How Hyperliquid Unlocks 24/7 Markets | Jake Chervinsky & MC Lader

But I think we're at the very beginning of the hockey stick for decentralized perpetuals. And I think that perps will basically take over the derivatives markets and DeFi will take over finance. So when you add those two things together, I do think Hyperliquid has the promise to become not just the most successful crypto project of, you know, our generation, but the most successful financial product of our generation.

Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. All right, welcome back everyone. I'm very, very excited to have this episode. Um, Jake is a longtime friend of the pod. He's been at kind been here a couple times talking about regulatory stuff. MC, you are new to Empire, but also really excited to have you on. Why don't you guys introduce yourselves? Uh, I'll start. Jake is the now CEO of Hyperliquid Policy Center. We're going to be talking a lot about, you know, advocacy for DeFi on the Hill. Um, and MC, you're founder, CEO of Native Markets. So welcome to the show, guys. Why don't you give you a quick introduction and then we'll set up the discussion.

Um, thanks for having me. Excited to be here for the first time. I'm MC Lader, founder and CEO of Native Markets, which is building the Hyperliquid Alliance stablecoin USDH. Um, before that, I was president and CEO of Uniswap Labs for 4 years. In 2021, um, right after DeFi summer, through lots of DeFi policy challenges, um, and a lot of growth, and I started digital assets at BlackRock, bought Bitcoin 2011, was a special situations trader and investor at Goldman Sachs in the financial crisis, which is what ignited my interest in DeFi and blockchain.

Awesome. And I'm Jake Chervinsky. It's a pleasure to be back. I feel like I have a new job every time I talk to you, Santi. Uh, I am Chief Executive Officer for the Hyperliquid Policy Center. And as a quick background, I was a lawyer in, uh, private practice for quite a long time doing regulatory compliance and government enforcement defense. I went all the way down the DeFi rabbit hole starting in 2019 as general counsel for Compound Labs, where I helped to design the Compound governance token and decentralize the Compound protocol. Spent a couple years as Chief Policy Officer for the Blockchain Association, which is our industry's main trade group in DC. Then spent a couple of years as Chief Legal Officer for Variant, an early-stage venture firm, and now very pleased to be back in the policy world full-time and working on behalf of the Hyperliquid ecosystem.

Yeah, well, look, we've talked a lot about Hyperliquid, obviously, um, It's been pretty interesting, uh, since the, uh, Iran situation blowing up. Like, a lot of people, I think, in TradFi starting to say, oh gosh, like, there's this— there's these markets that exist over the weekend, uh, and, and we can track oil, and that's super interesting as an oracle. Uh, I've always felt that TradFi has used Bitcoin to, to like hedge and, and as a risk barometer. Uh, but I'm curious, like, MC, I mean, you, you come from, uh, you know, what do your friends at Goldman special say? It's like, are they talking about Hyperliquid? Is this something that computes? Are Are hedge fund guys like paying attention or is it still mostly crypto natives that are just, uh, you know, punting oil? 'Cause they, they see Stan Druckenmiller talk about copper and they want to long the shit out of it.

Um, I think TradFi, uh, folks, investors are definitely paying attention. They may not be using it, they may not be actually using the chain, the product, trading the markets. Uh, but that Bloomberg, the Bloomberg articles and coverage, uh, from week before last, uh, were sent to me by people from all across my career and network who don't talk about crypto. Um, saying like, oh my gosh, are these your markets? Are these, Yeah, this is what, this is what, you know, you're working on talking about. So I think that like 24/7 markets, price discovery, perps also as like an instrument and a product are getting a lot of attention from both like from everyone from HFT shops to individual hedge funds and then tons of people who are just interested for their personal account, their PA. So yeah, I think it's a shift and look, we've all been in crypto for a long time. This, that is new, right? It's, and it's also more concrete and actionable than, uh, like LinkedIn posts about the future of tokenization, which are also, uh, driven by a lot of potential possibility and real developments. But I think like something you can actually do, markets you can actually participate in that expand beyond crypto as an asset class is happening.

Yeah. Jake, before I go to you, I mean, just to give people some context, like RWA angle is interesting, right? I think it was Hip3 that opened up markets around like gold, crude oil, silver, I think copper too. Uh, now it's in certain days, it's like almost 30% of the volume. Um, on the weekends we've seen pretty interesting spikes. Why, why haven't, why haven't your folks in TradFi started using Hyperliquid? Like when you go talk to them, like they're paying attention to it, maybe as an oracle, but they're not using it. Why is that?

