Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said tokenization is emerging as the most important mega trend in finance, laying out what she called a “10% blueprint” for real-world assets. In a conversation on The Rollup, Chen said she previously shared this view with BlackRock COO Rob Goldstein during a meeting in Manhattan, arguing that by 2030, tokenized versions of traditional financial assets such as equities, private credit, money market funds, and real estate could each reach roughly 10% penetration within their respective markets.
According to the figures she cited, tokenized stocks currently account for only about 0.01% of the broader market, while tokenized private credit stands near 0.5%. Her broader point was that crypto is no longer best understood as a niche alternative asset class. Instead, she said, blockchain is increasingly functioning as financial infrastructure capable of reshaping large segments of traditional finance.
Chen also said the audience for crypto is expanding beyond native on-chain traders and retail speculators. In her view, the next phase of adoption requires participation from Wall Street firms, banks, lawyers, regulators, and policymakers. That shift, she argued, is already changing how exchanges build products and how investors evaluate digital assets.
From speculative tokens to real-world asset rails
One of Chen’s clearest arguments was that “token” should no longer be treated as synonymous with altcoins. She said the market is now differentiating more sharply between speculative crypto assets and tokenized real-world instruments. In her framing, RWA became a major theme starting in 2025, and the sector is now moving toward products tied to traditional asset classes rather than narrative-driven coins.
She pointed to Bitget’s own rollout of tokenized stocks and commodities, and said the company partnered with Republic Crypto in April to list SpaceX pre-IPO shares, giving retail users exposure before a potential public listing. For Chen, that kind of product illustrates the real transformation underway: not just more crypto trading, but broader access to assets that historically sat inside highly gated financial systems.
At the same time, she criticized the part of the market still dominated by storytelling and speculation. Meme coins, she said, are inherently speculative instruments. While she did not dismiss them as worthless, she argued they should not define the industry’s future. If too many bad actors continue to rely on narrative alone without creating actual value, she warned, the sector’s credibility could erode quickly.
That view is affecting listing standards as well. Chen said Bitget has become more selective in what it brings to market, and noted that over roughly the prior week, the only new token listed by the exchange had been an RWA token. In her telling, exchanges, founders, and retail users are all moving toward a preference for higher-quality assets and more transparent economic structures.
Why token holders are starting to think more like equity investors
Chen said the last cycle exposed major weaknesses in token design, including insider allocations, distorted market-making structures, and poor alignment between holders and issuers. As a result, investors are no longer satisfied with simple narrative upside. Instead, they are asking what rights a token actually represents, whether revenue or value accrues back to holders, and how token structures compare with more familiar equity frameworks.
That shift is especially relevant as institutional capital and tokenized traditional assets enter the market. Chen argued that newer investors are bringing a different set of expectations, shaped less by crypto-native culture and more by capital markets logic. Transparency, accountability, and clear rights frameworks are becoming more important in token evaluation.
In practical terms, she suggested this will push both exchanges and projects to improve disclosure and rethink tokenomics. The era in which weak structures could be masked by momentum or hype may be fading, particularly as regulators and institutions pay closer attention to the sector.
Token versus equity: why more firms may choose IPOs
On the increasingly blurred line between tokens and corporate equity, Chen said many profitable projects may ultimately prefer a formal IPO route over launching a token. The reasons are straightforward: larger markets, better liquidity, stronger investor recognition, and more established pricing mechanisms.
She said this debate is especially relevant for exchanges that launched platform tokens several years ago. Bitget itself previously had BGB as its exchange token, but Chen said the token has since been shifted to Morph, where it is managed within a Layer 2 ecosystem structure. Bitget, by contrast, is considering a public listing path of its own.
In her view, that kind of restructuring is becoming more common. Some exchanges may move their legacy tokens into separate public-chain or Layer 2 ecosystems, while the operating company itself pursues audits, licensing, and eventual access to traditional capital markets. The result is not a simple replacement of tokens by equity, but a more complex separation of functions between protocol assets and corporate entities.
Chen added that major traditional listing venues such as Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange are also exploring tokenized equities and more crypto-native issuance models. She said those conversations remain early and would require substantial support from regulators including the SEC, but she described the direction as highly significant for the next phase of market development.
Exchanges are splitting into regulated and no-KYC models
Chen said the exchange sector is now diverging into two distinct strategic paths. On one side are platforms actively pursuing regulation, audits, and public-facing transparency. She said that among the top ten exchanges, at least four or five are seriously taking this route, obtaining licenses and working within frameworks such as Europe’s MiCA, Dubai’s VARA, and U.S. regimes including money transmitter licensing and broker-dealer structures.
