The Business of Clarity: At OKX Singapore, Gracie Lin leads a quiet but firm revolution

Gracie Lin was supposed to be born earlier. Her mother would tell this story throughout her childhood — how her daughter clung to the womb until Singapore’s National Day, as if waiting for the right symbolic moment to enter the world. 

“My mum would always say I stuck around and refused to come out. And I’d think, okay, maybe that must mean something. Maybe it doesn’t. But I grew up with that story, and to me it became this idea of, what can I do for Singapore? I’m a National Day baby, a Singapore baby — what can I do for the country? That’s always been at the back of my mind.”

Today, as the Chief Executive of OKX Singapore — one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges — Lin finds herself in the unusual position of answering that childhood question. She is building Singapore’s digital asset infrastructure, helping to establish the city-state as a global hub for an industry that most of the world still regards with suspicion. 

It is, by any measure, an unlikely trajectory for someone who spent the first decade of her career as a traditional finance regulator and economist.

But then again, Lin has always been drawn to the spaces between certainties. Even as a child growing up in a Buddhist household in western Singapore, she was contemplating questions that worried her parents. 

“I was very curious about the Buddha, about what motivated him. I read up a lot, even as a child. My reflections then — and keep in mind these were a kid’s reflections — were about how he felt so strongly about people suffering that he went out to find answers. That really affected me. I thought a lot about why humans had to go through so much suffering, why even animals and living things had to suffer, and what I could possibly do to help.”

Her father, pragmatic as he was, would counsel her to focus on what she could control. Her mother provided the emotional pillar. But the questions remained, evolving into a worldview that would later prove remarkably suited to navigating an industry built on promises of financial revolution while plagued by spectacular failures.

When crypto evangelists speak of their industry, they often deploy the language of true believers — blockchain will democratise finance, eliminate intermediaries, bank the unbanked. When sceptics respond, they point to the endless parade of scams, the environmental costs, the volatility that renders digital currencies useless as actual money. 

Lin occupies a different space entirely, one that acknowledges both the technology’s potential and its very real limitations. “I see the potential. I see the areas that need improvement. And I also see how those improvements sometimes end up bringing what was meant to be a new alternative closer to what the original state of the world was.”

This philosophical positioning — what she calls finding balance — stems from an unusual educational path that refused to choose sides. In secondary school, faced with the binary choice between arts and sciences, she chose both: triple humanities, double science, and double mathematics. Junior college presented the same dilemma. “Again, when asked to choose between science and humanities, I couldn’t bring myself to. So I did physics, literature, math and economics. So still 50/50, yes,” Lin recounts.

Economics ultimately won because it offered synthesis rather than specialisation. “I really enjoy economics. I feel like it’s both. It felt like everything was a good blend — the human condition, human stories, history, how things came to be, why people are the way they are — as well as the more mathematical, analytical, theoretical parts that I like about science and math.”

This integrated approach served her well during her early career at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, where she worked on foreign exchange intervention and money market operations. “By the time the 2008 global financial crisis rolled around, I was already on the markets desk, doing FX intervention — Sing dollar operations, Sing dollar FX intervention to keep the dollar stable, money markets to keep the banking system working. So I was honestly too busy to really think about my ‘why’.”

The reckoning came later, when she had time to process what had happened to ordinary people caught in the aftermath. “What hurt me after that was seeing that actually Main Street was the one that really got hit. And I think they didn’t really recover. The economy, the base of it, got hit so badly. And when the economy gets hit, it’s the people — your end customer, the man on the street, the shopkeeper — everybody gets hit, because of some risks that were taken in the financial sector.”

The crisis crystallised something important: financial systems, however well-intentioned, could inflict tremendous suffering when risk management failed. “That was what struck me. I wasn’t cynical, but it hit me how bad things can get when some of these risks are not managed properly.”

Trust as the new currency

From MAS, Lin moved to Grab, where she spent six years as an economist and later head of strategy. “Me and my team were using economic theory, data science, behavioural science to figure out how to make that marketplace operate as efficiently as possible.” 

It was work that directly addressed the financial inclusion challenges she had first encountered in traditional banking: serving people who were “unbanked not because they’re bad actors, but because banks don’t think they’re valuable enough to serve.”

Grab’s financial services division was explicitly focused on the underbanked and unbanked, offering micro-loans to people without traditional credit histories. The parallels to crypto’s original promise weren’t lost on her. “You want to be able to give them that. You want to provide micro loans to people in the community who can’t get loans because they don’t have enough credit history or a good credit history. It’s not their fault they’re poor.”

By the time Lin was considering her next career move, crypto had survived its latest winter. The spectacular collapse of FTX and the imprisonment of Sam Bankman-Fried had seemingly confirmed every sceptic’s warnings about the industry. 

But when she began conversations with OKX in early 2024, she discovered something unexpected: “It wasn’t that everything just stopped. The noise stopped, the headlines, the flashy stuff. It was easy to think the industry had just died. But when I started talking to OKX, I realised that in those years the builders were still there, quietly building.”

This distinction between the builders and the noise makers has become central to Lin’s understanding of crypto’s evolution. “There’s a difference between the people doing the work and the headlines. It’s not about the parties, it’s about the technology. The largest groups of people at OKX are engineers and product managers.”

What convinced her to eventually leave Grab — a decision she describes as quite difficult — was the realisation that crypto was entering a new phase of institutional adoption. OKX had already applied for a licence from MAS and had hundreds of employees in Singapore. Major traditional finance firms were launching Bitcoin ETFs. “I felt quite proud that Singapore had become a hub for something that is clearly going to be the future.”

Lin’s perspective on crypto’s mainstream adoption is notably measured. She points to the launch of Bitcoin ETFs as a watershed moment, when “people around me started to think, okay, maybe there is some long-term path here, so let’s figure out what it is.” 

