Bitget Puts Its CEO Inside an AI
Bitget, the world's sixth-largest crypto exchange by market share, launched Gracy AI on February 11, the first animated digital human in the crypto industry. The AI avatar is modeled after Bitget CEO Gracy Chen and is designed to hold one-on-one conversations with users about market cycles, trading strategy, career decisions, and long-term mindset.
Unlike traditional chatbots that spit out price alerts or execute trades, Gracy AI positions itself as a strategic advisor. Users can talk through portfolio thinking, ask about navigating bear markets, or discuss broader career questions in crypto, all filtered through the decision-making framework of the CEO who scaled Bitget from 20 million to over 125 million users in under two years.
The launch comes as crypto exchanges race to differentiate through AI. Crypto.com's CEO dropped $70 million on AI.com during the Super Bowl. Coinbase built agentic wallets that let AI agents trade autonomously. Bitget's play is different: instead of replacing the human, it's digitizing one.
Why a CEO Avatar Is Not Just a Gimmick
The concept sounds like a marketing stunt, but the timing and context tell a more nuanced story. Bitget posted a 45.5% year-over-year growth rate in trading volume for 2025, recorded $8.17 trillion in annual derivatives volume, and now serves users across 168 countries. At that scale, personal touch disappears. Gracy AI is Bitget's answer to a fundamental problem: how do you make 125 million users feel like they have access to leadership thinking?
Gracy Chen is not a typical exchange CEO. She is the only woman leading a top-10 global crypto exchange, was named among the top 10 women in Web3 and AI, and has been vocal about Bitget's evolution from a pure crypto exchange into what the company calls a "Universal Exchange," a platform spanning crypto, equities, ETFs, forex, gold, and real-world assets.
The avatar captures that breadth. Rather than limiting conversations to "should I buy BTC," Gracy AI is built to discuss macro strategy, how traditional finance convergence affects crypto portfolios, and why certain market structures repeat across cycles. It is advisory, not transactional.
How Gracy AI Fits Into Bitget's AI Stack
Gracy AI is not Bitget's first AI product. It sits on top of an increasingly layered stack:
GetAgent launched in September 2025 as a chat-based AI trading assistant. It handles real-time market analysis, personalized portfolio recommendations, and in-chat trade execution. GetAgent supports natural language queries like "What's trending today?" or "Buy $1,000 USDT of ETH," and it continuously learns from user trading history.
AI Trading Avatars arrived in late 2025, with six distinct personalities covering seven trading strategies: conservative hedging, momentum trading, altcoin breakout, trend following, grid arbitrage, sentiment reversal, and mechanical execution. These avatars trade live accounts, and users can one-click copy their strategies.
Gracy AI sits above both. It is not designed to execute trades or run automated strategies. Instead, it occupies the "why" layer, helping users think through the reasoning behind their decisions rather than just automating the decisions themselves.
This three-tier structure mirrors what traditional finance firms have done for decades: execution tools at the bottom, strategy engines in the middle, and advisory relationships at the top. The difference is that Bitget is trying to scale the advisory layer to 125 million users through AI.
What This Means for Exchange Users
For Bitget's existing user base, the practical impact depends on how deeply the AI captures Chen's actual thinking versus generic financial advice wrapped in a personality. The promotional framing, "talk through market cycles, strategy, career questions, and mindset," suggests something closer to a mentorship simulator than a trading tool.
The more interesting signal is competitive. If Gracy AI gains traction, expect other exchanges to follow. Binance has Changpeng Zhao's massive personal brand. OKX has Star Xu, who recently drew a hard line between DEX self-custody and CEX compliance. Kraken, Coinbase, and Bybit all have recognizable leadership. Turning those personalities into AI conversational tools is a logical next step.
For users of crypto cards and spending products, this development matters because it signals how exchanges are thinking about engagement beyond trading. Bitget already offers two card products: the Bitget Card (Visa debit with up to 8% BGB cashback) and the Bitget Wallet Card (Mastercard prepaid with DCS integration). An AI advisor that helps users think about spending strategy, cashback optimization, and portfolio allocation could eventually bridge the gap between exchange accounts and everyday crypto spending.
The Bigger Picture: AI Personalities as Competitive Moats
The crypto exchange market has largely commoditized. Most major platforms offer similar trading pairs, similar fee structures, and similar derivative products. The differentiators have shifted to ecosystem: who has the best wallet, the best card, the best DeFi integration, and now, the best AI.
Bitget's bet is that personality-driven AI creates stickier engagement than pure functionality. A user who builds a relationship with Gracy AI, even knowing it is artificial, has one more reason to stay on Bitget rather than migrating to a competitor with marginally lower fees.
This follows a broader pattern in tech. Character.AI proved that millions of users will engage deeply with AI personalities. OpenAI's custom GPTs showed that branded AI agents drive retention. Bitget is applying the same logic to financial services, where trust and perceived expertise matter far more than entertainment.
The risk is equally clear. If the AI gives bad advice during a market crash, or if its responses feel hollow, the backlash will be immediate and viral. Digitizing a real CEO's persona means every misstep reflects on the actual person, not just the product.
Chen herself has acknowledged the stakes. In a recent interview with Blockzeit, she described 2026 as a year of "structural shift" in digital assets, where capital flows through unified platforms regardless of whether the underlying asset is crypto or traditional. Gracy AI is built to explain that thesis to anyone willing to ask.
FAQ
What is Gracy AI? Gracy AI is Bitget's animated digital human, modeled after CEO Gracy Chen, that offers one-on-one conversational interactions about market strategy, crypto cycles, career decisions, and investing mindset.
Is Gracy AI the same as Bitget's GetAgent? No. GetAgent is a trading assistant that executes trades and provides real-time market analysis. Gracy AI focuses on strategic conversations and advisory thinking rather than trade execution.
Can Gracy AI execute trades? Gracy AI is designed for strategic discussions, not direct trade execution. For automated trading, Bitget offers GetAgent and its AI Trading Avatars with seven distinct strategies.
How many users does Bitget have? Bitget serves over 125 million users across 168 countries as of early 2026, making it the sixth-largest crypto exchange by global market share.
Overview
Bitget launched Gracy AI on February 11, 2026, introducing what it calls the first animated digital human in crypto. The AI avatar is modeled after CEO Gracy Chen and offers strategic conversations about market cycles, portfolio thinking, and career development rather than direct trade execution. The product sits atop Bitget's existing AI stack, which includes GetAgent for trading assistance and six AI Trading Avatars for copy trading. With 125 million users and $8.17 trillion in 2025 derivatives volume, Bitget is betting that personality-driven AI becomes the next competitive moat for crypto exchanges. Whether this proves to be genuine innovation or sophisticated marketing will depend on how well the AI captures real strategic thinking during volatile markets.
Recommended Reading
- Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek Drops $70 Million on AI.com and Launches an AI Agent Platform During the Super Bowl
- Coinbase Launches Agentic Wallets, Giving AI Agents Autonomous Crypto Spending and Trading on Base
- Bitget and BlockSec Release the UEX Security Standard, Setting a New Benchmark for Asset Protection Across Crypto and TradFi
