Suspected cow return? How Bitget became the "elephant in the room"

Author: Kevin, Baihua Blockchain

Recently, the heated Bitcoin ecosystem and other sectors have caused many people to feel anxious, as the sound of a bull market seems to be faintly heard. Driven by expectations of a spot Bitcoin ETF, the market has recently entered a broad upward trend, with various concepts like MEME and BRC20 overwhelming people, making it seem like the market revival happened in an instant.

For ordinary users, the gradual warming of the market and the rapid rotation of hotspots undoubtedly brings both optimism and anxiety, especially regarding how to position themselves for the bull market in advance, which has become the most urgent demand for everyone at the end of the bear market and the beginning of the bull market.

A Platform at the Center of the Crypto Stage

For the vast majority of ordinary users, the feeling of missing out on money-making opportunities at the end of the bear market and the beginning of the bull market is undoubtedly the hardest to endure.

After all, whether from the perspective of time or energy, being able to timely sense potential tokens and quickly enter hot concepts has a relatively high threshold. So, to be honest, is there a simple way to efficiently position oneself in hotspots and seize opportunities with a low barrier to entry?

"Before the bull market arrives, brokers take the lead," this traditional financial market saying is also completely applicable to the crypto industry.

From historical experience, in the crypto industry, centralized exchanges (CEX) have always been the track that benefits the most from dividends and wealth aggregation effects, especially in the transition from bear to bull markets. Leading platforms, as the first entry point for blockchain traffic, are often among the most intense arenas for sensing market conditions and reshuffling:

They can leverage their essential and high-frequency advantages to be the first to position themselves in potentially explosive tracks and enjoy the dividends of the bull market through the wealth effect of leading tokens.

Taking the recent bear-to-bull transition cycle from 2020 to 2022 as an example, many of the innovative projects like COMP, LINK, and AAVE from the DeFi Summer, as well as the stellar performances of AXS and YGG during the subsequent GameFi boom, were actually early seeds that leading platforms had already positioned themselves in.

Therefore, for ordinary users, tracking the project layout trends of platforms, especially leading ones, is particularly crucial. Especially those rapidly rising platforms, which serve as significant indicators:

At the turning point of the bear-bull transition, the emergence of new hotspots often leads to user migration and reshuffling of the CEX landscape, so platforms that can rise quickly in this process inherently demonstrate high sensitivity and ability to discover hotspots.

Recent actions from some leading platforms reveal hints of the evolving CEX landscape:

First, last month, after Bitget pioneered the copy trading feature in 2020, which subsequently became a standard configuration for leading platforms, Binance also belatedly launched its contract copy trading feature;

Then this month, as the well-reviewed OKX Web3 wallet has been making strides with the BRC20 concept over the past six months, Binance announced the opening of its built-in Web3 wallet interface in its app.

The "Elephant in the Room" at Bitget

In the rapidly changing crypto industry, the changes in the CEX landscape often happen quickly and quietly, leading to a lag in people's understanding of the actual situation.

For example, many may not yet realize that, from a data perspective, Bitget has already squeezed into the top tier, becoming the "elephant in the room" of the platform track:

According to the latest data from Coinglass, the CME Bitcoin futures open interest is approximately $4.17 billion, ranking first, followed by Binance ($3.88 billion), Bybit ($2.63 billion), OKX ($1.79 billion), and Bitget ($1.15 billion) closely behind in fifth place.

From the overall performance of CEX in the third quarter, the spot trading volume was $1.33 trillion, and the derivatives trading volume was $4.8 trillion, representing declines of 22% and 23%, respectively. Notably, in September, the combined trading volume of CEX's spot and derivatives fell for the third consecutive month, decreasing by 20.3% to $1.67 trillion.

However, Bitget's market share actually increased by 0.77%, with a growth rate of 9.43%, making it one of the few CEX players maintaining an upward trend against the current market.

Additionally, it has been a year since the sudden collapse of FTX in early November 2022, and the overall landscape of the crypto industry and the CEX track has undergone some significant changes.

In particular, leading CEXs have successively launched proof of reserves, promoting further development of CEX transparency, which has, to some extent, reassured the market's trust in CEXs.

