Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Qin Xiaofeng (@QinXiaofeng888)
In August in Bali, the scorching sea breeze carries the enthusiasm of the crypto world as Coinfest Asia 2026 kicks off. In the bustling conference hall, I met MEXC's product manager Vivien Lin.
At that time, the Alpha Arena S03 trading competition, mainly sponsored by MEXC Ventures, had just concluded. Twenty top traders from twelve countries sparred in a real-time demo environment, with Japanese player Arumando making a comeback to clinch the championship at the last moment. Traders from the Philippines and South Korea took second and third place, each sharing a prize of $100,000. Over ten thousand online and offline spectators witnessed this trading feast in the Asia-Pacific region. MEXC CEO Vugar personally presented awards to the winners and stated, "Supporting Alpha Arena is a key step in discovering talent and driving innovation."
Seizing the post-competition warmth, I sat down with Vivien to chat. In recent years, MEXC has long ceased to be merely viewed as an exchange that only lists new coins; its assets have expanded from crypto to U.S. stocks, precious metals, and commodities, covering over 3,000 digital assets. TradFi trading volume surged sixty times in six months, along with a zero-fee strategy covering 40 million global users. This established platform is refreshing industry perceptions through data and products, and Vivien, standing at the forefront of products, attributes everything to "user-centered long-termism." (Note: Vivien is the Product Director of MEXC, responsible for planning, strategy, and implementation of global products.)
During our conversation, she repeatedly emphasized "not only focusing on the present." As some veteran players were forced to exit due to outdated products and shrinking liquidity, MEXC, with system upgrades and AI layouts, stepped into the spotlight instead. She shared how AI allows novices and experts to see "two different worlds," and candidly admitted that the pain point of Copy Trading cannot be solved by simply adding more traders but requires distilling master strategies with AI to lower users' decision-making thresholds.
Regarding industry discussions on "one-stop," her answer was not about simply piling on features but about atomizing and modularizing underlying capabilities to make compliance across different markets flexible and efficient. More impressively, she praises perpetual contracts—viewing them as "leverage equity" that the crypto world offers to retail investors in traditional finance.
From a nine-year trading veteran in traditional finance to the helm of crypto products, Vivien’s cross-border perspective has made this exchange both intellectually structured and practically warm. Below is the transcript of the interview; enjoy~
————————
The End Goal of Exchanges is a One-stop Platform
Odaily Planet Daily: Crypto exchanges have long been viewed as one of the most profitable sectors. Recently, a batch of veteran players, including BitMEX, exited, overturning everyone's perception. In your opinion, is the current crypto exchange still a good business for making money? Why have some veteran players exited?
Vivien: Centralized exchanges, rather than being solely profitable, have become increasingly influenced by "network effects." Why do I say this? Because we have observed that user demands are changing.
For instance, around 2020, narrative (storytelling) was crucial. However, now, we see the integration of traditional finance and crypto intensifying, and users are more concerned about whether they can obtain assets with investment value—this has become the motive behind choosing trading platforms or trading behavior. Therefore, platforms that relied on a single narrative and provided relatively simple products face significant business challenges nowadays.
The second point is that in the current market, when an exchange accumulates many users and solid products, it enters a positive cycle—more users bring better liquidity, which has resources and a community to develop richer products. In contrast, newer exchanges do not think long-term about their product and business strategies, realizing that their products can no longer meet user needs. Consequently, fewer users lead to poorer liquidity, and they lack resources to focus on those products that may bring greater benefits in the long run.
I am grateful that MEXC's accumulation of technology, products, and global user deployment has finally been validated during this cycle. Precisely when the market conditions are not favorable, these forward-looking investments have allowed us to take a leading position.
Odaily Planet Daily: Many previously harbored stereotypes about MEXC—that it quickly listed small coins and had abundant assets. However, that has changed recently; it has not only limited itself to crypto assets but has deeply explored U.S. stocks, precious metals, and commodities. What led to this shift? What considerations does MEXC have?