It's not all across the board. I mean, there are, there are serious trading firms that are trading on Hyperliquid. Um, uh, so there are kind of global trading firms that are, that are trading on Hyperliquid. Um, I think that part of what make— what does make it appealing is that you just need stablecoins and a price to create these markets and get started, right? So if you think about the trajectory of real-world assets and tokenization, there's a lot of wood to chop, um, between what's possible today and having, um, what we think of as like the full stack of an asset on-chain. So this is kind of a starting point. Um, I think part of what is, um, a barrier for those who are new is honestly a lot of it's still just the user experience. Right? If you're not a professional trading firm that is like bothering to set up your own operations and like instrumentation, then, uh, it's a little bit unfamiliar. And if you aren't already trading crypto, similarly. Um, and then I think a lot of the remaining questions about policy that I think are going to shift over the next year, and, and Jake will drive so much of that, um, also kind of leave some questions in people's minds.

Yeah. Well, just to give people context, both of you guys have fought 3-letter agencies, I think, in your prior roles. Um, Jake, uh, maybe over to you, like, you, you've, you've Like, give us an insight into the policy side, like what drove your decision to lead this initiative from Hyperliquid, and what are you seeing on the ground?

Yeah, sure. And I'll start by answering part of your last question, which is one reason why financial institutions aren't using Hyperliquid, at least from the United States, is that it's not lawful in the United States to trade derivatives off exchange in a DeFi protocol like Hyperliquid, right? So this is a just a factor of how the Commodity Exchange Act, which is the law that the CFTC enforces, operates, which is it requires basically all derivatives to trade on a centralized exchange that goes in and registers with the CFTC as a designated contract market or otherwise. And it requires most people to use some type of broker, like a futures commission merchant or an introducing broker, in order to access the market. And this just fundamentally doesn't work for DeFi. So this is why, in part, I wanted to get back into the policy fight, because to me, hyperliquid really is the promise of DeFi come true. You know, I've been working in this space for a number of years, and I was always looking for a product that people would want to use, not because they are ideologically aligned with, you know, the crypto anarchist libertarian ideals of the early Bitcoiners, although, you know, certainly want those folks to use these products as well, but to have a product where people want to use it because it's just fundamentally better than what TradFi can offer. And that, I think, is hyper liquid. And so the question is, how do we sync up policies so that the most number of people in the world can benefit from that technology? And that's challenge that we have to take on in Washington and an opportunity that we have right now, given the leadership of those three-letter agencies and four-letter agencies in the CFTC, who now understand the opportunity in crypto and want to update laws and regulations so that people can use the technology.

Yeah, I think I've heard you say, like, look, perps are pretty interesting, novel instruments, um, and arguably superior to, like, futures and options for many use cases. But like, for a listener that comes in and hears that and says, I have no understanding what perps are, like, can you just like give us a 101 on why that is and what you're seeing, maybe from a, from a policy perspective, or like from a, from a, like, why is this instrument superior to futures or options?

Yeah, so a couple reasons. Um, but first I'll just say a perp is a superior financial product to a future or an option for basically all ordinary traders, retail traders, who don't want to have to deal with the complexity of futures and options. First of all, futures and options are very difficult to price, right? They depart from the price of the underlying asset in somewhat complicated ways. They also have inefficiencies built into them. You have to roll futures as they expire if you want to keep the position open. For options, you have to think about how much leverage you're taking on and all of the Greeks, which I won't even try to begin explaining because for most people, there's just no reason for them to try to understand how options are priced and how the price price changes over time. Perps are a very simple product. They are designed to essentially perfectly track the value of the underlying asset without departing very much at all, and they allow people to get access to the economic exposure of that underlying asset also without having to figure out buying and maybe custodying the spot asset itself. And they also allow people to take on leverage, which, you know, for, for many people is something that they need or want to do in a very safe and responsible way, even though there may be other people who are doing that in a, in a less safer or less responsible way. So perps really are a fundamentally better derivative than those other types of derivatives that are available right now through those regulated centralized exchanges that are up and running in the US. The other part of it is that DeFi is better underlying infrastructure than TradFi, right? DeFi itself improves cost, improves speed, improves resilience and reliability for people who want to access the system, who now don't have to deal with the additional fees of intermediaries and the counterparty risk of dealing with, with the types of service providers that they have to rely on. So when you add these two innovations together, right, the innovation of the perpetual derivative with the innovation of DeFi, what you get is a fundamentally better financial system that is not just better for the individual trader, but is frankly an upgrade for the entire global financial system and global trade, which depends on the derivatives markets being very deep, very liquid, and very efficient.

