At TOKEN2049 in 2026, PANews sat down with Xie Jiayin, Bitget’s head of Greater China, for a long interview. They covered the exchange’s late-September security incident, its UEX strategy, how it handles user service, and where it wants to go over the long haul.
This year is Bitget’s eighth anniversary. It is also Xie’s eighth year in crypto. In the conversation, he looked back on how both he and the exchange have changed during that stretch, and he also addressed the latest problems facing the platform.
Response to the late-September security incident
PANews began by saying the previous two weeks had probably been unusually hectic for Xie and his team. It then asked about the security incident that struck Bitget in late September, how it was handled, and whether it had affected the company.
Xie said it was the only security incident in Bitget’s eight-year history, and he described the response overall as fairly prompt. He said he made clear from the beginning that Bitget is a platform willing to take responsibility and that users did not need to panic. According to Xie, the exchange let users withdraw assets freely. He said users pulled funds out on the first day, and by the second day many assets were already flowing back.
Xie cast the episode as a test of credibility. Trust, he said, is never something a platform just gets by default; it has to be earned over and over through action. If users decide to trust Bitget, then the company has to figure out how to carry that trust, he said.
He also said the incident was not necessarily bad for the exchange. His view was blunt: a crisis does not finish off a platform, but taking responsibility can redefine it. He compared the company to a ship at sea. Only after real wind and real waves, he said, can it show that it is solid enough. And Xie said both he and Bitget are ambitious. He again pointed out that this is his eighth year in the industry and Bitget’s eighth anniversary.
Eight years in crypto: from operator to manager
PANews then shifted to Xie’s own development. He and Bitget have both spent eight years in crypto, so the interviewer asked what had changed in his thinking over that time.
Xie said one of the biggest changes was going from executor to manager. When he first entered the industry eight years ago, he said, he was a workplace newcomer. After eight years of being tested and shaped, he said, he has become someone who can take pressure and lead a team ahead.
He also said that both he and Bitget have gone from trying to prove themselves to expressing themselves. To him, that is a good change. It also shows the brand is stronger now and has gained recognition from more users.
When PANews said Xie himself had become a kind of business card for Bitget, he answered that it goes both ways, and that the platform made him who he is now. Without Bitget, he said directly, there would be no present-day Xie Jiayin. He stressed that people should not confuse the power of a platform with the ability of one individual. He described himself as the person pushed to the front by Bitget’s more than 2,100 employees. It is not that he alone is especially intimidating, he said. It is that the platform is strong enough that people see him that way.
Xie said Bitget gave him a solid stage and strong support behind him.
User service and empathy
The interview also touched on Xie’s personal background. PANews mentioned that he had previously shared on social media that he came from an ordinary rural family and worked his way to where he is today. It asked whether that made it easier for him to understand users and feel empathy. Xie said yes.
He said he often says that he came from the ordinary public and has now returned to the ordinary public. Even though he is now a Bitget executive, he still wants service to reach everyday users and be passed along to everyone. So, he said, he asks his team to serve all clients well, whether they are VIP users, ordinary users, channel partners, or other partners. The standard, as he put it, is quick response and quick problem-solving.
Xie said user trust is built through lots of small things, not one-off gestures. It is not about sending someone a gift box and suddenly making them like you, he said. It is about whether the platform can really help solve their problems. Because he came from a very ordinary family and knows how hard it can be for ordinary people to chase goals or deal with real-life problems, he said he is more likely to think from the user’s point of view. He summed it up like this: “If you have stood in the rain yourself, you want to hold an umbrella over someone else.”
PANews then brought up a case where a user sends the wrong token or deposits to the wrong network, and said Bitget would still devote major resources to helping even when the amount was not large. Xie said cases like that are extremely common. Over the past eight years, he said, Bitget has helped users recover assets without ever charging a fee.
He gave a recent example. The day before, one customer had deposited a gold asset worth about $160,000 onto another chain that Bitget had not enabled. In response, the company created a group chat, assembled an eight-person team, and solved the issue in about 30 minutes. Xie added that similar cases happen often, and he reminded users to check carefully and pick the correct network when making deposits.
UEX: from crypto to U.S. stocks, gold, forex and silver
PANews said Bitget moves fast. So does crypto itself. Regulation, market conditions, and user demand can all shift almost daily. Asked whether that creates anxiety, Xie said the feeling comes and goes in stages.
