Bitget still has plans to enter the U.S. market by 2027, despite the recent stalling of legislation that would have set down clearer rules for cryptocurrencies and digital assets, CEO Gracy Chen tells Fortune.
“With or without the CLARITY Act, entering the U.S. market is part of our company’s long-term strategy,” Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, the world’s sixth-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, tells Fortune. “We are heading towards it, little by little.”
Hopes to pass the CLARITY Act died last month, following concerns by U.S. Senate Democrats over potential conflicts-of-interest, specifically that President Donald Trump and other senior government officials may stand to profit via personal cryptocurrency ventures. The CLARITY Act failed to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.
Still, in Chen’s view, the CLARITY Act’s failure doesn’t undermine an increasingly crypto-friendly regime in the U.S. “Since early 2025, the general vibe around crypto regulation [in the U.S.] has been much more friendly,” she says.
Bitget plans to launch a U.S. website next year, with a small local team already applying for licenses. Chen travels to the U.S. roughly quarterly to meet regulators and partners.
“It’s a market that I think has long-term value,” she explains. “Short-term, I’m aware that we need to invest a lot. We’re not rushing ourselves—we have our pace.”
Recovering from a $388 million hack
The expansion push comes as Bitget is still rebuilding trust after the September hack, in which hackers stole nearly $388 million from the exchange through vulnerabilities in third-party products. It’s the largest hack in the crypto industry by far this year.
“Some users decided to leave the platform. It’s not a big number—it’s not significant—but they’re people that I want to win back,” Chen says. “Asset security is their number one concern.”
The exchange has since rebuilt and revoked all the credentials involved in the incident, reviewed the third-party vulnerabilities that let the hackers in, and shared incident details with outside investigators, including Mandiant and SlowMist, so the industry can learn from the attack. It is also leaning on AI in its cybersecurity work.
“Human beings have a limit: we get tired and we need to sleep,” Chen argues. “But AI can read code more easily and at a larger scale… so we’re using it in our monitoring, and in our defenses against fraud and money laundering.”
The CEO is also putting boots on the ground to assuage her clients’ fears. “The incident is something that [our users have] brought up a lot,” Chen admits. “This afternoon, right after this interview, I’m going to visit an institutional client at their office—hopefully, we can clear those concerns.”
She acknowledges that the crypto industry as a whole remains “very targeted by hackers”, but says the recent accident reaffirmed her view that exchanges have to learn to protect users from financial losses in the event of a potential breach.
Bitget launched a protection fund in 2022 to safeguard user assets against extreme market events or security breaches not caused by user misconduct. The exchange drew on the fund after the hack to cover compromised wallets, then topped it back up using more than $300 million from its own reserves.
“I’m sad that we needed to use it, but I’m so glad that we had this protection fund, to assure users that a hack like this can be totally borne by the platform,” she says.
Thailand next, then an IPO
The recent hack hasn’t stopped Bitget in its tracks. On Oct. 20, the exchange announced it would be entering Thailand via a planned acquisition of Bangkok-based digital asset exchange GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics, and Chen says it’s also eyeing other Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia and Vietnam.
“Many jurisdictions in Southeast Asia have rolled out crypto-related regulations 2025 and 2026,” she says. “For Asia in general, if there are good licensing schemes and partners, we’re interested in at least having a chat.”
Still, she’s not interested in either Singapore or Hong Kong, two Asian financial centers that have tried at times to win over crypto companies. “Singapore is a relatively small market, and compliance cost is pretty high,” Chen says.
Chen is also looking to take Bitget public, with an IPO planned within the next five years.
“I would say tian shi, di li, ren he,” Chen concludes, citing a Chinese idiom for the right timing, the right place, and the right people. “We need good conditions and a crypto-friendly environment in order to function.”