Vivien: Users are always changing, and the market is always evolving. As cryptocurrencies shift from niche to mainstream, the requirements for exchanges are completely different. In the past, the race was about the speed of listing tokens; now it’s about the ability to filter assets—can you bring truly valuable assets to users? With the advancement of compliance and a positive shift in the U.S. regulatory environment, the user composition is becoming increasingly diverse, and whether the system can accommodate this diversity is now a new challenge.
Although MEXC has always been labeled as "rich in assets," we realized early on that mere breadth is insufficient; depth is also essential. We proactively initiated system upgrades to make trading faster and smoother, striving for excellence in liquidity and interactive experience. Therefore, when the TradFi opportunity arrives, we can quickly respond at both technical and product levels, promptly launching products that meet current market developments and user needs.
Often, we must not only focus on the present; we need to think one or even two steps ahead when making money today, preparing proactive plans to address future market developments and regulatory trends.
Odaily Planet Daily: I also noticed that CoinGecko released a report indicating a significant leap in MEXC’s TradFi trading volume, with market share expanding considerably. Can you give us an overview of this situation?
Vivien: TradFi is indeed a key area of our recent efforts. Statistically, from January 2025 until now, our TradFi trading volume has increased 100-fold; from last November until now, it has grown more than sixty times in just over half a year, showcasing very rapid growth.
These numbers reflect the close collaboration among our company’s product research, operations, and marketing teams. Currently, we have launched over 350 TradFi assets. Moving forward, we will continue to pay attention to changing user needs and market hot spots, seeking to gather more quality assets within compliance frameworks and provide richer trading opportunities for everyone.
Odaily Planet Daily: I also see that MEXC is currently proposing a "one-stop" platform strategy. One-stop means continually expanding boundaries, requiring a variety of new products to enrich them. Will this cause the platform to become increasingly cluttered and crowded, thus affecting core trading efficiency?
Vivien: The term "one-stop" is not simply about piling features on top of each other, but how we define it. My understanding is that a one-stop first means a sufficiently robust technical base and underlying products, which is a prerequisite for all superstructures.
Before 2023, the prevailing industry approach was to have "one product fit all globally." However, with the arrival of compliance waves, this approach quickly became ineffective—regulatory requirements vary widely across different markets, and a single solution cannot adapt to all regions. At the same time, user demographics have transitioned from singularity to diversity; users with different trading experiences and risk appetites have completely different product needs.
This presents a core challenge for product research teams: Is the underlying foundation strong enough? Are risk controls comprehensive? Is performance stable? Is latency sufficiently low? These are the cornerstones of all product decisions.
On a level that users can perceive, we face another challenge: Can we deconstruct user experience to an atomic level? For instance, KYC is an atom, containing facial recognition and address identification; can these be separated into atoms? Components like T-Wap, V-Wap, and Iceberg in the order placement function—can they operate independently? When we atomize these elements, we can adapt flexibly to the varied needs of different users and the regulatory requirements of different markets.
The value brought by atomization is particularly evident at the front end. The operations, promotion, and compliance teams gain more freely combinable "modules." For example, in localized deployment: some markets allow high leverage, while others do not; some markets support derivatives trading, while others only allow spot trading. Previously, independent websites needed to be built for each market, but now, by rearranging atomic modules, we can rapidly launch a compliant site that meets local regulatory requirements, significantly shortening implementation timelines.
From a one-stop perspective, it resembles a unified base where everyone can DIY products that meet their market development requirements. From the user's perspective, this corresponds to the AI experience mentioned earlier—when a novice enters, they might see simple information like "BTC has risen, what Trump said yesterday"; when an experienced trader enters, we might tell them "What is the current OI? What is the funding rate? Here’s a MACD trading strategy for you.” This is what we aim to achieve—enter through one portal and see different worlds.
User-Centric + AI-Driven Trading Experience Upgrade
Odaily Planet Daily: Now more and more exchanges are venturing into traditional assets; in this new round of homogenized competition, what do you think will allow MEXC to win? Can you share some related achievements?