On the other side are exchanges and on-chain venues choosing a very different path: fully DeFi-native, heavily offshore, and geared toward users who prefer to avoid KYC. Chen argued that both models can coexist, but they are building for different users and will likely capture different parts of the market.
Her own preference was unambiguous. Chen said Bitget wants to operate on a compliant basis, with KYC, AML, and stronger user protection, rather than risk major legal battles with agencies such as the SEC or CFTC. That stance, she said, becomes even more important if the company eventually seeks to list publicly.
When asked specifically about Hyperliquid, she declined to comment directly, saying that any public stance on the platform tends to provoke strong reactions. Still, she reiterated that DEXs and CEXs, or what she called UEXs, are likely to remain in a durable bipolar structure. Some users will always prefer decentralized markets and no-KYC access, but the institutions likely to drive RWA adoption may favor licensed and regulated intermediaries.
Who captures value in the tokenization wave
Asked who stands to benefit most if the tokenization thesis plays out, Chen said exchanges will remain important, but not all exchanges equally. In her view, the winners will be platforms that can connect users, assets, liquidity providers, and institutions, while committing real resources and talent to building tokenized-asset infrastructure.
She then identified stablecoin issuers and payment networks as a second major beneficiary group. Bitget, she said, already lets users trade across asset classes using USDT, USDC, and USD Gold, and stablecoins are becoming increasingly central to both settlement and trading. She also referenced the recent launch of the Open USD network by Visa and others, noting that competitive dynamics among stablecoin players are evolving rapidly.
A third beneficiary group, in her view, is the base-layer and protocol stack. Chen said she is particularly constructive on Solana in the RWA context because of its closer ties with regulators and large banks, while also acknowledging Ethereum as an important platform in the same space. Her implication was that future winners will need more than just throughput; they will need institutional alignment, regulatory compatibility, and strong ecosystem support.
She also emphasized the role of communities and retail users. Bitget, she said, already allows users to post tokenized assets such as RNVDA, a tokenized Nvidia stock product, as collateral for perpetual futures or other trades including Bitcoin and equities. That structure, she argued, improves capital efficiency and gives users access to investment opportunities that may not exist in their domestic financial systems, often on a 24/7 or at least 24/5 basis.
Perpetuals and spot tokenization are complementary, not substitutes
Chen rejected the idea that perpetual futures will replace spot tokenization. She said the two products serve different purposes and have coexisted in crypto exchanges for nearly a decade. Spot markets are more suitable for users who want long-term directional exposure and actual asset ownership representation, while perpetuals cater to leveraged, more active trading strategies.
She described perpetuals as synthetic, oracle-driven markets that are valuable because they make price exposure and liquidity more flexible. Spot tokenization, by contrast, more closely reflects one-to-one ownership mapping. For that reason, she said, the long-term role of tokenized spot assets cannot simply be displaced by derivatives.
Chen noted that the U.S. market is only beginning to move more deeply into these products, citing the recent rollout of single-stock futures by CME. Offshore platforms, however, have offered related structures for years. That makes the current U.S. shift notable, but not conceptually new for global crypto trading venues.
Bitget’s longer-term thesis: become infrastructure for a blended financial system
Stepping back from product specifics, Chen framed the industry’s current “identity crisis” as a normal consequence of maturation rather than a betrayal of crypto’s original ethos. In her view, as with AI’s impact on traditional work, large technological shifts create discomfort but cannot be stopped once they begin reshaping real-world systems.
She listed the themes she expects to define the next several years: RWA, stablecoins, payments, genuine product-market fit, the convergence of crypto and traditional finance, and AI. For Bitget, that means thinking beyond the narrow role of a crypto exchange and building toward a longer-term position inside a broader financial stack.
Chen said running an exchange is a marathon, not a sprint, and the same is true for projects trying to build durable value. Her message was that the market is entering an early but crucial phase in which firms must choose whether to remain attached to old token narratives or adapt to a more regulated, institutional, multi-asset environment.
That is ultimately why she described tokenization as the defining financial revolution of the current era. In her view, the opportunity is not merely to trade crypto more efficiently, but to rebuild access, settlement, and ownership rails for global finance itself. And for Bitget, that means moving away from dependence on exchange-token storytelling and toward compliance, infrastructure, and long-term integration with traditional markets.