Bitget Asks What’s in Your Crypto

If it doesn’t offer the flexibility of working with either a DEX or CEX, then maybe it’s time to look for a new one.
In the ongoing debate over the merits of centralized versus decentralized exchanges, one crucial factor often overlooked is the pivotal role of the wallet. That factor, though, has been of keen interest lately to centralized exchange Bitget. The global platform, a leading spot and futures crypto exchange with an emphasis on copy trading, now offers three wallet options: a custodian wallet to trade on a CEX, another to self-custody with the seed phrase stored on a CEX and the last to trade on a fully decentralized environment with dapp functionalities.
The CEX and DEX dichotomy has been around for a considerable time. What’s new, however, is the recently launched Bitget Web3 Wallet, featuring in-app self-custody. This innovation is intended to complement the previously introduced Bitget Wallet, formerly BitKeep, for DEX traders who want to have access to their tokens freely and simultaneously enjoy the benefits of being a part of the centralized system with upgraded security and being able to retrieve your wallet even when you don’t have the seed phrase.
Web3 wallet bridging DeFi and CeFi
Bitget Web3 Wallet supports centralized trading by seamlessly facilitating self-custody. This distinctive feature eliminates the need for a seed phrase, that seemingly random sequence of words that stores the critical data needed to access or recover crypto wallets.
On the flip side, Bitget Wallet supports dapp trading by empowering users to safeguard their distinctive seed phrases. This marks a fundamental departure from Bitget Web3 Wallet's approach. Bitget Wallet, incidentally, is already among the top 4 most installed wallets on Android and iOS, serving 12 million users.
Bitget Wallet offers an upgraded Maximum Extractable Value protection (MEV) feature, providing a safer and more convenient on-chain trading experience. This feature, developed in conjunction with Flashbots, is enabled by default on Bitget Swap, the wallet's integrated swap function. MEV attacks occur when malicious actors manipulate and rearrange orders within a block, creating opportunities for illicit value generation by forcing other users to incur losses. Through this partnership, Bitget Wallet and Flashbots aim to jointly mitigate the negative consequences of MEV on the market, heighten overall transaction security, protect users from malicious actors, optimize transaction fees, avoid unnecessary costs and propel the Ethereum ecosystem towards fairness and sustainable growth for all users.
It might seem odd for a CEX to introduce a DeFi wallet before a CeFi one, but there is some history there. First of all, Bitget Wallet arrived via acquisition in April 2023. The wallet's acquisition circumvented Bitget's development pipeline, so it spared the Bitget team from any associated burdens. (It did, however, cost the organization $30 million.) Second, the product was brought into the Bitget fold to offer its users asset management services and native storage. It also provides Bitget traders entry into Uniswap, PancakeSwap and other leading DEXes.
More recently, Bitget Wallet expanded its Quick Buy service to include fiat support for the euro, the Russian ruble and the Japanese yen. These enhancements streamline the user experience and fortify the onboarding process into Web3, effectively dismantling entry barriers and ushering in a more accessible and seamless journey for users.
Another major update of Bitget Wallet, zkLink recently announced integrated support for the product. zkLink facilitates interoperability across layer1 and layer2 blockchains, utilizing multi-chain ZK-Rollup technology to streamline cross-chain and cross-rollup interactions. Following the Bitget Wallet integration, users can easily access zkLink’s suite of official ecosystem dapps via the Bitget Wallet browser extension. Users may also now engage in spot and perpetual contract trading over a wide diversity of blockchains from their Bitget Wallet.
"Integrating Web3 services into our CEX platform marks a significant milestone for Bitget. By offering users the freedom to access various DeFi services alongside the convenience and security of our CeFi platform, we are empowering them with a unique experience,” says Gracy Chen, managing director of Bitget.”Bitget aims to provide a comprehensive ecosystem that caters to the evolving needs of our users, all while maintaining the highest standards of security and reliability."
Chen further referred to Bitget’s vision and mission statements: “We believe in a more equitable future world driven by crypto evolution,” she says. “We empower the future of finance by ensuring secure, efficient and smart digital transactions.”
In the wake of FTX’s collapse, the entire crypto industry has been moving from CeFi to DeFi, and the recent news out of Binance is only likely to accelerate that move. It won’t, however, encourage a rash of legacy CEXes to transform into pure DEXes. A hybrid balance is in order so that community members are empowered while responsible practices are enforced. Chen’s team sees Bitget’s roadmap as an exponent of that trend.