But she also recognises that mainstream acceptance comes with constraints that may ultimately make digital assets look more like traditional financial instruments. “In the end there’s going to be convergence. That’s the natural evolution of new technologies and new areas.”

This convergence extends to the personalities leading crypto companies. Lin frequently encounters surprise at her background — traditional finance, regulatory experience, a measured approach to the technology’s potential. 

“I often get comments about how I’m an unlikely leader for the space. Maybe that’s because people still expect a certain type of crypto bro. First, I’m not a bro. And second, my background is much more traditional.”

But she believes the industry is moving beyond its personality-driven origins toward something more sustainable. The early narrative “tends to revolve a lot around individuals. And these individuals tend to be a certain kind of leader. They have these really big visions, bold visions, they’re trying to change things, do big things.” 

The problem, as crypto’s history has repeatedly demonstrated, is that “when too much is built around one person, or one person’s vision. That’s when things start to fall apart, especially if there isn’t enough of a system around it to keep things safe, secure, sustainable for the long term.”

At OKX Singapore, Lin is deliberately building systems rather than relying on individual charisma. “Trust is a long-term priority for us. Don’t trust us because I am balanced, or because I was from MAS. Like I said earlier, when something is built around an individual, it doesn’t last. It has to be built around a system.”

Infrastructure for inclusion

This systematic approach extends to her vision for the industry’s future. Rather than viewing crypto as a revolutionary alternative to traditional finance, she sees it as part of an evolving financial infrastructure that will ultimately serve the same fundamental needs more efficiently. 

For the genuinely unbanked, “crypto still serves a role today. You can clear KYC, you pass, because there’s nothing bad about your history. But unlike banks, there’s no minimum deposit size, no penalty for not keeping a minimum balance. You don’t need an ATM outside your house to access your cash.”

Lin’s role at OKX Singapore — officially Chief Executive, though she describes herself more simply as someone “building a digital assets platform that provides access to digital assets for anyone in Singapore who wants to access it in a safe, secure, and responsible way” — carries weight beyond the company itself. 

As she acknowledges, “because we are a licensed exchange in Singapore, and we’re licensed by MAS, and we’re a big global player — a big regional player, quite prominent in Singapore as well — it comes with a certain level of profile.”

The responsibility is both corporate and cultural. “If you agree that Singapore is seen as the regional hub for crypto, then whatever OKX Singapore does here is going to reflect on the state of crypto in Asia.”

This broader responsibility aligns with the question that has followed Lin since childhood: what can she do for Singapore? The answer, it seems, involves building the infrastructure for a financial system that could serve people previously excluded from traditional banking while maintaining the regulatory standards that have made Singapore a trusted financial centre.

The challenge, as Lin sees it, is achieving industry-wide coordination around these standards. “One of the things that came up in the discussion is that there’s still no consistent standard across the sector. The big players are all trying to address the same problems and build something long-lasting, secure, stable, something people can trust and rely on. But we’re doing it in slightly different ways.”

Unlike traditional banking, where systems and practices have been established over centuries, crypto companies are still figuring out best practices in real time. “What still needs to be done is for the serious players in the space to come together and set a high-level standard for the industry. There needs to be coordination, sharing, collaboration.”

Pragmatism over maximalism

This collaborative vision extends beyond the industry itself to include regulators, government agencies, and the broader public. It represents a marked departure from crypto’s libertarian origins, which viewed government oversight as an impediment to innovation. 

For Lin, regulatory engagement is essential to building something that will last. “Regulators are coming together to figure out what needs to be in place to make this a long-term thing. So I think it bodes well for the future of the industry.”

The convergence she anticipates won’t eliminate crypto’s distinctive features, but it will embed them within a broader financial ecosystem that serves real human needs rather than speculative fantasies. This more prosaic vision may disappoint crypto maximalists, but it represents something more valuable: the maturation of a technology that could genuinely improve how people access and use financial services.

Lin’s path from Buddhist-influenced child questioning human suffering to crypto executive building financial infrastructure suggests that technology’s highest purpose may be its most mundane: reducing the everyday frictions that prevent people from flourishing. 

“I like to believe — and I think every generation believes this — that there are enough people trying to further the pockets of technology and innovation that will bring benefits to the world.”

Her faith in technology’s potential is tempered by recognition of its limitations. “I feel like technology has the potential to solve a lot of problems. So even though there are a lot of problems in the world today — big problems, and those problems make me sad — I still feel hopeful because we’ve made such huge leaps and bounds in technology.”

This hope, rooted in careful observation rather than blind optimism, represents a more sustainable foundation for crypto’s future than the revolutionary rhetoric that has dominated its discourse. Lin’s approach suggests that the industry’s greatest contribution may not be disrupting traditional finance but extending its reach to people who have been systematically excluded from its benefits.

Standing at the intersection of regulation and innovation, East and West, traditional finance and digital assets, Lin embodies the kind of thoughtful leadership that crypto has long needed but rarely celebrated. Her work at OKX Singapore is an attempt to prove that technology can serve human flourishing without abandoning the institutional safeguards that protect the vulnerable from exploitation.

In a world increasingly divided between technological optimists and pessimists, Lin occupies a third position: that of the pragmatic builder, focused on creating systems that work for real people facing real problems. It’s a quieter kind of revolution, one measured in expanded access rather than disrupted industries, in institutional trust rather than individual charisma.

Perhaps that’s what being born on National Day really means — not just serving Singapore, but embodying its particular genius for finding practical solutions to complex challenges. In Lin’s hands, crypto’s future looks less like a radical break from the past and more like its thoughtful evolution, building bridges rather than burning them down.