Interview: Tong, PANews

Written by: Zen, PANews

Helen Liu is an atypical executive in the crypto exchange world. She comes from a human resources background and was new to crypto when she joined the exchange. She is also one of the oldest among the executives and rarely uses social media. Yet, in many ways, she is a typical crypto executive. She works harder than most younger colleagues, embodies a “work hard, play hard” culture, has extensive global experience that suits the exchange’s international needs, and practices the crypto community’s values of transparency and sharing. If we were to draw a parallel for her in the crypto world, Helen could be considered the Peng Lei of the space.

In October, PANews interviewed Helen at Bybit’s headquarters in Dubai. Without an introduction from her assistant, you might not believe that the woman sitting by the pantry in the company lobby, dressed in a company t-shirt, holding a laptop, and in the middle of a remote video meeting, is the COO of Bybit, leading a global top-tier exchange with 1,700 employees.

Helen joined Bybit in 2020 as the head of HR, before being promoted to Chief of Staff and eventually appointed as COO. Before joining Bybit, her career had been entirely in multinational corporations. She served as HR Director of the Global Supply Chain Division at Nokia and as HR Director of Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific Operations Center, working for many years in Finland, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Despite lacking in-depth crypto knowledge when she joined, Helen embraced the shift from traditional IT to the exciting world of Web3, encouraged by Bybit’s founder Ben Zhou. Her management experience in massive global corporations proved transferable and beneficial to the rapidly growing crypto exchange. According to a report from Bloomberg, citing crypto data provider Kaiko, Bybit surpassed Coinbase in March this year to become the second-largest exchange in the world.

Today, in addition to her HR expertise, Helen oversees all non-technical operations at Bybit, including legal, business, operations, and financial products.

In the interview, Helen shared her personal story, the market’s interest in Bybit’s listing strategies and partnerships, her experience transitioning from traditional industries to global management in the crypto sector, and the unique challenges she faces as a female executive. She also offered advice for women in the industry.

Global Operations, Localized Management

As an international crypto exchange, Bybit operates in about 190 countries and regions, offering support in over 20 languages. Helen noted that Bybit has not entered the U.S. market and follows a dual strategy of compliance-based operations and global expansion. In countries with clear regulatory frameworks, Bybit strategically applies for the necessary licenses. In regions where regulations are still developing, Bybit enters the market through its global operations. For example, this year Bybit launched Bybit.nl, a new platform that complies with Dutch regulations, and recently announced its intention to obtain a crypto license in Austria to secure regulatory approval in the European Union under the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework.

In terms of operations, Bybit adopts a combination of global and localized teams. According to Helen, Bybit Global has strong operational capabilities and boasts the most comprehensive operational tools in the industry. On this foundation, Bybit establishes local teams in each country that follow the same operational philosophy, strategies, and methods as the Global team, maintaining overall consistency. Whether it’s a country manager or a member of the local marketing and operations team, every new hire undergoes a three-month training program in the global Center of Excellence (COE), and only after passing the tests are they confirmed as full-time employees. “You’ll see that in every country’s operations, the approach essentially carries Bybit’s Global DNA.”

Additionally, Bybit promotes a “work hard, play hard” culture, expecting every employee to work diligently. The company currently has around 1,700 employees, but its productivity ranks among the highest in the industry. Helen revealed that based on individual capability and willingness, Bybit encourages capable employees to take on multiple roles, giving them opportunities to engage in areas beyond their primary responsibilities or even in fields where they have no prior experience, fostering their professional growth. To support this, Bybit offers generous incentives and growth opportunities through performance evaluations, enabling employees to advance to higher-level roles.

In the Web3 industry, which emphasizes the spirit of “decentralization,” many companies prefer a distributed remote working model. However, Bybit provides top-tier office spaces, and all Bybit employees work from the office. Helen firmly believes in the “Just in time” principle, meaning the right people participate in the right meetings to make the right decisions. She feels that working together in an office environment is beneficial for Bybit employees, who adhere to the startup mentality, as it enhances internal collaboration, improves efficiency, and minimizes communication issues. Physically working together also helps with the transmission of company culture. Across its global offices, Bybit promotes a transparent work model, allowing customers and partners to use shared spaces. This enables users to interact directly with the product managers, customer service teams, and others who provide services to them. Bybit hopes that through this approach, it can help shape a positive image for the crypto industry.

Listing Strategy: Focus on Projects with Long-term Potential

Bybit’s performance in project listings this year has been impressive, not only synchronizing with popular projects but also offering first-launchpad channels for ecosystem projects like Solana and Sui. When discussing Bybit’s listing strategy, a topic users care about most, Helen explained that their primary principle is to choose projects based on user demand, rather than purely for the company’s own interests. She added, “Bybit values user feedback, and if we see strong demand for a particular project, we prioritize listing it, providing users with more trading opportunities.” The core idea of this strategy is to ensure that users have access to the projects they are interested in, rather than listing projects to gain short-term profits for the company.

