Gracy Chen Is the CEO Wherever She Goes

Two weeks ago, Bitget, one of the biggest crypto exchanges by both volume and reputation, lost $388 million. Well, not so much “lost” as had it stolen.

CNBC. Fortune. The Financial Times. They all wanted to talk to Gracy Chen, BitGet’s 35-year-old CEO, who just so happens to be the only woman leading a major crypto exchange.

Gracy Chen was back in the spotlight.

Chen has never not been at the center of things. Technically, she was an only child, a circumstance that usually guarantees parental attention because there’s nowhere else for it to go. But her parents divorced and each remarried, and she became the eldest of a small tribe of step-siblings and half-siblings. Chen took charge. Nobody appointed her. Like many eldest siblings, she understood that someone needed to be the example, and it was going to be her.

In her youth, Chen drew inspiration from the Chinese mathematician Hua Luogeng and from the TV anchor Yang Lan, often called China’s Oprah Winfrey. A few teachers made math questions “quite fun rather than hard.” Every time she solved a problem, she felt a sense of achievement, and she calls the process “mathematical beauty.” She put it to use as a teenager at the National Olympics Mathematical Games in China. She won.

Math and the spotlight became her twin pursuits. Chen’s first real job was as a TV anchor and producer at Phoenix TV, where she covered technology and finance. This was around 2014, and she interviewed founders early on, including ByteDance’s, when the company was at roughly Series B. A friend from her TV circle suggested she look into Bitcoin.

“I saw again the mathematical beauty out of the nine pages of very delicate and simple yet powerful Bitcoin white paper. I bought my first Bitcoin after that.”

She left the TV station for startups and fintech, landing her first and only crypto job in 2022: managing director, and later CEO, of Bitget.

When Chen became CEO in 2024, she was the only woman leading a top crypto exchange. The numbers may not add up like a typical equation, but she doesn’t see that as a disadvantage. “I don’t think it’s that different being a female CEO or a male CEO. For me, it’s just doing your job, increasing the company’s partnership influence, and heading in the right direction.”

She’d seen other women come before her, such as Catherine Coley, who was appointed CEO of Binance U.S. in 2019, and Hong Fang, who was CEO of Okcoin is now a senior partner at OKX. 

Over the past couple of years, she said, more women have reached the top tier. Yi He became co-CEO of Binance in December 2025. Helen Liu was co-CEO of Bybit before stepping down in April. Chen estimated that women make up about 40% of Bitget’s management, though she hadn’t checked recently. 

Being a woman in a male-heavy field brought the spotlight back to Chen. “Because this space has more male CEOs, being a female CEO actually gives you more exposure or more visibility,” she said.

She was often the only woman on panels. She got used to it, she recalled, then came to see it as a strength, even a privilege. “I joke about that, but the important thing is our company is growing fast, and because of that, I get to sit in very important panels or conversations.” That makes her, as an individual, more influential.

Because Chen entered crypto in 2022, she missed the 2017–18 craze for initial coin offerings (ICOs). In hindsight, that was another advantage.

“I came into the space with a mindset that there will be gradually a lot more collaboration between the crypto world and the TradFi world,” she said. At its peak this year, about 40% of Bitget’s total volume came from non-crypto assets, which she called “quite magical.”

Some friends who entered during the ICO era hoped the same growth and hype would return. It won’t, she said. “This world is not about speculation. It’s not about some altcoin hypes. As an altcoin, you have to have a strong user base and a serious business model that can be sustainable.” Circle, she noted, pursued an IPO rather than an ICO. Very few altcoins now outperform Bitcoin, she said, and even venture capitalists focused on web3 find it hard to pick winners.

Some friends who entered during the ICO era hoped the same growth and hype would return. It won’t, she said. “This world is not about speculation.”

But the pace of the space remains unchanged. When Bitget was hit by the hack, she pulled from a reservoir of practices to keep herself grounded:  yoga, meditation, Pilates, and musicals, which she watches with her son. “I’ve even tried performing some of them,” she said. Her favorites are Chicago, Moulin Rouge!, Hamilton, and The Book of Mormon.

Those pauses keep her calm as serious issues and everyday decisions arise. She makes hard calls sometimes on gut feeling, other times on rational analysis or group discussion.

It’s similar at home, where the one-time only child is raising an only child of her own. But her hard calls there rarely rely on rational argument. Kids aren’t that rational, so she has to find a way to explain a decision her son will understand and accept, a skill she thinks carries over to leading a company.

Chen treats the family as a project. As a single mother, she relies on her parents and an at-home helper. “I think of them as different team members who can drive different things," she said. "In my home, I think I’m still the CEO.”