Vivien: Regarding "winning," we actually rarely discuss that term internally—we're more interested in how to leave an unusual position for MEXC in the minds of users. To this end, we are driving two to three key initiatives.
The first is a global zero-fee strategy. This is a very forward-looking market expansion tactic for MEXC, with a simple goal: to allow more global retail users to enter our ecosystem at a very low cost and personally experience various dimensions of MEXC's products.
The second is speed. We often refer to "Matcha speed" internally, which stems from a high degree of synergy among our product, development, and marketing teams—such synergy is not commonly seen in the crypto industry. When an opportunity arises, we can quickly align and implement solutions. Just like you mentioned, once the TradFi window opens, we can promptly launch real stocks and swiftly shift core resources and market focus to traditional assets with clear trends such as gold, silver, and oil.
The third is AI. This is one of the directions where we are currently investing the most resources. We break down our AI strategy into four to five levels, corresponding to front-end user experience, internal operational efficiency, and foundational system infrastructure. This plan started at the end of last year, and after almost a year, when you log into MEXC, the entire trading experience has undergone noticeable changes—the interface is cleaner, and interactions are more efficient. More importantly, different levels of users see different information: AI will determine if you are a novice or advanced player based on your trading behavior and asset preferences; novices will see more basic concept guidance, while advanced users will be directed toward tools like AI Strategy.
When we integrate AI technology early, deeply, and broadly with all product and business development philosophies, I believe this will create a formidable moat for MEXC in the mid to long term.
Odaily Planet Daily: Since you just mentioned AI, I want to know about the applications of AI across the entire MEXC ecosystem. Besides helping users engage in profile classification, what other specific product applications are there?
Vivien: AI is an infrastructure, and we divide its applications into two dimensions: user-perceptible and non-perceptible.
The user-perceptible part consists of a series of intelligent tool matrices—AI News, Smart Search, Smart Line, Smart Chart, and MEXC AI. Throughout their complete journey on the platform, users gradually encounter these smart tools and assistants that help them distill key market information, discover assets of interest, and match valuable activities and benefits.
For example, in AI news reading, MEXC's AI Bot not only outputs text summaries but also presents information in a combination of text and images—where there’s an image, there’s a truth, making the reading experience more user-friendly. Trading itself is serious, but we hope that with the support of AI, what users experience is not just efficiency but also a more enjoyable interaction. Multi-modal approaches are directions we are exploring, and we hope to make this "sense of enjoyment" a brand hallmark for MEXC.
The non-perceptible part lies in the backend. Our operation configuration systems leverage AI and big data to achieve significant efficiency improvements. More importantly, the platform can perceive user sentiment more finely—in times of market volatility, identify user hesitation or panic, and provide welfare products like "first-order compensation," lowering their psychological thresholds. Thus, AI assists the platform in understanding users better and offering them what they truly desire.
Odaily Planet Daily: I also noticed that there are many assets on the MEXC platform, over 3,000 as officially stated. With such a rich asset list, how should an average user efficiently discover these assets? Does MEXC provide any tools or products to help quickly locate quality assets and seize value?
Vivien: We now also leverage AI technology; the product I use most is AI Search, which is embedded in the search box. In the past, inputting BTC would yield static search results—contracts, spot trading; however, now when you input BTC, users receive a summary of market sentiment, three key real-time news items, and proactive recommendations for related products and activities. The design logic behind this product is to accurately answer users’ core questions within the limited space of information: "How can I participate right now?"
This year marks the eighth anniversary of MEXC, and our slogan is "Infinite Opportunities." However, I want to clarify: Infinite Opportunities is definitely not Infinite Products—our goal is not to endlessly stack assets but to continuously shorten the distance between users and market opportunities. The prerequisite for shortening this distance is that we must deeply understand the genuine needs of users at specific market stages.
Taking the filtering of TradFi assets as an example, we not only focus on popularity and investment value but also on the alignment between “user profiles” and “asset types.” MEXC’s core user group primarily consists of retail investors, which is fundamentally different from many platforms that mainly target institutional clients.
