Gracy Chen doesn’t want to run just a crypto exchange any more.

The chief executive of Bitget – the sixth-biggest exchange by trading volume, per tracker CoinMarketCap – says institutional clients increasingly want to trade stocks, commodities and crypto together, use equities as collateral, and keep more of their assets on a single platform.

But there is another reason she is pushing beyond digital tokens: She thinks the old crypto trading business is getting worse.

“For nearly a year now, liquidity is not coming back, and I don’t see it coming back,” the Hong Kong-based Chen said. “That’s why we don’t want to be just a crypto exchange. I don’t want to just compete with Binance – we…