Dialogue with Bitget Wallet CEO: The wallet is not the entrance, and the moat is a false proposition

From an Internet entrepreneur to the helmsman of a Web3 enterprise,Bitget Wallet CEO Karry's career trajectory reflects the development of China's Internet industry.

After experiencing the PC Internet and mobile Internet, why did this veteran with 15 years of experience in the Internet industry finally choose to join the Web3 track? In the fiercely competitive encrypted wallet track, how did Karry lead Bitget Wallet to break through?

In this in-depth conversation, Karry shared his career journey, contributed a lot of in-depth thoughts on the industry and products, and systematically explained the strategic thinking behind the Bitget Wallet brand upgrade for the first time. The vision of "Crypto for Everyone" is based on a deep judgment of user needs and industry trends. He believes that truly future-oriented Web3 products are not complex tools that serve a few people, but should be part of everyone's daily life.

Highlights of the conversation

The core of the founder's mentality is not to complain. You are the founder. Anyone can complain about the bad market, bad team, and bad product, but the founder cannot complain. The founder is the root cause of all problems.

There is no such thing as globalization, only localization. The core of localization is to use local people to do local things.

Don’t label your product with a definition like “I want to be minimalist” or “I want to be restrained.” Complexity does not lie in the number of functions, but in whether it disturbs the user.

A good product should return to the level of user needs, allowing users to find what they want and use the product intuitively, rather than defining the quality of the product by simplicity or complexity.

In terms of liquidity, the blurring of the boundaries between on-chain and centralized exchanges is a major trend.

The so-called "ticket" or "moat" is actually a subjective imagination. Once you think of the so-called "ticket" or "moat", you are actually asking yourself: Can you lie flat? I think this industry is still in its early stages, including the entire mobile Internet industry, and there is no possibility of lying flat. If Douyin lies flat, WeChat Video Account will rise rapidly; if Meituan relaxes, JD.com will enter the food delivery field. No one dares to let down their guard. Once you relax, you will fall behind, even the biggest companies are the same.

The following is the full text, with some edited and abridged content:

Internet veterans enter Web3

Xiaobai Navigation Coderworld: Karry, please introduce yourself. How did you get into the Crypto industry?

Karry:

Hello everyone, I am Karry, CEO of Bitget Wallet.

Since graduation, I have been focusing on the Internet field. From 2012 to 2019, I started a series of businesses in the mobile Internet industry. I have also served as a product manager in major Internet companies.

As early as when I was starting my business, I had been exposed to the field of cryptocurrency, but I didn't get deeply involved. It wasn't until the DeFi Summer of 2021 that I began to pay serious attention to the Web3 industry. In the second half of 2021, I received an invitation from the founder of BitKeep (later upgraded to Bitget Wallet) to serve as a product consultant. After he left in 2022, I took over as CEO and have been responsible for the development of Bitget Wallet ever since.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: Your career has always revolved around the Internet. In your opinion, what are the main differences between traditional mobile Internet and the web3 industry?

Karry:

My experience at ByteDance in 2020 gave me a deep understanding of how big companies operate. At that time, big Internet companies had already developed very maturely and had a complete support system, including professional data, growth, business analysis and other departments. Each business operated within a strict framework, with clear evaluation criteria and time nodes.Although this highly standardized management method brings efficiency, it also limits the space for innovation to some extent.

At that time, the Internet industry had become a battlefield of competition among large companies.ByteDance is competing with Alibaba in e-commerce, and Tencent is competing with TikTok in short video, and the room for innovation is getting smaller and smaller.

In fact, there is nothing new to see on the Internet after 2020. There is only a fight between a few big companies, which feels a bit like carving flowers on shit.

In contrast, Web3 gives me a completely different feeling. There are endless new things in this field, from AA wallet to MPC, from Layer2 to ZK rollup, new concepts and technologies continue to emerge. Although there is no lack of concept hype, it does bring continuous innovation vitality to the industry. Any new project may suddenly rise, and there are no obvious industry barriers. This environment full of possibilities is very attractive.

For example, pump.fun may suddenly emerge in half a year or a year, and the same goes for gmgn. There is no class solidification, and there are still many new possibilities, and a turnaround may occur at any time.

However, as a wallet business in the Web3 field, we have a lot in common with the traditional Internet. We also need to develop apps, focus on user growth, and attach importance to retention and conversion. About 80%'s Internet operation methods can be directly applied. This makes wallets and exchanges the business forms closest to the traditional Internet in Web3. This feature allows us to make full use of past experience while exploring the possibility of innovation in new fields.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: There is a popular term on the Internet now, "founder model". As a professional manager, what do you think are your main advantages in this regard compared to other companies driven by founders themselves?