Therefore, whether it’s the over 3,000 asset categories we offer or the more than 350 RWA products added in the past year, they have all been precisely positioned under the guidance of user profiling. I believe that every user entering MEXC can find the product that allows them to trade smoothly and enjoy a comfortable experience.
Odaily Planet Daily: What is the current priority ranking of these products within MEXC?
Vivien: Our product resource allocation logic boils down to being user-centric, with a greater focus on what users currently need. This places different demands on both operations and products: operations must deeply understand the market, and product managers must plan for potential future trends.
Here, we should mention a concept: how to distinguish between “real needs” and “imagined needs”? We have built a feedback loop covering community, BD, affiliates, and customer service, and we receive vast amounts of feedback.
When product managers face this feedback, the first principle they follow is—to listen to what users express but to observe their behaviors. Most of the solutions provided by users are what they "think" should work; if we simply adopt these solutions, our product research and development system would become overloaded, and product architecture would spiral out of control.
Hence, our prioritization logic is: first define the core problems users face, rather than adopting the solutions they provide. After classifying needs, we seek a product design path that offers "a single solution covering multiple problems."
Take Copy Trading as an example. This feature has been rolled out on other platforms, but MEXC has maintained a relatively restrained pace. We have discerned that the real pain point for users is not “too few options,” but rather “too high a selection cost”—users struggle to find trustworthy master traders and frequently incur losses following trades. If this issue were addressed merely by piling more traders, we would inevitably fall into an internal competitiveness quagmire.
Our solution is twofold. First, we introduce AI capabilities: forming a specialized product team that systematically organizes the theories of classic investment masters since the 1990s, combining them with current market trends for backtesting and strategy fitting, and using AI to select strategies that better adapt to the volatile characteristics of crypto markets to open up "AI strategies" for users to follow. Second, we optimize the expression channels of quality traders: many master traders excel at trading but lack self-marketing skills, and we proactively create platforms for them to showcase their investment philosophies, allowing users to connect more closely with them and building more confidence in using Copy Trading.
Odaily Planet Daily: From the data you observe from your backend, how are the benefits for users resulting from the distilled master techniques or recommended master traders?
Vivien: This question is quite subtle. Even recognized investment masters cannot guarantee that every trade will be profitable. I want to emphasize that the relationship between AI and users should enhance users’ decision-making capabilities rather than replace their judgment. No system can make "the right" decision on behalf of users.
Thus, when users consider utilizing Copy Trading products, we first advise them to confront their own risk tolerance directly. We provide complete data on historical drawdowns and risk ratings for strategies, but users must answer three questions themselves—“Can I bear this level of drawdown?” “Does the risk preference of the strategy match my capital size?” “Does this trading logic align with my investment philosophy?”
The first hurdle in investing is always being honest with oneself. After overcoming this hurdle, then strategies can be selected, ultimately allowing for a rational evaluation of profit or loss results.
What Can a Cross-Border Perspective of Traditional Finance and Crypto Bring to the Industry?
Odaily Planet Daily: I noticed that you might have a long history in traditional industries; you later moved into crypto and held product director roles at other crypto exchanges. Now that you are at MEXC, how has this cross-border experience helped you in comprehending products?
Vivien: Before entering the crypto space, I spent nearly nine years as a trader in traditional finance, covering multiple asset classes including commodities, forex, stocks, and private bonds. This experience first shaped my acute sensitivity to details. In particular, my time as a derivative trader, facing Greek letter risks and operating in an environment where high-order risks couldn’t be hedged, has given me an almost instinctual understanding of market volatility, risk exposure, and maximum drawdown.
Additionally, what's ingrained in my DNA from traditional finance is the best practice methodology—pursuing optimal user experience and maintaining continuous respect for regulations and the market.
Transitioning to the crypto space, the most immediate impact was the difference in speed. The product development cycle in traditional finance spans six months to a year, whereas here in crypto, the fastest timelines can be as short as a week. The 24-hour energy and drive prevalent here are very contagious. Thus, what I can bring from traditional finance to the crypto world is the ability to alert others to risks when they are running too fast.
