- Retail investors shift from hype to practical, long-term crypto use cases and payments.
- Bitget has expanded into crypto payments, stablecoins and decentralised exchange access in response.
- Clear-cut bull/bear market cycles will fade as fragmented, globalised “episodes” become the norm.
Retail crypto investors haven’t disappeared – they’ve simply shifted gears, according to Bitget Chief Operating Officer, Vugar Usi Zade. In an interview with Cointelegraph during the Consensus conference in Canada, he explained that retail interest has shifted from hype-driven speculation to sustainable, practical applications instead.
He also attributed the shift to market trauma and today’s economic instability, driven largely by Trump-era uncertainty in 2025. He said, “Retail investors’ appetite for risk is much lower because we know what happened with the stock market and every other aspect.”
There’s less disposable income to play around with, but people are becoming smarter with their investments.
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Tapping the Growing Retail Market
Usi Zade noted that after the highs of 2021 and the brutal bear market that followed, users are prioritising safer, more stable, and more functional ways to use crypto. To meet this shift in sentiment, Bitget is rolling out products like Bitget Pay, a crypto payments platform, and stablecoin solutions to support real-world use cases.
Now several exchanges are entering the payments sector to support daily crypto use, moving beyond simple earning and trading, Usi Zade explained. He noted that decentralised exchanges are also gaining attention and now make up nearly 10% of crypto derivatives, offering access to tokens not yet listed on centralised exchanges.
People still want to do big things, but not necessarily within the formal arena.
Vugar Usi Zade, Bitget Chief Operating OfficerBitget now ranks as one of the largest crypto exchanges globally, processing more than US$3.4 billion (AU$5.3 billion) in average daily volume as of 31 May and lists more than 800 cryptocurrencies. Millions more tokens are available through Bitget Onchain, which enables users to complete on-chain asset transactions directly on the Bitget App.
A More Unpredictable Future
Usi Zade believes that the days of easily defined bull and bear crypto market cycles are behind us. Instead, traders can expect fragmented “episodes” that come and go with less predictability that reflects the broader shift in market behaviour. Bitcoin remains the exception which flows independently of the market while being increasingly shaped by global economic signals and politics.
Therefore, it’s a very interesting place to be, and I think as an exchange we are trying to reinvent ourselves first with all the regulations and KYCs; we are becoming more of a bank-like organization.
Vugar Usi Zade, Bitget Chief Operating OfficerRelated: GENIUS Act Anti-Corruption Amendment Planned to Foil Trump Stablecoin Profiteering
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