Karry:

I have been an entrepreneur for many years. Although I did not create this product from scratch, I always work with the mentality of a founder. This mentality comes from my responsibility for life: since I have chosen this path, I must go all out. I believe that the core of the founder's mentality is not to complain. Therefore, I always think from the perspective of problem solving, focus on the market, business, vision and long-term value, maintain long-term thinking, and avoid falling into short-term emotions. Only by facing challenges with the mentality of a founder can we continue to drive the business forward.

I think there are several differences in mentality. First of all, my experience in large companies has allowed me to accumulate some experience in management. For example, in our small team of more than 100 people, I introduced ByteDance's management method, which emphasizes data transparency. Each business line has a corresponding data system, and the Lark robot will push the data to the group to ensure that team members can see the business data and understand the business performance and decision-making background. This management concept is called "Context" in ByteDance, which is to provide front-line employees with sufficient contextual information and let them make decisions independently instead of conveying instructions layer by layer.

Secondly, I always have a direct sense of business details and industry dynamics. I spend 2 to 3 hours using our product every day and make about 50 wallet transactions. This daily use allows me to experience the product directly, rather than just relying on reports from others.

Therefore, I think the founder mode is more of a mindset. This mindset is crucial if you want to feel a sense of accomplishment in your work. On the contrary, if you just hold the mindset of "completing tasks" or "working to make money", it is easy to fall into a vicious circle of complaining.

The history of the development of old wallets

Xiaobai Navigator coderworld: Bitget Wallet has developed step by step from BitKeep to the present. Can you introduce the complete development history of Bitget Wallet?

Karry:

BitKeep was founded in May 2018.

Our real breakthrough came during the DeFi Summer of 2021, when we developed ranking and candlestick chart features for Uniswap tokens and gained a large number of users. Subsequently, we launched a trading aggregator and maintained active trading volume on the TRON and BSC networks, with a single-day trading volume exceeding US$600 million.

At present, we have supported the cross-chain functions of more than 20 public chains, and recently connected to emerging public chains such as Berachain, Sonic, and Sui, continuously expanding liquidity sources to optimize the trading experience.

Bitget invested in BitKeep twice in 2021-2022. After the original founder withdrew, I took over the team management and changed the brand to Bitget Wallet in 2023.

The reason for the name change is to integrate marketing resources so that Bitget (focusing on centralized trading) and the original BitKeep (focusing on the decentralized field) can more effectively build global brands. Although the brand is unified, the team, business and equity structure remain independent.

Xiaobai Navigation coderworld: At present, what achievements of Bitget Wallet make you proud?

Karry:

In our opinion,The key indicator for measuring the status of the first tier is active users, especially the number of new users.

Looking back at the market landscape at the beginning of 2023, the first-tier representatives such as MetaMask, Trust Wallet and Coinbase Wallet generally maintained more than 500,000 new users per month. At that time, we were in the second tier together with TP, imToken, etc., with monthly new users in the range of 200,000-300,000. Although we are in the leading position in the second tier, there is indeed a clear gap between us and the first tier.

Over the past year, we have reached the first-tier level in terms of new users. For example, in February this year, our number of new users has jumped to third in the world, second only to Trust Wallet and Phantom, and surpassing traditional mainstream wallets including MetaMask. We currently have more than 80 million users worldwide, with monthly active users (MAU) of about 10 million and daily active users (DAU) maintained at around 1 million.

Strategic thinking behind brand upgrading

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld:Bitget Wallet recently celebrated its seventh anniversary and released a new brand upgrade. From the reshaping of the entire brand vision to the core vision of "Crypto for Everyone", what are the thoughts behind this? How is this vision truly implemented in your product planning and function design and transformed into an experience that users can actually feel?

Karry: Looking back on the past seven years of development, we are very proud to see that we have grown from a basic crypto wallet tool to a one-stop Web3 platform serving global users. The global user scale has exceeded 80 million. This brand upgrade has a dual meaning: on the one hand, it shows a new visual image to the outside world, and on the other hand, it clarifies our core value proposition internally.

On the visual level, we chose a more modern blue-green color as the main color, which not only maintains the professionalism of financial technology products, but also enhances the user's affinity. The new graphic language uses arrows as the core element, symbolizing connection and progress, and also reflects our adherence to the spirit of decentralization and openness.