Now that MEXC is entering the TradFi arena, we are facing the intersection of two financial worlds. Our goal is not to reconstruct a traditional financial system within crypto but rather to find interoperability between the two markets and effectively transfer the experiences and resources of traditional finance. Personally, what I can contribute is an understanding of the essence of finance and insights into trading mindsets.
When I first entered the crypto space, I was responsible for trading products because I naturally put myself in the users’ position—how to present K charts more intuitively? What analytical tools and auxiliary functions do users need? These practical reflections have continuously supported my understanding of user trading intentions, identifying behavioral patterns in specific scenarios, and making precise judgments on product details.
Odaily Planet Daily: After joining MEXC, how do you personally position the role of product director? What do you hope you and the MEXC team can bring to the crypto industry?
Vivien: First and foremost, securing the current base of our products and R&D as the product director is the most important step—continuing to carry on the good spirit, good products, and good services we have established, consistently providing MEXC's global users with at least an experience that is on par with what we currently offer, if not better, is our baseline.
If the product team can further enhance its performance, we have always hoped for our products to stay a step ahead of the market. Since product preparation and R&D preparations are necessary, we encourage the product team internally to absorb the nutrients from the product world broadly; they should not only see what competitors are doing but also what industry peers are doing, and even look across industries. For example, when we develop operational products, we should look at how e-commerce companies run operations, and see how short video companies like TikTok manage theirs. Cross-industry inspirations are abundant.
Another point is that we need to become more professional because our competition is no longer limited to the several crypto exchanges among ourselves, but now includes traditional finance—Robinhood, Coinbase, all entering the same market. This is a competition of professionalism against professionalism; it’s not just about speed but also about the acceleration of expertise, which is very brutal. The product team has a greater obligation to prepare for new product directions for the next era and phase and devote energy to excel.
Odaily Planet Daily: Based on your cross-industry experiences in both TradFi and Crypto, at what stage do you believe crypto products have developed currently?
Vivien: The current development of crypto products has entered a phase where the "one-stop" narrative is being extensively pushed. However, the key is that each exchange's understanding of "one-stop" and the path to implementation differs. MEXC's choice is to have a unified technical base, supplemented by modular product layers that can be flexibly combined, ensuring underlying consistency while fully accommodating the diversified needs of different markets and users. This is our core approach in facing the current product competition.
If we elevate our perspective further and look at peers in the TradFi field—Robinhood is rapidly entering crypto, and Coinbase, Kraken, etc., are also intensifying their involvement in the perpetual market. Competition is no longer restricted solely to native crypto players. This brings us back to our earlier judgment: The current crypto market cannot have shortcomings, but it should also have strengths.
For MEXC, our core strengths are threefold: First is zero fees; second is our persistent investment in AI both in terms of manpower and technology; third is our unwavering commitment to being user-centric and striving to address users’ core demands.
Odaily Planet Daily: In the past couple of years, what changes have you observed globally in user demand for digital assets from your perspective?
Vivien: Regarding the market evolution of digital assets, we have actually been observing signals of TradFi users attempting to enter crypto since 2023. At that time, the industry generally believed the two markets were moving towards integration, but my judgment is that period felt more like a transitional phase of "punching but not passing through," and true integration officially began only this year.
The turning point this year was the regulatory environment, especially the crypto-friendly signals released by the U.S. market. A large number of bills have entered the discussion process, some have already been passed, and these positive changes have injected strong confidence into the entire crypto ecosystem. Traditional financial institutions and long-term capital are evaluating crypto service providers, including trading platforms like MEXC, with noticeably more open attitudes. The establishment of this confidence is inseparable from the industry's continued efforts towards market health and normalization.
Of course, entry by TradFi users into crypto isn’t seamless—there remain discrepancies between the trading logic they are familiar with and the actual operational mechanisms of the crypto market. However, we also observe that this group of users has a very steep learning curve, and they enter the market with profound knowledge of traditional financial systems. Beyond mainstream assets like BTC and ETH, they are also conducting arbitrage trading between traditional exchanges and crypto exchanges involving TradFi assets.