Additionally, when selecting projects, Bybit prioritizes high-quality projects with long-term growth potential. “The founding team must have a sense of social responsibility, be committed to enriching their community, and continuously foster its growth, rather than adopting short-sighted strategies,” Helen said. Bybit prefers projects with a long-term vision and development plans over those seeking short-term profits. The exchange also evaluates the technical team behind the project, with particular attention to the quality and security of the code. If a project’s technical capabilities are weak or its code is of low quality — such as outsourced or plagiarized code — Bybit will deprioritize it for listing.

Strategic Partnerships with Ecosystems like Solana and Ton

TON’s ecosystem has been one of the few bright spots in the industry this year, but beneath the surface, issues such as data manipulation by studios, severe homogenization of applications, short lifecycles, and low user retention have emerged.

When discussing some of these phenomena within the TON ecosystem, Helen mentioned that projects from the Ton ecosystem have generally performed well on Bybit. Bybit doesn’t just list these projects but also takes the time to understand their development, particularly by working closely with the original founding teams to see how they are building the ecosystem. For example, they are currently developing GameFi and Staking functionalities. Bybit believes that Ton is actively constructing a robust ecosystem. Although individual projects within the ecosystem may vary in performance, Bybit is confident in the long-term growth potential of the Ton ecosystem.

Solana is another close partner of Bybit. In the third quarter of this year, Bybit launched the exchange-backed liquid staking token bbSOL on Solana. Bybit also integrated PYUSD into Solana, allowing all its users to deposit and withdraw PayPal USD (PYUSD) on the network, making it the first major exchange to offer this functionality. Helen is also very optimistic about Solana’s ecosystem, stating that it has developed very comprehensively. The ecosystem has even extended to the hardware application level, offering a variety of use cases, enabling users to access more real-world applications while using Solana.

Thus, “Bybit is very willing to collaborate with such a robust blockchain ecosystem. Not only in selecting projects, but we also hope to support and help these ecosystems grow richer and more mature through our role as infrastructure.”

Social Responsibility and Non-profit Initiatives

Helen also oversees Bybit’s corporate social responsibility sector, where she founded Moledao, a platform dedicated to supporting blockchain developers. The main goal of this project is to create a community for blockchain developers, providing educational resources, learning opportunities, and career development support. Over the past three years, Moledao has successfully established several regional communities across multiple countries and regions, including Singapore, Dubai, India, and South Korea.

Additionally, Bybit supports the Blockchain for Good Alliance (BGA), investing around 5 million USD annually. BGA is a non-profit organization committed to using blockchain technology for social good, providing grants to developers or project teams that aim to solve real-world problems using blockchain technology. If a developer’s project demonstrates potential and real impact, especially in addressing environmental, social, and economic issues, they can apply for funding from BGA. In addition to financial support, Bybit offers technical, marketing, and other resources to help projects transition from concept to reality. BGA has currently gathered 52 partners to jointly promote these social good projects.

As the crypto industry develops, more and more content creators are entering the field early. Helen notes that 2024 is a pivotal year for Bybit in the industry. After securing the second position in the industry, Bybit is proactively contributing to advancing the crypto sector. Bybit aims to expand awareness of crypto among Web 2 users and strengthen the belief of industry enthusiasts. To this end, Bybit launched and sponsored an annual program called the “Crypto Content Creator Campus.” This is an educational event specifically aimed at content creators in the cryptocurrency space. “The key to expanding the crypto user base in the future might lie with these content creators. Therefore, Bybit hopes to empower these KOLs through this training program, helping them learn deeper blockchain knowledge and thereby generate greater influence. This event is not only primarily sponsored by Bybit but will also invite many companies within the industry to collaborate, working together to shape and nurture content creators in the crypto space and promote the healthy development of the industry.”

Advice for Career Women: Focus on Personal Growth

For professional women, they often talk about balancing life and work, i.e., how to be a good mother while managing their career. Since women naturally need to dedicate more time to their families, men might spend 99% of their time at work and 1% on family, but for women, this is impossible. So women may have to aim for a 50–50 balance.

“Based on this, I want to give a piece of advice: there’s no need to balance work and life, in my opinion,” Helen says, emphasizing that women must focus on their personal growth. “I think the relationship with our children is parallel — we’re all growing. I think this is the best approach. We don’t need to sacrifice one thing to achieve another in pursuit of balance. Otherwise, we might end up accomplishing neither.”

“When we’re growing, our children are watching us. They see how we overcome difficulties, solve problems, and triumph over setbacks. We are the best role models for our children.” She believes that a mother’s example will inspire her children to adopt a similar never-give-up attitude when they face difficulties and to make similar efforts to overcome them.

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