MEXC Chief Executive Officer Vugar Usi said the exchange is trying to build a platform that goes beyond cryptocurrency trading, arguing that users should be able to move across stocks, tokenized assets and digital assets without being boxed in by old market labels.
In an interview with BlockTempo, Usi framed that strategy as "infinite opportunities." He said the goal is to create a new version of MEXC after taking over as CEO in April 2026, following his earlier role as chief operating officer. According to the interview, MEXC now serves more than 40 million users across over 170 markets. The report also said Usi previously held roles at traditional large companies including Sony and has been a serial entrepreneur.
"Infinite opportunities" means moving past strict asset labels
Asked why MEXC placed infinity in its logo, Usi said the company wanted to build around the idea that markets are not a zero-sum game. In his account, more users entering the industry, investing and trading can expand the pie rather than force one side to lose for another to win.
He described several user profiles to explain that point: someone in a Western market looking for a safer way to beat the S&P 500; someone in Southeast Asia with $2,000 looking for a 10x or 20x trade; a family office trying to hedge stock-market risk; or a Gen Z crypto user now looking at equities. His argument was that users arrive with different goals, and the platform should match those different paths.
Usi said he no longer thinks in terms of a "crypto investor" alone and prefers the idea of an "opportunity investor." He said that after more than a decade of markets being framed around bull and bear cycles, this is the first time he sees a bear market that still offers room to make money. That is why he called it "the best bear market" in the interview.
He tied that view to blockchain-based market structure, saying real-world assets, tokenized stocks and digital representations of physical assets are changing how people invest. In his telling, users no longer need to stop and sort an idea into rigid buckets such as Bitcoin, altcoins, crypto or non-crypto before making a move. Instead, he said, markets are entering what he called a "trade everything" phase.
He gave concrete examples. If headlines are focused on rising tensions in the Middle East, a trader can go long oil. If AI is the dominant topic, they can buy exposure to chips and semiconductors. If oil prices rise, they can short airline stocks because tickets may become more expensive. Usi said MEXC offers 3,000 digital assets and more than 7,000 stocks, allowing users to move from Bitcoin to Tesla stock, then to gold, and back to Bitcoin in the same day without splitting activity across multiple venues.
That kind of movement across asset classes, he said, gives retail users access to something much closer to institutional-grade opportunity, especially when paired with AI tools.
Lowering entry barriers remains a core operating principle
When asked what belief MEXC is willing to defend even at a short-term cost, Usi said the answer is reducing barriers to entry.
He said those barriers can take several forms: complicated technology, user experiences that are not intuitive, and fees that ordinary users cannot absorb. In his view, global finance has long been more accessible to wealthy people, celebrities and those with influence. For many users, especially outside the United States, getting access to an investment in a company has often felt out of reach.
As an example, he pointed to MEXC’s first SpaceX pre-IPO share offering this year. Usi said 80,000 people signed up on the platform to take part. For him, that was a case where MEXC moved beyond rhetoric about lowering barriers and started putting that idea into practice.
He also said the exchange uses zero fees to keep trading costs low. In markets where it cannot offer zero-fee trading, he said MEXC is at least 10 times cheaper than the nearest competitor.
As walls between assets fall, the focus shifts to narrower themes
Usi said he does not think the next phase is mainly about adding one more asset class to the list. Instead, he expects attention to shift toward narrower segments inside those categories. He said he has argued for the past two to three years that there will no longer be an "altseason" in the old sense. What matters more, in his view, are themes such as semiconductors, AI or weight-loss drugs, driven by ideas, narrative, speed and execution.
He added that the next five years are hard to predict because the change is not limited to crypto exchanges. Traditional financial institutions are also changing. In the interview, he said both the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq have announced moves toward 24/7 operations and tokenizing the entire portfolio structure. To him, that shows the world is adopting blockchain as a technology layer.
From there, he said the next five years could bring a highly unified and interoperable economy. Users will care less about which platform they use and more about whether the choice in front of them is the safest, cheapest and fastest one at that moment.
He compared the shift to ride-hailing apps. On a rainy day, someone may open two or three apps and take whichever car arrives first. He expects global finance to work in much the same way.
The next billion users may come through retail spending, not trading screens
Asked who the next billion users will be, Usi said the answer is not simply people coming to trade crypto or stocks. He said a billion users need a solution to a billion everyday problems, and that solution is not really about trading.
For him, the larger issue is ownership and spending: how people truly own what they have and how they use it. He pointed to ordinary routines such as buying coffee, going to work and purchasing gifts for loved ones as the places where mass adoption is more likely to happen.
That is why he said MEXC wants to build around a model where users do not have to sell assets, convert to cash and withdraw before they can spend. Instead, they should be able to hold the asset until the last second and then spend through a card.
Usi said he expects the next billion users to appear in retail use cases where the platform solves the problem quietly and smoothly instead of repeatedly explaining the technology. He compared that experience to Apple Pay. Users did not need to understand how it worked under the hood; it solved the simple problem of not carrying many cards and became part of daily life.
AI can act as a co-pilot, but not as the sole manager of wealth
On AI and financial literacy, Usi stressed self-education. He said that in most areas of life, such as medicine or engineering, someone with formal training usually knows more than a self-taught person. Trading, in his view, is one of the few fields where a self-taught individual can become highly successful and even outperform someone with elite credentials from Harvard or Goldman Sachs.
That is why he thinks financial literacy in the AI era means learning how to invest better, how to compare products and how to use AI not only as a study tool but also as a co-pilot in the investment process.
Still, he drew a clear line. Usi said he would not give AI a 100% chance to manage his portfolio. He compared that to corporate budget controls, where no single employee has unlimited spending power and every expense goes through teams and approval processes.
He said the same principle should apply to AI: it can have access, it can place trades, and it can make payments, but it should operate within limits rather than take over entirely. The reason, he said, is straightforward. Investing is too important, and one mistake can wipe out a lifetime of earnings.
For now, he expects AI to take on more routine work such as technical analysis, reading order books and gathering data. But at least at today’s level, he said, AI is not ready to manage a person’s entire wealth.
Compliance and transparency should become assumed, not debated
In the later part of the interview, Usi spoke about what users may come to expect by default over the next decade. He said people do not walk into a bank and ask whether it is real or compliant; they already assume that it is.
He expects the same standard to apply to financial platforms 10 years from now. In his view, users will come to a platform already assuming that it is compliant and safe. Before the industry reaches that point, though, platforms need to help users understand how they operate and make transparency visible.
Usi said that is why he is pushing a program called "Trust You Can Verify." Under that effort, he said, MEXC asks outside audit firms every month to review its proof of reserves and places its Guardian Fund in publicly verifiable wallets so users can check it themselves at any time.
He said the end goal is for customers to feel comfortable enough that they no longer spend time worrying about these issues and can instead focus on product innovation, speed and lower fees.
Usi also said he strongly supports regulatory clarity. A common framework, he argued, means every exchange is held to the same standard. Only then does competition really center on product quality, speed and the opportunities a platform can bring to users.
How Usi wants MEXC to be remembered
At the end of the interview, Usi said he does not want MEXC to be remembered for one isolated event. He said he wants people to remember the company because they found success there, or because something on the platform helped change their lives, but not because of one single dramatic moment.
What matters more to him is the idea that success on the platform can be repeated. He said that, whether in relationships, friendships or work, lasting progress usually does not come from one giant leap. It comes from steady optimization and sustainable growth.
That is how he described MEXC’s internal creed: "one person improved at a time." If the company can help one person improve each day or each week, he said, that effect compounds over time.