Exclusive Interview with Bitget's New Chief Legal Officer: Unveiling the Mysterious Yet Crucial Back-Office Role at Exchanges
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Exclusive Interview with Bitget's New Chief Legal Officer: Unveiling the Mysterious Yet Crucial Back-Office Role at Exchanges
From the World Cup to internet giants, from Binance to Bitget.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
On August 14, Bitget officially announced the appointment of former Binance executive Hon Ng as its Chief Legal Officer (CLO). Hon Ng will play a key role in driving Bitget’s global business development, supporting the exchange’s continued push toward global compliance and strategic expansion.
According to Bitget's official announcement, Hon Ng brings over 20 years of legal experience and was previously recognized by the Financial Times as one of the top 20 legal leaders globally. Prior to joining Bitget, he served as General Counsel and Head of Government Affairs & Policy at Binance. Earlier, he worked at Uber, helping the company evolve from a startup into a tech giant through to its IPO. Before entering the tech industry, Hon Ng practiced at several prestigious law firms, focusing on mergers and acquisitions and IPO-related matters.
For a leading exchange like Bitget, leadership changes in critical areas such as compliance often signal a shift in strategy. To better understand Bitget’s future direction—particularly its global expansion plans—Odaily Planet Daily recently conducted an exclusive interview with Hon Ng. His openness and candidness were surprising; we had initially expected a more reserved and formal legal professional. Instead, Hon Ng openly shared his career journey and mindset evolution, provided rare insights into the often-misunderstood world of exchange compliance, and laid out Bitget’s comprehensive approach to compliance optimization and growth.
Two Decades of Career Transformation
Hon Ng began his career at Herbert Smith in London, later working at renowned international law firms including White & Case and Latham & Watkins. He primarily operated across London, Doha, and Hong Kong, handling legal matters related to M&A and IPOs.
During his time in Doha, a passionate football fan, Hon Ng was seconded to Qatar’s World Cup bid committee, assisting the Qatari government with the application and preparatory work for hosting the tournament. Reflecting on that period, he repeatedly described it as “challenging,” as few believed the Middle East could host the World Cup. Yet, Hon Ng and his team overcame numerous obstacles, ultimately delivering a historic tournament capped by “Messi’s coronation.”
In 2015, Hon Ng’s career took another pivotal turn when he joined Uber during its early-stage development, supporting the company’s strategic expansion across Asia-Pacific. At the time, ride-hailing was not yet mainstream—especially in APAC markets. Drawn by the challenge of disrupting traditional models, Hon Ng spent nearly five years at Uber, witnessing firsthand its transformation from a disruptive startup into an internet powerhouse.
In 2020, Hon Ng formally entered the Web3 space, joining Binance as General Counsel and Head of Government Affairs & Policy. When asked about transitioning from Web2 to Web3, he noted that both domains share a common challenge: upending entrenched systems. Just as Uber challenged taxi monopolies, cryptocurrencies are challenging a traditional financial industry with over a century of institutional legacy. In essence, both aim to replace old paradigms with new innovations.
However, Hon Ng acknowledged that Web3 has unique characteristics compared to Web2—chiefly, a faster pace and higher demands for speed, requiring professionals to respond swiftly to evolving trends. Additionally, the regulatory environment for Web3 remains immature. Yet, as a legal expert, he sees this as an opportunity: rather than being bogged down by complex regulations as in Web2, companies can focus more directly on product improvement and user experience.
Notably, during his tenure at Binance, Hon Ng helped facilitate Binance’s $500 million investment in Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X). He views this as a meaningful move for the broader industry, offering a powerful channel to introduce cryptocurrency concepts to billions of potential users.
After three years at Binance, Hon Ng stepped down to reflect on his next steps. During a nine-month sabbatical, he reaffirmed his desire to remain in the industry while receiving offers from multiple leading exchanges, institutions, and projects. Ultimately, he chose Bitget, drawn by alignment with its business vision and cultural fit.
Inside Web3 Legal Operations: A Rare Look
Most crypto users have little understanding of what exchange legal work actually entails. Hon Ng offered a detailed breakdown.
