Exclusive Interview with Bitget's New Chief Legal Officer: Unveiling the Mysterious and Important Backend Role of the Exchange

Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

On August 14, Bitget officially announced the appointment of former Binance executive Hon Ng as Chief Legal Officer (CLO). Hon Ng will play a key role in leading Bitget's global business development and assisting Bitget in continuing to advance global compliance operations and strategic expansion.

According to Bitget's official announcement, Hon Ng has over 20 years of legal experience and was named one of the Top 20 legal leaders globally by the Financial Times. Before joining Bitget, Hon Ng served as the General Counsel and Head of Government Affairs and Policy at Binance; prior to that, he worked at Uber, helping the company transition from a startup to a publicly listed technology giant; and before entering the tech field, Hon Ng worked at several well-known law firms, handling mergers, listings, and other related matters.

For a leading exchange like Bitget, a "change of leadership" in compliance-related operations often signifies a new direction for the development of that business. To further understand Bitget's future development plans, especially its focus on global strategic deployment, Odaily Planet Daily recently arranged an exclusive interview with Hon Ng. His candidness and eloquence surprised us ------ we initially thought that a professional legal person would lean towards being conservative and serious, but Hon Ng not only shared his career development journey and mindset changes with us but also provided a detailed introduction to the lesser-known aspects of exchange compliance work, explaining Bitget's overall approach to compliance optimization and expansion.

Twenty Years in the Industry, Major Field Transition

Hon Ng's career began at the London law firm Herbert Smith, and over the years, he worked at renowned law firms such as White & Case and Latham & Watkins, primarily active in London, Doha, and Hong Kong, handling legal work related to mergers and listings.

During his time in Doha, as a passionate football fan, Hon Ng was seconded to the Qatar World Cup bidding committee, responsible for assisting the Qatari government in completing the application and preparation work for the World Cup. Reflecting on that experience, Hon Ng frequently used the word "challenge," as most people at the time did not believe that the World Cup would actually be held in the Middle East. However, Hon Ng and his team overcame numerous challenges and successfully hosted the spectacular World Cup that concluded with "Messi's coronation."

In 2015, Hon Ng's career took another significant turn when he joined Uber, which was still in its early development stage, responsible for assisting Uber's strategic expansion in the Asia-Pacific region. At that time, online ride-hailing had not yet become a common choice for daily transportation (at least in the Asia-Pacific market). With hopes of "disrupting the old model," Hon Ng worked at Uber for nearly five years, witnessing the company's growth from a tech newcomer to an internet giant.

In 2020, Hon Ng officially entered the Web3 industry by joining Binance as General Counsel and Head of Government Affairs and Policy. When discussing his transition from Web2 to Web3, Hon Ng noted that the challenges faced by both are actually quite similar ------ Uber's competitors were long-established taxi companies, while the competitors in cryptocurrency are traditional financial institutions with over a century of accumulation. Essentially, both are working to iterate old models with new approaches.

However, Hon Ng also acknowledged that Web3 has some unique characteristics compared to Web2, such as a faster overall pace and higher demands for speed, which require practitioners to respond more quickly to changes in industry trends. Additionally, the policy environment faced by Web3 is relatively immature, but Hon Ng, as a professional legal expert, believes this actually provides companies in the industry with an opportunity to focus on the product itself, allowing them to advance business development purely from the perspective of improving product quality, without needing to consider overly complex policy terms as in Web2.

It is worth mentioning that during his time at Binance, Hon Ng helped Binance invest $500 million to participate in Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter (now X). Hon Ng believes this was a very meaningful attempt for the development of the entire industry, helping to promote the concept of cryptocurrency to hundreds of millions of potential users.

After working at Binance for three years, Hon Ng chose to leave to reflect on his career plans. During a nine-month hiatus, he confirmed his desire to remain in the industry while several leading exchanges, institutions, and projects extended olive branches to him. Ultimately, Hon Ng chose to join Bitget due to his alignment with Bitget's business planning and the company's cultural atmosphere.

Unveiling Web3 Legal Work

Most cryptocurrency users may not be familiar with the specific contents of legal work at exchanges, and Hon Ng provided a detailed answer to this.

According to Hon Ng, Bitget's legal team currently has over 70 members, accounting for about 4% of the total Bitget team, a figure that is generally higher than that of other exchanges in the industry. From an operational perspective, Bitget's legal team operates in a distributed manner, internally divided into several different groups based on licenses, investments, partnerships, litigation, contracts, and other directions. Additionally, to match the regulatory differences in various regions, Bitget directly hires local legal talent in multiple jurisdictions to operate and expand its business more smoothly.

