During TOKEN2049 in 2026, PANews sat down with Xie Jiayin, Bitget’s head of Greater China. The timing mattered on two fronts: 2026 marks Bitget’s eighth anniversary, and it is also Xie’s eighth year in crypto. Just before the interview, Bitget had gone through what Xie described as the only security incident in the exchange’s eight-year history, making that event the first subject of the conversation.
The discussion also covered Bitget’s UEX, or panoramic exchange, strategy, including progress in trading products tied to U.S. stocks, gold and forex, as well as how those products are changing the platform’s user mix.
Response to the late-September security incident
Asked by PANews about the outcome of the security incident at the end of September and whether it affected Bitget, Xie said the exchange handled the situation quickly.
He said he made it clear at the time that Bitget would take responsibility and that users did not need to worry. The platform allowed users to withdraw their assets. According to Xie, withdrawals happened on the first day, and from the second day onward many assets had already started coming back.
Xie said trust should never be treated as a given and has to be earned again and again through action. In his view, once users choose to trust Bitget, the company has to prove it can carry that trust.
He also said the crisis was not necessarily a bad thing for Bitget. A crisis does not end a platform, he said, but responsibility can redefine one. He compared the episode to a ship being tested by rough seas and added that both he and Bitget have ambition. This year, he noted, is both his eighth year in the industry and Bitget’s eighth anniversary.
Eight years in crypto: from executor to manager
Looking back on his own career and Bitget’s path over the same period, Xie said the biggest shift has been moving from an executor’s role to a manager’s role.
When he entered the industry eight years ago, he said, he was still a newcomer in the workplace. After eight years of pressure and repetition, he now sees himself as someone able to withstand pressure and lead a team forward. He said both he and Bitget have moved from trying to prove themselves to being able to express themselves, which he sees as a sign that the brand has grown stronger and earned wider recognition from users.
When PANews said Xie himself had become a public face of Bitget, he answered that the relationship works both ways and that the platform made his own growth possible. Without Bitget, he said, he would not be where he is today.
Xie added that people should not mistake the strength of the platform for an individual’s personal ability. He described himself as one person standing at the front on behalf of more than 2,100 Bitget employees. If others think he is impressive, he said, that starts with the platform being strong enough. Bitget gave him a stage and strong backing.
User service: fast response across all client types
Xie linked his approach to user service with his personal background. He said he came from an ordinary family and that experience makes it easier for him to understand how difficult it can be for ordinary people to solve problems or pursue goals. Because of that, he said, he wants service to reach the broader public.
He said he asks his team to serve all clients the same way, whether they are VIP users, ordinary users, channel partners or other partners. The requirement is fast response and fast problem solving. In his telling, user trust is built through many small interactions over time, not by a one-off gesture. What matters is whether the platform can actually solve users’ problems.
Xie said Bitget has never charged users a fee when helping them recover assets over the past eight years. He gave one example from the day before the interview: a client mistakenly deposited gold-related assets worth about $160,000 onto another chain that Bitget had not enabled. The company set up a group and assembled an eight-person task force, and the issue was resolved in about 30 minutes.
He said cases like that happen often and used the example to remind users to check the network carefully before making deposits.
UEX strategy: from crypto into U.S. stocks, gold, forex and silver
On the pace of the industry and the pressure that comes with it, Xie said anxiety comes in phases. There are times when Bitget sees rivals launch new features or products and feels pressure. At the same time, he said, Bitget has also released products that made rivals feel the same.
He pointed to September last year, when Bitget launched UEX, saying he could clearly feel that competing platforms had started to worry as well. Pressure, in his view, is part of the business. Products need constant polishing and innovation because both the times and the users have changed. If a platform does not change, it falls behind. Methods that worked in the past, he said, may no longer fit the present or the future.
Explaining why Bitget moved early, Xie said many people doubted the UEX concept when the company announced it in September last year. Some thought it would be too difficult to execute, too complicated or too far off. Others argued that an exchange should simply focus on crypto and stay away from products tied to U.S. stocks, gold, forex and silver.
Xie disagreed. He said an exchange’s strategy should stay at least half a year ahead of rivals and that the job of a platform is to keep providing users with trading opportunities.
U.S. stock products: from Ondo access to Reality
Xie said Bitget launched U.S. stock trading in September last year, initially by integrating Ondo. After users raised issues about the operating experience, the company started developing Reality, a tokenized U.S. equities protocol, in late December of the same year.
He said the system connects directly to liquidity from Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, improves execution efficiency and supports direct dividend distribution. Because of that liquidity access design, Xie said, Bitget’s rToken has strong competitiveness in liquidity.
After the new system went live, Bitget’s U.S. stock business reached as much as $10 billion in single-day trading volume. He added that trading activity still depends on market conditions, and volumes decline when the U.S. equity market turns weak.
Gold, forex and silver added on Jan. 5
Xie said Bitget launched gold, forex and silver products on Jan. 5 this year through MT5.
He said Bitget’s contracts for difference, or CFD, business tied to gold and forex has already reached meaningful scale. Compared with traditional forex trading platforms, he said, Bitget has reached an upper-middle level within the industry.
On U.S. stock products, he added that Bitget’s U.S. stock derivatives business now accounts for 19.5%. By his description, that makes Bitget the world’s second-largest U.S. stock derivatives market after Binance.
User mix is changing
Asked whether the new product set mainly pushed existing crypto users into traditional financial assets or brought in a new group of users, Xie said both are happening.
He said the company ran an internal count about two months ago and found that among users who registered this year, one in every four new users was trading U.S. stocks or forex.
At the same time, he said the number of users brought in from the traditional forex and U.S. equity markets is still below what he had hoped for, so the company still has more work to do.
Xie also noted that Bitget did not have a C2C business a few years ago. To expand into more markets, the exchange later added C2C as an access point for more users.
From dark horse to top-tier exchange
When asked how Bitget grew from a dark horse exchange into a leading platform over eight years, Xie put product first.
He said Bitget led the market on product and was the first platform globally to launch copy trading. The company, he said, has been able to identify what users need and also anticipate which products they may want next.
He also stressed user-facing presence. His view is that users should be able to see Bitget people wherever they are and feel a sense of security. If they want to reach someone from Bitget, they should be able to do so at any time.
Transparency was another point he highlighted, including asset transparency and proof of reserves. Xie said Bitget discloses its reserve status every month and that its proof of reserves stood at 131% at the end of September.
For Xie, the more important principle in running an exchange is long-term thinking. A platform needs to keep its respect for products, the market and users, while continuing to work deeply on what it builds.
What comes next
Xie described his goal for Bitget in direct terms: he wants the exchange to become one of the top three choices for Chinese-speaking users and to win genuine user recognition.
On his own role, he said he wants to help the team do better and grow faster. He said he hopes every member of the team will eventually do better than he does, because the platform can only improve if the people inside it keep improving.
At the end of the interview, PANews asked how he would introduce Bitget to someone new to the industry. Xie’s answer was that Bitget is a one-stop financial operations platform. In his description, users can trade U.S. stocks, Hong Kong stocks, gold and crypto there, and use it for global asset allocation.