Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the exchange will enter the US market whether or not Congress passes the CLARITY Act, telling The Block’s Gareth Jenkinson on The Starting Block podcast on July 21, 2026, Tuesday.
Reviving a Shelved Plan
Bitget, currently registered in the Seychelles, first considered a US entity in 2022 before shelving the plan after FTX’s collapse and what Chen described as the unfriendly regulatory environment that followed under the Biden administration.
The Bitget CEO said she is now personally leading the revived effort, telling The Block: “We’ve stayed away from the US market pretty much since day one.”
The company plans to secure money-transmitter, derivatives, and broker-dealer approvals before launching any services, operating through an independent US-based entity separate from its offshore platform. “I want to enter the US market in the proper way by getting all these licenses and setting up an individual, independent US-based entity,” Chen said.
The approach mirrors Bitget’s broader push for local licensing elsewhere. Bitget EU submitted a MiCAR application to Austria’s Financial Market Authority in early July, and the company has expanded registrations in markets including Argentina.
Separately, on July 22, the exchange confirmed it is not licensed or supervised by Singapore’s Monetary Authority and continues to treat Singapore as a restricted market it does not target.
Tokenized Stocks Are Central to the US Pitch
Chen said Bitget has held talks with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq about distributing tokenized versions of traditional assets, describing the exchanges as potential partners rather than competitors.
“At least at this point, we are more collaborators,” she said. “We need to do this together with NYSE, Nasdaq, together with a lot of RWA issuance providers, as well as broker-dealer license providers in the US.”
Traditional assets made up between 20% and 30% of Bitget’s spot trading volume last quarter, 52% of users now hold both crypto and stocks, and the exchange’s tokenized-stock products have accumulated more than $100 million in assets since launching last month, according to Chen.
Moreover, Bitget has brought more than 100 tokenized US stocks into a unified margin system alongside over 370 eligible assets, with its Reality platform offering 1:1-backed tokenized equities and ETFs, some usable as trading collateral.
Readers interested in the regulatory backdrop for this kind of product can find context in our coverage of the CLARITY Act.
Where the CLARITY Act Stands
Chen said she has grown more pessimistic about the CLARITY Act passing before the midterm elections, even as the bill cleared a significant hurdle this week.
President Trump agreed to ethics language intended to restrict how government officials profit from digital assets while in office, resolving a dispute tied largely to Trump’s own crypto ventures that had stalled negotiations.
An updated bill text is expected soon and could set up a Senate vote before lawmakers leave Washington in early August, though the Senate still needs enough Democratic support to reach the 60-vote threshold, and revised text had not been publicly released as of July 22.
The House has already passed its own version, and any differences between House and Senate text would still need to be resolved before final passage.
Chen said this uncertainty won’t determine whether Bitget enters the US, though clearer federal rules could simplify parts of the licensing process. “Everything needs to be ready before we ship anything,” she said.
What Comes Next
Bitget has not announced a specific US launch date, and Chen’s comments signal the company has moved from considering entry to actively preparing for the licensing process itself.
What this means for you: US access to Bitget’s services will depend on the specific approvals the company secures, money-transmitter, derivatives, and broker-dealer licenses among them, so the structure and availability of any eventual US offering may differ meaningfully from what the exchange offers on its existing offshore platform.
Disclosure: The author trades primarily on Bitget, is an affiliate of the Bitget Builders Program, and a completer of the Blockchain4Youth Learning Hub program.