In addition to "stacking resources" on the human level, to ensure more efficient compliance construction, Bitget has partnered with professional third-party compliance service providers such as Chainalysis and Onfido to better adapt to the different regulatory characteristics of various jurisdictions.

Regarding his personal work rhythm, Hon Ng stated that his work at Bitget mainly consists of three major areas. The most obvious is compliance-related work, such as license applications, KYC systems, regulatory communications, etc.; the most complex is the formulation of user terms (the lengthy terms that users need to read before activating services). Hon Ng admitted that the vast majority of users do not encounter the restricted content of the terms during normal use of the exchange, but a very small proportion of users may encounter disputes for various reasons, at which point the user terms serve as a benchmark to fairly protect the interests of both the exchange and the users; another quite important task is drafting various external cooperation contracts, such as endorsement contracts with Messi or contracts for new asset listings.

When discussing the allocation of energy across different content areas, Hon Ng mentioned that the distribution of effort across various tasks is relatively even, but he also acknowledged that there are significant differences in the difficulty of different tasks, with license application work remaining the most challenging, especially considering the varying regulatory attitudes across jurisdictions, and even within the same jurisdiction at different times.

During the conversation, Hon Ng mentioned two areas that mainstream exchanges are currently focusing on. First is the European Union, which has established the MiCA license specifically for crypto asset service providers. Holding this license will mean that services related to crypto assets can be conducted in over twenty member states of the EU ------ the main provisions of the MiCA regulation will come into effect on December 30, 2024, but no crypto exchange has yet obtained this license; secondly, Hon Ng also specifically mentioned the regulatory environment in the United States. Although Bitget has completely exited the U.S. market, the regulations there are still worth the attention of all practitioners. The differing regulatory styles of the SEC, CFTC, DOJ, and the recent uncertain election situation make the specific regulatory attitude in the U.S. even harder to capture.

Bitget's Path to Crypto Compliance

In recent years, there have been numerous cases of exchanges facing setbacks in compliance, such as the FTX case, which collapsed due to financial mismanagement, and several exchanges being fined or even banned in certain jurisdictions for failing to meet requirements.

When evaluating Bitget's compliance measures, Hon Ng particularly emphasized the industry's past lessons, striving to avoid similar incidents occurring at Bitget. At the same time, Hon Ng also mentioned that he spends a lot of time thinking about potential risks that "were not issues in the past but may become problems in the future," to prevent and mitigate challenges that Bitget may face in the future, such as the fact that a few exchanges in the industry are still operating in sanctioned regions like North Korea and Iran, which are absolute red lines for Bitget. Using the strictest methods from multiple dimensions such as KYC, IP, and phone number locality, they "discourage" users from restricted regions from using the platform.

According to Hon Ng, Bitget currently holds licenses in several jurisdictions, including Poland and Lithuania, allowing it to operate compliantly under local regulatory frameworks. Looking ahead to future regional expansion plans, Hon Ng stated that Bitget will not blindly pursue all licenses ------ because there are too many licenses in the market, choices must be made ------ but will comprehensively assess whether to enter a market based on factors such as local market size, regulatory attitude, entry barriers, and local talent conditions.

Specifically, Bitget will continue to expand in regions such as Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, but the specific countries chosen will require detailed analysis; Hon Ng also mentioned that Bitget has strategically temporarily abandoned certain markets, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States, with the intention of returning to these markets after being better prepared in terms of compliance… However, all choices are dynamic, and Bitget will conduct specific analyses based on the varying market demands over time.

At the end of the interview, we asked Hon Ng a question: "As someone who can directly interact with regulators, how do you view the compliance process in the cryptocurrency industry? How long will it take for cryptocurrencies to achieve full compliance similar to stocks?" Hon Ng's answer exceeded our expectations: "Optimistically, cryptocurrencies are likely to be accepted by global traditional companies within a few years."

Hon Ng added that this trend is already underway, with intuitive examples being traditional financial companies like BlackRock and Fidelity deeply participating in the issuance of Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs. Personally, he has witnessed Uber disrupt the transportation market at an extremely fast pace, and he now has a similar perception of the cryptocurrency market. The early market may still have some concerns about the security of cryptocurrencies, but as user trust accumulates, these concerns are dissipating at a rapid pace.

However, this does not mean that the cryptocurrency industry is already perfect. From the industry's own perspective, Hon Ng believes that further exploration of the potential use cases for tokens is still needed to create more practical scenarios for cryptocurrencies. This is the foundation for the industry's true survival, development, and gradual acceptance.