Bitget is also one of the first CEXs to launch proof of reserves, having completed 12 monthly updates. The latest reserve data shows that its reserve ratios for BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC are 426%, 141%, 117%, and 2556%, respectively, with a comprehensive reserve ratio of about 200%.

Bitget's Managing Director Gracy Chen stated, "A reserve ratio close to 200% means that for every $1 deposited by users, the platform reserves an additional $1, effectively ensuring the safety of users' assets." This is reportedly one of the highest reserve ratios among mainstream CEXs.

A Leading Approach of Speed Over Slowness

At the same time, as an easily overlooked "elephant in the room," Bitget's actions are not clumsy; rather, they leverage a strategy of speed over slowness to create a differentiated competitive advantage:

Over the past year, seasoned trading users have likely experienced this firsthand, whether it’s closely following popular narratives, quickly launching sections for MEME, L2, AI, BRC20 tokens, or positioning themselves early to capitalize on the wealth effect of launching BLUR. Bitget's performance has been quite impressive over the past year:

In the MEME section, BLUR, Bot section, AI section, ARB futures, SUI futures, ORDI, SATS, etc., during each trading hotspot rotation phase, they can quickly respond and offer options that allow Bitget users to enjoy early dividends.

This is indeed Bitget's greatest differentiated competitive advantage—deeply exploring those potential projects and being half a step ahead of other leading platforms to sift out early quality tokens from the community, providing users with early entry opportunities. Many users even joke, "On the day a major exchange lists, BG users profit."

This includes currently popular projects like GAS, Hifi, and GROK, which are also actively followed and positioned ahead of other platforms, capitalizing on their wealth effects.

"In the world of martial arts, nothing is unbreakable, only speed is unbreakable," Bitget should have a deep understanding of this, given its continuous actions and frequent leadership in trends since last year.

The Philosophy of Long-Termism

If you had 100 million yuan, would you dare to bet on Messi before the 2022 World Cup?

Bitget's answer was to sign him, spending nearly 100 million yuan to secure a two-year contract with Messi—Bitget made significant efforts through IMG, the world's largest sports event and entertainment public relations agency, to finally partner with Messi.

Looking back, compared to the returns from other leading platforms sponsoring major sports events, signing Messi before the 2022 World Cup was Bitget's "key move" in breaking into new circles, and the commercial value of this return goes without saying.

This seemingly "lucky" move by Bitget actually reflects its operational style: searching in advance and ambushing opportunities to maximize wealth effects, strategically positioning itself, which is another manifestation of the "long-termism" philosophy.

This can also be validated in the recent trend of copy trading in CEXs, though few know that Bitget was actually one of the earliest CEX players to create copy trading services and make it a distinctive feature of the industry.

Since the end of 2019, the Bitget team has developed the copy trading feature and decided to promote this product vigorously. In May of the following year, this feature was officially launched.

Currently, Bitget has over 110,000 copy trading experts and 520,000 copy trading users, achieving a total profit of $380 million for users.

Additionally, Bitget Launchpad, as a platform under Bitget for launching popular and quality crypto projects, has already uncovered several high-quality projects for users.

According to CryptoRank, Bitget ranks first in the ATH Average ROI of the top ten platform LaunchPads in 2023.

Overall, everyone needs more certainty, whether it’s narratives like ORDI and SATS in the new Bitcoin ecosystem or the rotation of hotspots in AI concepts and Bot concepts. Those who can respond quickly and provide a smooth value-added experience will attract the largest user traffic.

One hand grasps popular narratives to ensure users' trading needs; the other hand grasps potential projects to provide users with wealth effects. This aligns closely with Bitget's long-term vision and is also an indispensable core service demand for ordinary crypto users in the current market environment.

As a path to rise that has been validated by past leading platforms, Bitget's core secret to becoming a leading CEX player over the past year lies here. Therefore, in such a market atmosphere, discussing previous "XX big" rankings has little significance.

The mutual competition exists only in the wealth effects and reputation gained by users. A new cycle is about to begin, and at the turning point from bear to bull, platforms and users are destined to complement each other:

Platforms that can truly benefit users will naturally be pushed to the forefront by them.