Bitget Courts BlackRock to Distribute Tokenized ETFs in Asia

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitget is in talks with BlackRock and other Wall Street giants about distributing tokenized exchange-traded funds to Asia's rapidly expanding crypto investor base, CEO Gracy Chen told CoinDesk. Chen said Bitget has "very close communication" with BlackRock on distribution in the Asian market, part of a broader push to bring tokenized ETPs to the region's investors.

BlackRock confirmed its crypto ETPs are already available in Asia and that it regularly engages with virtual asset service providers, but declined to comment on specific expansion plans.

Why it matters

Asia is now the fastest-growing crypto region on the planet. Blockchain-based crypto-asset transactions across the region grew 69% year-over-year as of June 2025, the highest of any region tracked by the OECD. BlackRock APAC iShares head Nicholas Peach pegged the prize at nearly $2 trillion in potential inflows if even 1% of the region's estimated $108 trillion in household wealth rotates into crypto.

Bitget's user base is a direct line into that bid. Roughly half of its 125 million registered users sit in East and Southeast Asia, and 52% already hold both cryptocurrencies and traditional stocks. That overlap is the structural reason Wall Street asset managers are now treating crypto exchanges as distribution channels rather than competitors.

Market impact

BlackRock's digital-asset footprint in Asia is already widening. The firm announced a new digital-assets role in Singapore in December to drive regional strategy, and head of digital assets Robert Mitchnick said last week that the macro case for bitcoin is strengthening. Coinbase, which serves as custodian for the majority of BlackRock's US-listed bitcoin and Ether ETPs, is positioning itself inside the same institutional rails.

The bigger read is the channel. Tokenized ETFs from the world's largest asset manager, distributed via a venue whose users already hold both asset classes, would compress the distance between traditional Wall Street product and Asian crypto-native capital. If even a fraction of Peach's $2 trillion math flows through, the regional price-discovery dynamic shifts materially toward Asia.