I believe that in the next phase, the flow of arbitrage capital from traditional finance will become one of the key variables driving the growth of trading volumes at crypto exchanges, and this trend is worth paying close attention to.
Odaily Planet Daily: There is a view that current crypto products are essentially replicating previous TradFi products; however, I also see another voice claiming that the most significant innovation in crypto is actually in Perpetual. What is your perspective on current crypto products? If you were to recommend some crypto products to your previous TradFi friends, which would they be?
Vivien: I think you’re right; I feel the same way. In the financial industry, innovation needs to be approached with extreme caution. In the progression of crypto over the past decade, I believe the most disruptive innovation has been Perpetual. Perpetual provides retail investors with prime brokerage services in a very straightforward manner, whereas previously, the barriers for borrowing were high—only VIPs, institutions, or large firms could access relatively cheap financing to leverage their investments, while retail investors could not leverage on individual stocks.
The advent of Perpetual fundamentally broke this barrier—it instantaneously and equitably grants leverage capacity to all users. Of course, it has other good characteristics—like the funding rate being continuously charged, unlike traditional finance’s marginal contracts that come with a one-time rolling cost, which is more challenging to comprehend and accept for retail investors. From a product perspective, Perpetual indeed optimizes many of the existing flaws within traditional finance across multiple dimensions.
However, this does not imply we are starting from scratch. In terms of underlying design—whether it’s constructing risk control systems or developing mathematical models—we still very often draw from the mature frameworks that traditional finance has validated over the past century. Building upon the shoulders of giants, making continued well-considered innovations like Perpetual is a pragmatic pathway for the evolution of crypto products.
If I were to recommend a crypto product to friends in traditional finance, I would say—check out MEXC’s AI Strategy. Having experience as a strategy trader, I know first-hand how time-consuming and labor-intensive it is to build a complete quantitative strategy from scratch. The breakthrough of AI Strategy lies in its ability to reduce the threshold for constructing strategies to the level of natural language. You can tell it a simple sentence like, “I want to buy when RSI reverses and sell when RSI reverses again.” It will automatically parse the intent, interface with the API, and complete backtesting; once you confirm, “This is what I want,” a bot will take over until you decide to stop when you feel the market has reversed. This indeed offers a lot of convenience to traders with ideas, saving significant costs and effort.
Odaily Planet Daily: The final question, which is of great concern to many, is about the market. Bitcoin has been in decline since it hit a peak of $128,000 last year but has recently shown a good rebound. From your personal perspective, how do you think the crypto industry will change in the future?
Vivien: From a fundamental perspective, I believe Bitcoin has formed effective support in the range of $55,000 to $60,000—this can be confirmed with indicators such as capital flow and volatility.
A few days ago, Trump made favorable remarks about crypto assets—especially friendly signals towards Bitcoin and Ethereum—which directly ignited market sentiment. The BTC price rose nearly $8,000 within 48 hours, and the annualized volatility also increased from around 30% to 40%. From a fear index standpoint, it has now returned to a relatively comfortable range, and the market is in a healthy state capable of self-evolution.
Looking ahead to the medium to long term, I hold an unequivocal bullish stance on the crypto space—not just because of my professional background. Observing the stock market, it has entered a phase of rotation among subsystems, incremental capital has slowed down, and existing capital is switching between different sectors. Meanwhile, crypto assets have undergone nearly nine months of sluggishness. In the classic logic of asset rotation, the current situation likely represents a "golden pit" opportunity. Although liquidity has not yet significantly recovered, indicators such as volatility have built up strong support, with upward trading momentum clearly outweighing downward selling pressure.
Of course, risks are always present. Will the Fed raise interest rates within the year? Will the Bank of Japan tighten early due to pressure from global central banks? The uncertainty of monetary policy is expected to persist throughout the remainder of this year. Therefore, during this window from September to November, I recommend investors maintain necessary caution.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