He said there are moments when the team sees a rival launch a product or feature and feels pressure. But, he added, Bitget has also made rivals nervous. After UEX launched in September last year, he said, he could clearly feel that peers had started getting uneasy too. In his view, that pressure cannot be avoided. That is why the company has to keep polishing products and keep innovating. Times have changed. Users have changed. And if a platform does not change with them, it will be left behind.
Xie added that Bitget has been overturning some of its old playbooks. Methods that once worked well and were seen as mature may no longer suit the present or the future, he said.
PANews then asked why Bitget chose to get in front of those changes a full year early, and what kind of impact the UEX strategy had produced for users and the business.
Xie said that when Bitget announced in September last year that it would build a UEX “panoramic exchange,” plenty of people thought the idea would be hard to pull off. Others thought it was too complicated, or too far away. Some argued that as an exchange, Bitget should just stick to crypto and stay away from U.S. stocks, gold, forex, and silver.
Xie saw it the other way. He said Bitget’s strategy should stay at least half a year ahead of peers, and that an exchange needs to keep giving users trading opportunities.
On the details, he said Bitget launched U.S. stock trading in September last year, first through integration with Ondo. Later, after getting user feedback on the trading experience, the company started developing the tokenized stock protocol Reality at the end of December that year. He said the system connects directly to liquidity from Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, raises execution efficiency, and supports direct dividend distribution.
According to Xie, Bitget’s rToken is highly competitive on liquidity because of that mechanism. After the new system went live, daily trading volume in the U.S. stock business climbed as high as $10 billion. He also said activity still depends on market conditions, and when the U.S. stock market weakens, related trading volume falls too.
As for traditional asset products, Xie said Bitget launched gold, forex, and silver on Jan. 5 this year through MT5. Right now, he said, Bitget’s contracts for difference, or CFD, business in gold and forex has already reached a meaningful scale. In his telling, it is already in the upper-middle tier of the industry even compared with traditional forex trading platforms.
On the U.S. equity side, he offered another figure: Bitget’s U.S. stock derivatives now account for 19.5%, making it the world’s second-largest U.S. stock derivatives market after Binance.
How the new products changed the user mix
PANews asked whether Bitget had mainly seen its existing crypto users move into traditional financial assets, or whether adding those products had brought in a fresh group of users.
Xie said both things are happening. He revealed that about two months ago, the team ran the numbers and found that among users who registered this year, one out of every four new users traded U.S. stocks or forex.
He said Bitget has indeed drawn part of its user base from the traditional forex market and the U.S. stock market, though the scale is still smaller than he wants, which means more work still has to be done.
Xie also said Bitget did not have a C2C business in its earlier years. Later, to expand into more markets, the company added a C2C function to give users a point of entry.
From dark horse to major exchange
Looking back at Bitget’s eighth anniversary, PANews said surviving and growing for eight years in crypto is no easy thing. It asked what enabled Bitget to grow quickly and build a competitive moat, from its early days as a dark horse exchange to its current place among leading platforms.
Xie started with product. He said Bitget has stayed ahead of the market in product development and was the first platform in the world to launch copy trading. In his account, the company can spot user demand and get in front of the kinds of products users may want.
He also pointed to service visibility. He wants users to be able to spot Bitget staff anywhere and feel safe. If users want to find someone from Bitget, he said, they should be able to do it at any time.
Transparency was another thing he emphasized, including asset transparency and proof of reserves. Bitget publishes those figures every month, he said, and its proof of reserves at the end of September was 131%.
When it comes to running an exchange, Xie said long-term thinking matters even more. The company has to keep its respect for products, the market, and users, while continuing to study and improve its own offerings. That, in his view, is how a platform becomes more competitive.
Goal ahead: become one of the top three choices for Chinese-speaking users
Looking ahead, PANews asked about Bitget’s next goals and vision, and also what part Xie wants to play in that process.
Xie said his personal goal is to make Bitget one of the top three choices for Chinese-speaking users and to win their real recognition.
As for his own growth, he said he wants to help the team perform better and keep improving. If every member of the team gets stronger, he said, the platform will develop better too.
At the end of the interview, PANews asked how he would describe Bitget to someone completely new to the industry. Xie’s answer was that Bitget is a one-stop financial operations platform. There, he said, users can trade U.S. stocks, Hong Kong stocks, gold, and crypto, and carry out global asset allocation. In his words, it is a good option.