We have put forward the brand vision of "Crypto for Everyone", which is not only a slogan, but also our judgment on the future development of the industry: the real value of encryption technology is not to serve a small number of geek users, but to become a part of the daily life of the masses. To this end, we have comprehensively upgraded the four core scenarios of "trading, financial management, payment, and exploration" at the product level, with the goal of allowing every user to participate in it simply and safely.

In terms of trading, we have built a closed-loop experience from market discovery to one-click order placement, combining the Alpha module's signal discovery and AI-enabled project evaluation tools to help users seize opportunities more efficiently. We also solve the problem of insufficient Gas for new users through the innovative GetGas function.

In terms of financial management, we have not only integrated mainstream DeFi protocols, but also launched low-threshold yield products such as Hold2Earn. The native vault that will be launched soon will further lower the threshold for participation.

In the payment scenario, we support three methods: scanning codes, swiping cards, and shopping mall consumption. We are connected to merchant gateways such as Padify, and have also launched the Bitget Wallet Visa card, so that encrypted assets can be truly used for daily consumption.

In the exploration dimension, we aggregated various DApps and combined the mnemonic-free account system with a completeSafety保障，帮助用户更安全、便捷地接触 Web3 世界。

The core idea behind these products is the same - by lowering the threshold and improving usability, encryption technology is closer to the real needs of ordinary users. We believe that only when everyone can use Web3 products naturally, the vision of "Crypto for Everyone" can be truly realized.

Xiaobai Navigator CoderWorld: What do you think of the current competitive landscape of crypto wallets?

Karry:

The liquidity boundary between on-chain and centralized exchanges is blurring, which is an industry trend. Taking Binance Alpha 2.0 as an example, exchanges have begun to utilize the liquidity provided by AMM. This model will affect the development direction of the entire industry.

Regarding wallet competition, the entire industry is still in a very early stage and is not yet mature, with a penetration rate lower than 5%.

We believe that this is a protracted war, not a one-shot victory. We often say internally: "Victory depends on oneself, victory depends on the enemy." We can only make sure that we don't make mistakes, and whether we can win depends on whether the opponent makes mistakes.If the opponent does not make mistakes, the competition will last for a long time.

Looking back, we chose to build an independent app and focus on on-chain transactions in 2021, which was actually a very correct decision.

We not only focus on the transaction business, but also simultaneously deploy the PayFi field. Now it seems that on-chain transactions are moving towards efficiency competition, and payment will become the next growth point. In the future, we will focus more on the construction of consumer scenarios and build the wallet into a real encrypted payment platform.

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: What is your core competitiveness in this marathon?

Karry:

Our core business philosophy is:Pursue growth while ensuring break-even.

This self-sustaining ability allows us to fight a protracted war without relying on subsidies or investor funds. We have achieved monthly profits, which makes continued investment more secure and avoids the risk of some projects being cut off by a decision maker. For example, a ZK DEX project of an exchange took two years and 60 people to invest, but it was finally cut off because of a boss's words.

In terms of product strategy, we are not limited to the initial on-chain transaction scenario. We believe that payment is the key scenario for the future of wallets, so we launched the PayFi strategy. At the same time, we set up an innovation team to maintain sensitivity to market trends and continue to innovate and experiment based on user feedback.

There is no such thing as globalization, only localization

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: How does Bitget Wallet plan its globalization strategy? Does it have differentiated layouts for different markets?

Karry:

One view is thatThere is no such thing as globalization, only localization.The core of localization is to use local people to do local things, including local community building, PR activities and marketing strategies.

Our products have many functions, such as Swap, financial management, Staking, DeFi interaction, airdrop activities, Alpha strategy, and even credit card services. It is impossible to push all these functions to users at once, otherwise users will not know where to start. Therefore, the promotion focus of different regional markets is different. For example, Japanese users are more interested in financial management, and some countries regard crypto assets as a value preservation tool because of the large fluctuations in local currencies.

Therefore, we have local teams in each region who are responsible for establishing operating models, building communities and carrying out promotional activities. These local teams can better understand market demand and provide us with effective strategic advice.

Xiaobai Navigation Coderworld: Chinese Internet products often encounter some "water and soil incompatibility" problems when going overseas. At the product level, domestic users seem to prefer "all in one" products, such as WeChat. Overseas markets tend to use simpler products. What are your experiences in this regard? When overseas users use Bitget Wallet, will they encounter "water and soil incompatibility" problems?

Karry:

I have a clear point of view.Don't label your product with a definition like "I want to be minimalist" or "I want to be restrained."

