Exclusive Interview with BIT Group Co-Founder and CCO Cynthia Wu | From Matrixport to BIT, the Ambition for the "Next 10x Users" Behind This Brand Upgrade

Matrixport has officially rebranded to BIT Group, and its co-founder Cynthia Wu revealed the strategic ambitions behind this move in an exclusive interview. (Context: Bitcoin trading volume has plummeted! Matrixport: The crypto market is being tested by a "volume-less bear market") (Background: Matrixport analysis: Crypto options volume cut in half! No longer dominating price trends, the market is turning cautious) Cynthia Wu, co-founder and CCO of BIT Group, has a career spanning both traditional finance and digital assets. She previously worked at HKEX, where she was responsible for product design and institutional sales of commodity derivatives. Later, she served as Investment Director at Bitmain and co-founded Matrixport in 2019. Founded in 2019, Matrixport was co-founded by Jihan Wu, co-founder and former CEO of Bitmain. As a crypto financial services platform, it has long focused on the digital asset space. Over the past 7 years, Matrixport has built a diverse product matrix: the institutional-grade custody brand Cactus Custody, crypto asset management (including structured products), block trading, traditional assets (US Treasuries, gold, silver, US stocks), and liquidity and financing services. In the Asian market, it is often regarded as one of the "representative institutional-grade crypto financial services groups" that has weathered multiple market cycles. In 2024, Matrixport officially upgraded its brand to "BIT." But why change a brand that has been in use for 7 years at this time? How will BIT's business landscape develop in the future? This interview provides the answers. Behind this brand upgrade, it is worth reviewing the three stages of BIT Group executive Cynthia Wu's career. Her first full-time job was as a floor trader for commodities in Hong Kong. After more than 4 years of commodity trading, she joined HKEX as an "early member" when the exchange began its acquisition and investment in commodities, spending another 6 years on product design and institutional sales of commodity derivatives. "There is no wasted path in life; every experience settles into a new understanding," she says. What really made her rethink the future of the financial industry was her experience after coming into contact with the digital asset market in 2017. With a deeper understanding of blockchain technology and digital assets, she gradually realized that digital assets are not just a new asset class; the underlying technology and market mechanisms could also bring new changes to financial infrastructure and market operations. Regarding the driving force behind joining the crypto industry, Cynthia mentioned, "At that time, I felt both a pull factor and a push factor, so the decision was not difficult to make." In 2018, Cynthia joined Bitmain's investment department. At that time, digital asset financial services were still in their early stages, and industry infrastructure mainly revolved around trading, wallets, and mining. This experience made her realize that there was still significant room for development in digital asset financial services, laying the foundation for her later participation in founding Matrixport. On the path of entrepreneurship, why one starts a business and what opportunities were seen in the past are very important. Therefore, before diving deep into the BIT brand upgrade, it is necessary to understand Matrixport's original intention and the background at the time of its founding. Thus, we first asked Cynthia the following questions: "What platform did you use to buy crypto for the first time in 2017? What was your experience with that platform, and how did it influence the design of Matrixport?" "I used an early fiat trading platform at the time. The industry was still in its early stages, and there was a lot of room for improvement in product experience and financial service capabilities." More importantly, these experiences led her and her co-founders to clearly decide on day one not to build an exchange: "After all, there were already several mature exchanges in the Chinese community at that time. We felt that the way most people would interact with crypto assets in the future would be more like banks or brokerages today. You have an app, an interface, and most of your financial needs can be met there." She then clarified the product architecture: "The future appearance of a financial platform is nothing more than having a place to store (custody), a place to buy and sell (providing liquidity, OTC, flash swaps), wealth management (long-term asset appreciation), and perhaps payments. We thought at the time: isn't this just 'deposit, loan, remittance, and investment' in the traditional financial world?" Moreover, they saw the long-term direction of RWA from Day 1: "Crypto-native assets are just the beginning. In the future, through tokenization, many off-chain assets can be brought on-chain. This app doesn't necessarily just serve crypto-natives; it can serve a