tokenized commodities, we have tokenized metals and and there's a growing asset class in income products which is effectively like these tokenized money markets, tokenized private credit, all these tokenized RWA products.

Typically what we've seen in terms of this these income style products is it starts with a stable coin that you own in your wallet at least if it's onchain. you go take that stable coin and deposit it into some sort of yield producing vault or smart contract. Now those things are getting packaged up and and distributed just like regular assets that pay some sort of yield or dividend.

Do you see Bitcat as sort of a distribution pathway for a lot of these assets right along with the speculative assets or generally how do you see serving the golds, the bitcoins, the fixed income assets, the tokenized rwas serving all of these products when all of them are so different without overwhelming the end users right still providing a simple user experience. How how do we make sure that we don't overwhelm users?

I think that's a good good question. I sometimes find it confusing and I talked to my for example CPO shift product officer. It's a she as well. So so two girls having lots of conversation about what market is is feedback is is giving us feedback and how can we improve from the product wise.

So so a few a few thoughts around that is first of all I probably don't have like a full answer and I think we are overwhelming our users a little bit by providing universal asset coverages. It's it's always it's the balance right it's like users always want more and more more like they want more choices but they also want it to be simple you just can't have both simplicity and lots of user choice.

That's right, but the big picture we are seeing here is not about how many tokens we have or how many assets we provide in terms of trading. It's about what users want. So even for tokenized US stocks or ETFs, we are not listing all of them. We only have about 200 tokenized US stocks. And then for the futures trading the perpetuals of those US stocks there are only 30 plus.

On the other hand crypto and all coins I would say in 2025 we did slow down a lot on token listing for the pure cryptonative kind of token and we did listed a lot that were on us. The reason being these asset classes or these altcoins are not we are not seeing as much liquidity trading volume. Sometimes price can just crash like 30% a day and those assets are not traded by the users anymore. So we delisted them.

So while adding all sort of asset classes on big we are also delisting some altcoins. So the major shift that you are seeing here is less and less cryptonative especially those altcoins that's not providing or producing real value more and more mainstream asset they are listed on NASDAQ and my big ETFs and indices they have much more fundamental value so as an exchange we want to look at number one what our users want number two what are the assets assets that has value that's that has volume that has people who want to trade and then how do we enable them.

So that's the methodology behind I I don't we we definitely don't want to overwhelm our users but as far as we keep this mental you know me mentality here that we know what we're doing and why we are doing them I think that that that should be fine yeah Gracie the user just want to trade uranium and they want it now. They want to trade commodities right now.

Don't let Andy sell you uranium. And Andy's got a big uranium position he's been pushing on this show. It's one of those tokenized metals. The TZOs guy came on Rob so long ago and told us about it. Remember that? And they had a tokenized They had a tokenized uranium product that that they listed as well, right?

Gracie, I'm curious when you're thinking about that current market structure you know I just want to come back to 1010 because I see I saw this tweet today that was like oh you know 1010 really screwed us and it was the chart of Bitcoin negative 15% since like June or something of last year and then it was S&P NASDAQ gold and there was like 22% 22% 40%.

Like do you think we're still picking up the scraps of 1010 in the market? Like do you think that we're still navigating market maker fallout? were still waiting on some like pieces to get put back together or is this just like we all, you know, said this time was different, that the four-year cycle was over, but it's a midterm year. It's the it's the year after it's the um you know, the fourth year of the cycle has passed. Bitcoin had a 8x from 15K to 125K. you know, we're just going through the usual pullback here and 1010 maybe could get blamed for it, but hasn't left necessarily like catastrophic damage in terms of the structure.

Like I'm trying to get a bit of insight from your side into the structure of what you're seeing. How healthy is the structure right now in Bitcoin? Do we have cause for concern with regards to the way that market makers, exchanges, etc. are holding up? I mean, we had a crazy 2025, right, with Bybit, you know, I remember you coming out and helping Bybit with their hack and then 1010 and then all these things. And so, like, are are we at a healthy point behind the scenes right now? I'm not sure exactly what you can share, but I'm just curious like what you're seeing.

That's a good question and I don't have a crystal ball. I wish I could. But telling whether this is already very healthy position or not that's like holding a crystal ball. But I do think fundamentally Bitcoin as we pointed out Bitcoin should still have a rally because of the liquidity is increasing. The the the global market you know monetary supply is increasing and Bitcoin should reflect that.