A good product should focus on user needs, allowing users to intuitively find and use the required functions.

Take WeChat as an example. Its functional design (such as red envelopes) is naturally presented in specific scenarios, rather than being pushed to users. Its user experience is excellent worldwide, not inferior to products such as WhatsApp. Its globalization is limited more by market strategy and geographical factors, rather than product design issues.

This reminds me of some debates in the early days of mobile phones. Luo Yonghao particularly emphasized "skeuomorphism" at the time. The early iPhone did adopt a "gift-like" design, but later the trend turned to "flatness."

Luo Yonghao has been arguing endlessly about these design concepts. I think this actually shows a lack of understanding of the essence of the product. The focus is not on the labels on the design, but on whether the user's information flow is natural enough and that the user can use your product intuitively and instinctively. This is the real core of product design.

Therefore, when making global products, our goal is to enable users in different regions of the world to use them intuitively, rather than simply pursuing a certain design concept, such as "minimalism". The focus of simplicity is to make the user experience natural and smooth, rather than deliberately catering to formal simplicity.

Coderworld: You mentioned earlier that wallets and exchanges are probably the applications that are most like web2. Based on the wave of mobile Internet development that you have experienced, which stage of early mobile Internet competition do you think the current stage of crypto wallet development is equivalent to? What are the similarities and differences?

Karry:

The current penetration rate of crypto wallets is indeed very low, similar to the Internet era in 1998 and 2000. But we cannot simply draw an analogy and think that it will soon usher in explosive growth.

The reason why I am optimistic about this industry is that Crypto has shown real value in the financial field, such as cross-border payments and DeFi liquidity support. At present, we are more concerned about the development of PayFi.

The popular U card now only uses the merchant network accumulated by Visa and MasterCard over the years to achieve cold start. But what is more valuable is that in the future, direct payment and settlement from Crypto to Crypto will be realized, allowing users to directly use cryptocurrency for financial management, salary payment or conversion into legal currency. Once this end-to-end encrypted payment system is established, it will bring huge opportunities in the fields of remittances, cross-border payments, etc.

The wallet is not the entrance, and the moat is a false proposition

Xiaobai Navigation CoderWorld: Looking back at the era of mobile Internet, we often hear about the "traffic entrance battle". Everyone thinks that Tencent got the first ticket to the mobile Internet because of WeChat. In web3, many people also regard wallets as similar traffic entrances. What do you think of this analogy? According to this logic, which wallets do you think have already got the ticket?

Karry:

I don't agree with this view.

Many people think that wallets are the entrance, but I don’t think so. WeChat is the entrance because it has extremely high user coverage and strong social network effects. Wallets have neither such coverage nor network effects.The account system of Web3 is inherently interoperable, and the cost of user migration is very low.

The so-called "ticket" or "moat" is actually a subjective imagination.

Around 2020, I was working at ByteDance. At that time, the company had a full-staff meeting every two months. Someone asked Zhang Yiming: "Tencent has social networking as its moat, Alibaba has e-commerce as its moat, so what is ByteDance's moat?"

I remember Zhang Yiming's answer was very clear. He responded in the video conference: "The concept of moat is a very old idea. In the era of mobile Internet, or in such a fiercely competitive environment, there is no real moat."

Despite Alibaba's huge moat, Pinduoduo still copied its back door. Despite Tencent's strong moat, its usage time had been declining and was being eroded by Douyin, at least before the rise of its video account in 2020.

What is a moat?He said that the moat is that we have competitors like Kuaishou, which makes us dare not slack off and requires us to run forward desperately.

Once you start thinking about "tickets" and "moats", you are essentially asking "can you lie flat?" But in this industry, whether it is the encryption field or the entire mobile Internet industry, there is no possibility of lying flat.Once you relax, you will be quickly overtaken by your competitors.

Xiaobai Navigator CoderWorld: Will there be a similar winner-takes-all situation in the field of crypto wallets in the future, and in the end only a few companies may survive in the market?

Karry:

According to business rules, mature markets will inevitably be concentrated in the top, and eventually form a pattern of two or three dominant companies: the top company accounts for 50-60%, and the second and third largest companies account for about 30%. For example, the current exchange market has already shown this trend.

However, the lack of such a centralized trend in the crypto wallet space indicates that the industry is still in its very early stages. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether the industry can truly mature or remain on the fringes.

The article comes from the Internet:Dialogue with Bitget Wallet CEO: The wallet is not the entrance, and the moat is a false proposition