Bitget Marks 5 Years in Business by Looking Forward to the Next 5 – and Beyond

The steadily growing CEX known for copy trading looks to expand its presence amidst a bear market.

In 2018, the year Bitget launched, at least 23 other exchanges failed. The next year, that figure was 252, then 2020’s figure exceeded that. After that came FTX’s implosion. It’s no accident then that Bitget is still in business and is, in fact, thriving.

“In retrospect, 2018 marked the rise of Ethereum and the dawn of a cryptocurrency frenzy,” Bitget Managing Director Gracy Chen wrote in a letter to employees. “However, as crypto prices plummeted, most speculators fled, leaving only a resilient 10% still holding their ground. It was during this pivotal moment that Bitget emerged. We envisioned a crypto revolution that will reform the way finance works and people invest forever, creating a more equitable future.”

Bitget can be overlooked in the centralized exchange market. Binance – which is only one year older – casts a huge shadow. But by any number of metrics, Bitget has achieved a rarified level of operational excellence, earning the right to be seen and heard.

Expanding from a core competency

Historically – we can use that word at this point – Bitget’s focus has been at the intersection of four vectors:

• Copy trading
• Futures trading
• Asia
• Generation Z

This has proven not only to be a successful bedrock for the platform, but also a litany of opportunities to springboard into. While copy trading, a beginner-centric marketing approach and a particular appeal to younger investors remain hallmarks of Bitget’s recent strategy, the exchange’s expansion is marked by its embrace of spot trading.

Going beyond futures, Bitget is expanding the variety of digital assets in its spot market. It is now one of the top 10 spot trading platforms according to Coingecko, with more than 670 trading pairs. Among that top 10, Bitget ranks second in the number of coins listed.

Bitget constantly introduces different innovative “trading zones” in the spot market to help investors recognize trending sectors and make faster trading decisions. These include zones for AI coins, Arbitrum coins, Hong Kong-related coins and NFTs. It also launched its Innovation Zone to support more promising coins that are still in early stages. And just this past February, Bitget re-launched its token sale launchpad platform. Bitget has already helped with launching six early-stage projects, one of which has hit a 200x return in the first week of its listing.

Bitget’s native token, BGB, is among those traded assets with outsized success in the spot market. BGB launched around for about a year and had consistently trended higher. Then a surge in February doubled its value, almost all of which has stuck.

From past to future

Even so, Bitget’s reputation in futures and other derivatives is well-earned. Tellingly, Bitget was the only major exchange where monthly derivatives volume increased in the six months following FTX’s collapse.

That’s because it had a track record of successful innovation. Bitget launched the first USDT-margined futures product, which is more user-friendly for beginners and doesn't require investors to hold corresponding coins. Bitget followed that up with the first USDC-margined futures through a partnership with Circle. According to the Boston Consulting Group, Bitget ranks as the world’s third-largest crypto derivative exchange with a reported 11% market share in 2022. The upward trend persists as Bitget experienced the most significant market share growth in the derivative sector, surging by 1.58% in August 2023, as reported by CCdata.

As reported previously in this space, Bitget has a strong interest in younger traders, who themselves have a strong interest in copy trading. That’s where Bitget developed special expertise.

In copy trading, investors replicate the activities of professional traders, adopting the same positions as the experts they are copying. Transactions can be executed automatically and instantaneously.

It seems to work in most cases. According to a Bitget report, 93% of copy traders involved in futures trading and 82% involved in spot trading achieved profitability. They not only make money, they save time. The report states that copy trading reduces time spent on the exchange by 23%.

The worldwide appeal of copy trading will inevitably – and probably very quickly – realign Bitget’s one-time geographic focus on Asia. The report suggests that western Europe accounts for almost one-third of all copy traders, with African users showing the most interest.

Wherever these users are, they tend to have one thing in common: youth. Gen Z accounts for 44% of all copy trading operations.

“From pioneering copy trading services and educational programs tailored for Gen Z users to setting the highest security standards in the industry and the insightful market reports from our think tank, we've become a multifaceted force for progress,” Chen wrote in her letter. “We take immense pride in witnessing our initiatives embraced by other industry players. Today, we stand at the forefront of innovation, shaping the future of the cryptocurrency landscape.”

Growing like a tree

The traditional gift for a fifth anniversary is made from wood. It symbolizes strength and wisdom, and Bitget has shown both. It also symbolizes forgiveness, which such a successful exchange as Bitget shouldn’t require. Still, there are a lot of failed trading platforms out there, and billions of investors’ dollars shredded into confetti as a result. These investors would be forgiven for taking the rest of their money out of cryptocurrency for good. But they didn’t do that. They forgave the blockchain community at large, because they knew they could rely on surviving CEXes to not make the same mistakes.

In Chen’s letter, she described Bitget’s growth as “the marathon runner's approach”. Maybe that’s a different metaphor for the same virtues. In the fast-paced crypto space, perhaps what Bitget has that many other CEXes lack is the patience to grow like a tree.