Bitget CEO Gracy Chen aims to enter the U.S. market in 2027, with or without the CLARITY Act

Bitget still has plans to enter the U.S. market by 2027, despite the recent stalling of legislation that would have set down clearer rules for cryptocurrencies and digital assets, CEO Gracy Chen tells Fortune.

“With or without the CLARITY Act , entering the U.S. market is part of our company’s long-term strategy,” Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, the world’s sixth-largest crypto exchange by trading volume, tells Fortune. “We are heading towards it, little by little.”

Hopes to pass the CLARITY Act died last month, following concerns by U.S. Senate Democrats over potential conflicts-of-interest, specifically that President Donald Trump and other senior government officials may stand to profit via personal cryptocurrency ventures . The CLARITY Act failed to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a Senate filibuster.

Still, in Chen’s view, the CLARITY Act’s failure doesn’t undermine an increasingly crypto-friendly regime in the U.S. “Since early 2025, the general vibe around crypto regulation [in the U.S.] has been much more friendly,” she says.

Bitget plans to launch a U.S. website next year, with a small local team already applying for licenses. Chen travels to the U.S. roughly quarterly to meet regulators and partners.

“It’s a market that I think has long-term value,” she explains. “Short-term, I’m aware that we need to invest a lot. We’re not rushing ourselves—we have our pace.”

The expansion push comes as Bitget is still rebuilding trust after the September hack, in which hackers stole nearly $388 million from the exchange through vulnerabilities in third-party products. It’s the largest hack in the crypto industry by far this year.

“Some users decided to leave the platform. It’s not a big number—it’s not significant—but they’re people that I want to win back,” Chen says. “Asset security is their number one concern.”

The exchange has since rebuilt and revoked all the credentials involved in the incident, reviewed the third-party vulnerabilities that let the hackers in, and shared incident details with outside investigators, including Mandiant and SlowMist, so the industry can learn from the attack. It is also leaning on AI in its cybersecurity work .

“Human beings have a limit: we get tired and we need to sleep,” Chen argues. “But AI can read code more easily and at a larger scale… so we’re using it in our monitoring, and in our defenses against fraud and money laundering.”

The CEO is also putting boots on the ground to assuage her clients’ fears. “The incident is something that [our users have] brought up a lot,” Chen admits. “This afternoon, right after this interview, I’m going to visit an institutional client at their office—hopefully, we can clear those concerns.”