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At TEDx Forbes Park event in BGC, Bitget Chief Operating Officer Vugar Usi Zade connected childhood lessons to the company’s ongoing education programs. His talk, “The Next Billion Minds: Why Blockchain Education Matters More Than Blockchain Itself,” argued that literacy and discipline matter more than hype around price charts.
He sat down with interviewers including BitPinas to discuss his talk as well as the next steps for the global company.
Childhood Lessons and Discipline
Reflecting on his early years, when his parents would pay him to write book reports in exchange for him not going outside, Zade said his book reports were never about the stories themselves but about training discipline.
“Discipline is very important, especially if you’re investing,” he told BitPinas. “Dollar-cost averaging, saving a certain amount every month, these habits build wealth that can improve not just your life but the lives of your children and generations after.”
That mindset, he explained, is the same principle behind Bitget’s push for blockchain education:
Blockchain for Her: Funding and Training
Now in its second year, Blockchain4Her has already committed over $150,000 to young startups. Zade said the exchange’s most ambitious step this year is its partnership with UNICEF. “We are planning to deliver education to 300 girls in eight countries and help them build apps,” he said.
For Zade, this work is about preparing future entrepreneurs and technologists, not just token traders:
“These initiatives are very important to educate the next generation of financiers, builders, and entrepreneurs who will help us reimagine the future of finance.”
University Partnerships
Bitget has also partnered with 17 universities worldwide, including UCLA, Harvard, and University College London. “We not only look into how to promote web3 initiatives, but we do deep fundamental research, from economics to applied economics,” Zade explained.
These academic links, he argued, are essential to build credibility for blockchain and to help students apply financial concepts in real contexts.
The initiatives form part of a $10 million, five-year commitment for Blockchain4Youth, but Zade said he expects the programs to last beyond the set timeline. “As long as Bitget is standing strong and growing, we’ll be keeping our promise to give back to society,” he said.
Building Bitget Wallet in a Bear Market
The same philosophy of discipline guided Bitget’s decision to back a decentralized wallet at a time when other companies were cutting back. “We invested $30 million to develop BitKeep Wallet, which later rebranded to Bitget Wallet, right in the middle of the bear market,” Zade said.
That move has since paid off. The wallet has become the most downloaded globally, serving 80 million customers and processing $12 billion in daily swap volume. “Our thinking is how to bridge web2 to web3, but also how to bridge centralized finance and decentralized finance,” he said.
Zade pointed out features that reflect lessons learned from its exchange business, such as paying gas fees in stablecoins instead of needing a chain’s native token. For him, this is how the company makes DeFi more practical and accessible.
Closing his talk and the interview, Zade returned to the same lesson he learned as a child: once you master self-discipline, you can apply it to any field. For him, blockchain education is not about technology for its own sake, but about giving young people the tools and mindset to build with purpose.
This article is published on BitPinas: Bitget COO Vugar Usi Zade on Discipline, Blockchain4Her, and Training the Next Billion Minds
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