Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said tokenization is emerging as one of the most important mega trends in global finance, arguing that crypto is no longer just an alternative asset class but an infrastructure layer increasingly intersecting with traditional markets. Speaking in a conversation associated with New York’s Tokenization Tower and The Rollup podcast, Chen described a long-term view she calls a “10% blueprint” for real-world asset adoption on-chain.
According to Chen, she previously discussed this thesis with BlackRock COO Rob Goldstein during a coffee meeting in Manhattan. Her core argument is that tokenized versions of major traditional financial products, including money market funds, real estate, equities, and private credit, remain at extremely low penetration today, but could each climb materially by the end of the decade. She said tokenized equities are currently around 0.01% of their traditional market base, while tokenized private credit is closer to 0.5%, and she believes both can move toward 10% by 2030.
From crypto exchange to “universal exchange”
Chen said Bitget is repositioning itself beyond pure crypto trading and is building toward what it calls a “universal exchange,” or UEX. In practice, that means broader access to multiple asset classes, including crypto, forex, stocks, ETFs, bonds, money market funds, commodities, and pre-IPO shares. She cited Bitget’s cooperation with Republic Crypto to list SpaceX pre-IPO shares, giving retail users exposure before a public listing.
That strategic shift is also influencing corporate structure. Chen said Bitget is considering an IPO path, signaling that some crypto firms with meaningful revenue and profit generation may ultimately prefer public equity markets over dependence on exchange-token narratives. She also noted that BGB, Bitget’s former platform token, has already been transferred to the Morph ecosystem, a move she framed as part of a broader industry trend in which exchange operators separate token ecosystems from the compliance-oriented operating entity.
In her view, this reflects a deeper market-level reassessment of the relationship between tokens and equity. Projects that can produce real cash flow and profit may conclude that an IPO offers superior liquidity, visibility, and institutional access. Meanwhile, token investors are becoming less willing to accept unclear rights, weak value accrual, or purely narrative-driven positioning.
Token markets are being repriced around quality and transparency
Asked how the token market is being rebuilt during the current bear cycle, Chen said investors have grown more skeptical after multiple rounds of poorly structured listings, insider advantages, aggressive market-making practices, and retail losses. As a result, token holders are increasingly behaving like equity investors, pressing teams to clarify what exactly they own, what rights are attached to the asset, and how economic value ultimately flows back to holders.
Chen drew a clear distinction between tokenization and speculative altcoin culture. She said a token should not automatically be treated as synonymous with an altcoin, because tokenized stocks, bonds, and other real-world assets also fall under the broader token category. She added that Bitget has become more selective in listings, saying the only token added over the prior week was an RWA-related asset, underscoring the exchange’s preference for projects with stronger fundamentals or real asset linkage.
She also cautioned against an industry in which every project adopts the meme coin model. In her words, meme coins are inherently speculative instruments. They may not be worthless, but speculation alone cannot support an entire market structure. Chen said the sector is now at a critical point where projects that publish meaningful on-chain and off-chain data, improve token design, and take investor protection seriously are increasingly being separated from teams that rely primarily on storytelling.
Top exchanges are splitting into two strategic camps
Chen said major exchanges are now diverging into two broad paths. One path focuses on compliance, licensing, auditing, and transparency. She said at least four or five of the top ten exchanges are seriously pursuing this route by working with Big Four auditors and applying for licenses across key jurisdictions, including MiCA in Europe, VARA in Dubai, and frameworks in the United States such as money transmitter licenses and broker-dealer structures.
The other path is more crypto-native and remains centered on fully on-chain, low-friction, or no-KYC trading environments. Chen declined to comment directly on Hyperliquid, but she said DEXs and centralized exchanges, or in Bitget’s framing universal exchanges, will likely continue to coexist in a polarized market. Some users will always prefer non-KYC, on-chain venues, while others need regulated access, broader product breadth, and institution-ready infrastructure.
She made clear that Bitget wants to avoid major confrontations with US regulators such as the SEC and CFTC. Instead, the company intends to build around formal KYC and AML standards and expand its US footprint through compliant channels. Chen said Bitget plans to launch a US website and a dedicated US app later in the year, describing her frequent visits to New York as part of that expansion effort.
The “10% blueprint” for RWA by 2030
The centerpiece of the conversation was Chen’s “10% blueprint.” She said the market is still in a very early stage across every major category of tokenized traditional finance. That includes money market products, real estate, equities, and private credit. Today’s percentages are low enough that even moderate adoption looks transformational, and Chen’s thesis is that the industry should be building with the assumption that 2030 will look dramatically different from the current environment.