Whether the well I I also noticed that maybe yesterday Kathy Wood thought that the the so-called correction period should be very much finishing now. I'm slightly less optimistic but I'm not pass pessmissive. What I mean by that is I think I don't want to really guess the market. But if you're a long-term holder, what you should do now is probably accumulate a little bit of Bitcoin. Especially if you don't have any position.

But whether Bitcoin can reach another, you know, 70K, even 69K, I think it is possible. I as a long-term holder, I'm more like I prefer to start buy when I see the trend being very obvious. I don't mind buying slightly higher. But I don't want to be very very much like again predicting or just speculating on what's happening in the market.

Well, that makes sense. It it does. It does. And I I think you know cuz you don't have a crystal ball. None of us do. We're just you know we're trying to draw you know what what a unique perspective that you have as a centralized or you know a universal exchange as you called it. You know you've got quite a bit of insight into the flows right of several high volume market makers and traders.

And so I guess I I'll just double down not again not trying to ask you to predict but sim a very similar question is are you seeing anything in the flows as far as is it more retail is it more institutional is it you know greater volume is there is there anything that you can point to and how you're seeing the trading via bit right all the throughput that is coming in the volume that's coming in is it on particular assets more on maybe the major asset classes or or less on altcoins is there anything that you can point to in in the trading flows through bitat that are signaling anything to you about the market.

In terms of what we see or in the business we I would I would say institution and retail are like half half in terms of volume but the asset classes that they prefer is very obviously mainstream cryptocurrencies and also the mainstream US stocks are picking up in terms of volume on big as well traffic you know gold, silver, copper etc. even Forex, we we also started to offer Forex very recently in January this year.

So so the the conclusion from that observation or my personal take would be Bitcoin is still dominating the narrative and especially if you are running or planning to do a token launch on all coins, you want to make sure that your project can hold in the long time and is doing your business have have some sort of inflow rather than purely you know issue a token then and yeah we call this the revenue meta Gracie yeah that would be very bad to to the market and and that that and that won't succeed either right now exchanges are very very selective in terms of what token we are launching yeah just last thing there Gracie what has been the major changes for listings and for tokens Right?

Because we've got this general thesis that and I think like the entire market knows that it's it's it's changed. It's getting more it's gotten more harder due to more tokens, more dynamic you know different types of businesses. Give us the quick and dirty here on the changes in what you're seeing industrywide on token listings and on the way that exchanges are operating with new founders kind of trying to prevent these slow rugs or easy money operations that have been plaguing the industry for a while. What are you guys changing and what are you seeing as the core industrywide shifts here?

The core industrywide shifts would be again pure cryptonative stories won't really work. Some of the good projects that we see now are either infrastructure like RWA stable coin payi and then probably have some sort of elements in AI. So so this is not just how exchanges are listing. I've talked to a lot of VCs VC partners as well and and I think from the VC point of view what they are investing is also shifting a lot.

We actually collaborate we already funded a a a VC 400 mill aum VC force ventures and and we we do have like weekly meetings. It's the same it's the same thing. So the narrative has been very different. And then from an exchange listing process point of view not not sure how much you know about how we evaluate project but I can give you some sort of quick summary please would be would be we we do look at the their product like you if you have a if you have an app you have an agent we want to look at what what it is doing exactly we also want to look at the community and social so that we know how popular this project is and we even you know divide the the volumes from geographic point of view in order to understand how healthy those volumes is and then token economy that's just another big monster there that we have some some core team who will look into them and we want to ask for auditing report for some token auditing as well as code auditing.

We look at the background of the project as well as the background of the investors. So it's a quite tedious process that that that our listing team is like the BD talking to the project but but behind them there's a very strong research team who look at each elements differently and support our our our listing managers to to talk to the project and come up with good plans. Yet I would say in 2025 most of the tokens are especially after October 10th are kind of like like think the graph probably look like this like the the listing day is the highest price for them which is again very unhealthy for for a whole sector for the whole blockchain or crypto sector.

People said web 3 is dead. This this term just doesn't make sense. is not revolutionizing web two at least from the application point of view. I probably agree with that and that's why we have not been listing as many alcoin tokens and I even said tweeted I said all coins are dead a little bit extreme but I I want to make my point. In essence is Yeah. Yeah.

Gracie Chen, thank you so much for your time. Enjoy your time in in the US. Enjoy your time fighting the good fight here. Thank you for your energy and your work in the industry and we'll have you on soon again.

Thank you so much. Thank you. See you next time, Gracie. Thanks.