Bitget Says It Is in Close Talks With BlackRock on Asia…

Bitget is holding talks with several large financial institutions about widening the reach of their digital asset products across Asia, with BlackRock among the firms in discussion with the crypto exchange. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said the company has been speaking with major Wall Street players to work out how their digital asset offerings could reach more regional investors, naming the world's largest asset manager as one of them.

"I'm talking to all the Wall Street giants to understand where they are coming from and how we could collaborate," Chen said, adding that Bitget has "very close communication with BlackRock... in terms of our distribution in the Asia market." BlackRock responded that its crypto exchange-traded products are already available in Asia and that it engages regularly with participants across the digital asset ecosystem, but declined to comment on specific regional expansion plans.

Why Asia Is the Focus

Asia has become one of the fastest-growing markets for digital asset activity, with blockchain-based crypto transactions in the region rising 69% year over year as of June 2025 — the highest growth rate of any region, according to OECD data. Bitget could offer asset managers a direct route into that demand: the exchange has roughly 125 million registered users worldwide, about half of them in East and Southeast Asia, according to Chen. First-quarter 2026 data showed 52% of Bitget users already hold both crypto and traditional stocks, a mix that makes exchanges potentially useful partners for institutions targeting investors who no longer treat the two asset classes separately.

BlackRock has been building out its own digital asset footprint while paying closer attention to Asia. The firm oversees about $15.3 trillion in client assets and has expanded tokenized cash products through blockchain-based money market offerings. At an industry conference in Hong Kong earlier this year, Nicholas Peach, head of BlackRock's APAC iShares division, estimated that a 1% crypto allocation from Asian household wealth could generate roughly $2 trillion in inflows, based on about $108 trillion of household wealth in the region. BlackRock also created a digital assets role in Singapore in December to help shape its Asian strategy.

Ties between crypto-native firms and traditional asset managers already extend beyond distribution. Coinbase serves as custodian for the majority of BlackRock's Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded products in the United States. Bitget's talks remain preliminary and no distribution agreement has been announced, but they illustrate how the line between crypto exchanges and conventional investment platforms is blurring as both compete for the same capital.