Her framework is straightforward: tokenization is not a marginal extension of crypto markets, but a mechanism for traditional asset distribution, settlement, and access. If that thesis plays out, the competitive landscape will be shaped not only by crypto-native exchanges and protocols, but also by banks, asset managers, lawyers, regulators, and political stakeholders. Chen said the industry must now bring Wall Street and traditional financial institutions into the same conversation if it wants tokenization to scale beyond niche adoption.
That also means the market is still early enough that infrastructure winners have not yet been fully established. In her telling, product development, regulatory navigation, investor education, liquidity depth, and user access all remain open fields of competition. The next several years, she suggested, will determine whether tokenization becomes a durable layer of global capital markets or remains confined to isolated crypto-native products.
Who could benefit most from the tokenization wave
When asked which sectors are best positioned to capture value if tokenization succeeds, Chen pointed first to exchanges, but with a clear qualification: not every exchange will win. She argued that only platforms that truly understand the tokenization direction and are willing to allocate meaningful capital, talent, and operational resources will become the main gateways connecting users, institutions, asset issuers, and liquidity providers.
Her second category was stablecoin issuers and stablecoin infrastructure providers. Chen said stablecoins such as USDT, USDC, and USD Gold are increasingly becoming the transactional layer for trading across multiple asset classes. Even as market narratives shift around initiatives such as Visa-linked Open USD network developments, she said stablecoins remain central to settlement, payments, and trading in a tokenized market architecture.
The third category is blockchains and protocol builders. Chen said she is more optimistic about Solana in the RWA arena because of what she characterized as tighter engagement with regulators and major banks. At the same time, she said Ethereum remains firmly in the mix as a foundational ecosystem for tokenized assets and financial infrastructure.
She also highlighted retail users and broader communities as perhaps the most important long-term beneficiaries. If universal exchanges can give users access to a wider range of investable assets, portfolio construction changes materially. Chen gave the example of allowing users to post RNVDA, a tokenized Nvidia stock product from Reality, as collateral for perpetual futures or for trading other assets including Bitcoin. In her view, that kind of structure improves capital efficiency and expands access for users in jurisdictions where traditional financial markets may be difficult to reach directly.
Perpetuals and spot tokenization are complementary
The discussion also turned to the rapid expansion of real-world asset perpetual products across both decentralized and centralized venues, including pre-IPO perpetuals, commodities, equities, and indexes. Chen said she does not see a conflict between perpetuals and spot tokenization. Instead, she described them as complementary instruments that serve different use cases, much like spot and perpetual markets have coexisted in crypto for roughly a decade.
Her reasoning is functional. Investors who want long-term directional exposure without leverage may prefer spot holdings, particularly for assets they intend to keep over time. By contrast, perpetuals are synthetic products better suited for short-term trading, leverage, or tactical market expression, but they come with funding rates, liquidation risk, and generally higher volatility exposure. For that reason, Chen said perpetuals will not replace the one-to-one ownership logic embedded in spot tokenized assets.
She added that the US market is still in the early stages of adapting these products to domestic regulation. Offshore venues have listed similar instruments for years, but the American market is only beginning to formalize its own framework, with recent product developments around single-stock futures seen as an example of that ongoing shift.
Identity crisis or maturation: Chen’s view of the next cycle
Near the end of the conversation, Chen addressed the broader question of whether crypto is undergoing an identity crisis as it moves from anti-Wall Street positioning toward deeper integration with traditional finance. She said many people have raised that issue with her over the past year, but she views the tension as a normal feature of industry evolution rather than a contradiction that can be avoided.
Her broader outlook extends beyond RWA alone. Chen said the next few years will be defined by the convergence of tokenization, stablecoins, payments, real product-market fit, crypto-tradfi integration, and AI. In that sense, she sees RWA and AI as structural trends that market participants cannot stop, only respond to.
Chen summarized that stance in direct terms: “You can’t stop the trend of RWA, and you can’t stop the trend of AI.” The real choice, she said, is whether to resist those trends or ride them with a long-term mindset. For Bitget, that means thinking beyond short-term cycles and positioning the company for a multi-year buildout. In her view, tokenization may ultimately represent a financial transformation on the scale of an earlier era of Wall Street innovation, with New York once again serving as one of the key centers where that transition is taking shape.