He explained that Bitget’s legal team comprises over 70 members, accounting for approximately 4% of the company’s total headcount—a proportion higher than most industry peers. The team operates in a distributed model, internally divided into specialized groups focusing on licensing, investments, partnerships, litigation, contracts, and more. To address regional regulatory differences, Bitget directly hires local legal talent across multiple jurisdictions, enabling smoother operations and expansion locally.
Beyond internal resourcing, Bitget has partnered with third-party compliance providers such as Chainalysis and Onfido to efficiently adapt to diverse regulatory requirements across regions.
Regarding his personal workload, Hon Ng outlined three main areas. The most visible is compliance—handling license applications, KYC systems, and regulator engagement. The most tedious, he admitted, is drafting user terms and conditions (the lengthy documents users agree to when signing up). While most users never encounter issues governed by these terms, a small fraction may face disputes, where the terms serve as a fair benchmark to protect both the platform and users. Another crucial responsibility involves drafting partnership agreements—such as contracts with Lionel Messi or new asset listings.
When asked about time allocation across these areas, Hon Ng said efforts are relatively evenly distributed, though challenges vary significantly. The most difficult task remains license acquisition, particularly due to varying regulatory stances across jurisdictions—and even shifting attitudes within the same jurisdiction over time.
Hon Ng highlighted two regions currently drawing significant attention from major exchanges. First is the EU, which has introduced the MiCA license specifically for crypto asset service providers. Holding a MiCA license would allow compliant operations across over twenty EU member states. While MiCA’s core provisions take effect on December 30, 2024, no crypto exchange has yet obtained the license. Second, he emphasized the importance of monitoring the U.S. regulatory landscape. Although Bitget has fully exited the U.S. market, developments involving agencies like the SEC, CFTC, and DOJ—compounded by the unpredictable election cycle—make the U.S. regulatory outlook especially complex and hard to anticipate.
Bitget’s Path Toward Crypto Compliance
In recent years, numerous exchanges have faced setbacks due to compliance failures—from FTX’s collapse amid accounting chaos to various platforms being fined or forced out of markets for non-compliance.
When evaluating Bitget’s compliance strategy, Hon Ng stressed learning from these industry-wide lessons to prevent similar incidents. He also spends considerable time identifying latent risks—issues that aren’t problematic today but could become so tomorrow. For example, while a few exchanges still operate in sanctioned regions like North Korea or Iran, Bitget treats such markets as absolute red lines. Through strict controls across KYC, IP detection, phone number geolocation, and other dimensions, the platform actively prevents users from restricted regions from accessing services.
Currently, Bitget holds licenses in jurisdictions including Poland and Lithuania, allowing it to operate legally under local regulatory frameworks. Looking ahead, Hon Ng emphasized that Bitget won’t pursue every available license indiscriminately—there are simply too many. Instead, expansion decisions will be based on a holistic assessment of market size, regulatory posture, entry barriers, and local talent availability.
Specifically, Bitget plans to continue expanding in Latin America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, though exact country choices will require further analysis. Hon Ng also revealed that Bitget has strategically paused entry into certain markets—including Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S.—to ensure stronger compliance readiness before re-entering. However, all decisions remain dynamic, subject to evolving market needs and conditions.
Toward the end of the interview, we posed a final question to Hon Ng: “As someone who engages directly with regulators, how do you view the progress of crypto regulation? How long until crypto achieves full legitimacy comparable to equities?”
His answer surprised us: “Optimistically, I believe global acceptance of crypto assets by major traditional corporations could happen within just a few years.”
He added that this shift is already underway—the clearest evidence being deep involvement by traditional finance giants like BlackRock and Fidelity in spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs. From personal experience, having witnessed Uber rapidly disrupt the transportation sector, he now senses a similar momentum building in crypto. Early concerns about security and trust are fading quickly as user confidence grows.
That said, Hon Ng stressed that the industry is far from mature. From an internal perspective, more work is needed to explore token utility and create real-world use cases. This, he believes, is the true foundation for the industry’s long-term sustainability, widespread adoption, and ultimate acceptance.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
Odaily