Yeah. MC, I want to go to you, but I guess when I hear you say these are superior instruments, you know, we've been in crypto long enough to understand how interesting these are. But when we go back to, you know, when the protocol was stress-tested back in October and you had the ADL, you know, to me that was like, I think it was the first time, um, you know, hyperliquids like ADL kicked in, um, and you could argue like some of the traders like just got closed out of their profitable positions and You know, some people were just obviously caught off guard there, and you could argue all day long whether it was right or not. I mean, the protocol stayed solvent, so it's still, you know, it worked. But I think part of my appreciation, like, on the regulatory side is consumer protection. And I think that's obviously something regulators really care about. And it's always been one of those things where, like, look, crypto is a very volatile asset class. A lot of these things, traders just come in here and click and don't really read the fine print. And that's not a problem of crypto, by the way, but just crypto gets scrutinized much more because, you know, for, for a million reasons that we don't have to go into this pod. How do you balance the user experience and demand with proper guardrails, um, around leverage and around ADL and around like other limits that, uh, strike that balance? Or is your position just like, let's be totally capitalist and laissez-faire and just like let animal spirits run amok? MC, you want to go? Jake? Yeah, I mean, for both of you guys, because obviously from both sides you guys are having to think about this. I'm, I'm, uh, so curious to get your—

I mean, look, I— that's not like an area that— it's an area that Jake in the Policy Center will have to kind of weigh in on and be working on with the Hyperliquid team, right? How they think about ADL, consumer protection, how DeFi intersects with, um, with regulation around the world. I can say from my perspective broadly on DeFi, like, my view, and especially at Uniswap, was that like if you're building If you're building the best product, you want, you wanna retain your users, you want your users to grow. You don't want them to churn out because they're losing money or they lose trust or faith in how the system works, even if it was because of their own choices that they had a bad outcome. And so I think that like the best protocols teams should build and over time proven to build for the best user outcomes. And that includes what we think of as consumer protection. So like, do people know the decisions that they're making when they make them? Is it transparent kind of where you have risk? So, look, I think that there's still room for like research, evolution, experimentation, and like how these systems work. And I think that now what I'm excited about this year is that like there's going to be an update of all these, all this financial regulation and financial infrastructure because we've had this kind of like dam break of the last year or so of like really no kind of like collaborative progress in introducing DeFi into either the regulatory framework or into, um, like traditional financial system and like financial services at scale. That's changing now. And so I think a lot of this stuff will start to get worked out. And there are like professors at top universities around the world who are now writing papers about ADL and about how to think about what is there to be, what is there to learn from the systems, um, that, that, uh, users are more used to. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I mean, I think MC totally nailed it and, you know, credit to her for, you know, building exactly the types of, of products that she believes in and, and just described at Native Markets. I guess all I will add is to say, for me, the key to consumer protection is consumer choice, right? There is no such thing as consumer protection if the government is just telling people what they are and are not allowed to use. What we want is a robust market of competing products that give the consumer the choice to pick what works best for them. For some people, that's not going to be a system that subjects them to the risk of ADL, but for other people it is. And what matters there is making sure they understand exactly what they are getting themselves into at the front end. Right. And that is, that is the beauty of DeFi in the first place is understanding what risks you are subject to so that if that risk materializes, you're not surprised by it. And I think it's very clear, you know, this is no secret that the way that Hyperliquid ensures its solvency is through ADL, which means that people who are making money on a trade might not make as much money as they possibly could on that trade or as much as they could in a different venue. And to me, that is a totally fine and desirable trade-off to ensure the solvency of the protocol, because the worst thing that happens from a consumer protection standpoint is people who are taking very limited risk in a protocol end up suffering losses because of some other risk created somewhere else in the system. And I think it's actually been quite amazing to see that ADL, even though it is a fairly new and nascent innovation and sort of new concept and way to manage risk in a system, has been working really well, right? It has managed to ensure the solvency of the protocol. It's not to say it can't be improved. Surely over the, you know, months and years it will be improved. But I think it would be a mistake to say this isn't how it's always worked in the past, and therefore, you know, we should throw this out in the name of consumer protection by maintaining the status quo.

Yeah, certainly you can put to like, uh, if you're very profitable in a casino, they'll kick you out. Um, but, uh, I think we can all agree in a perfectly— in a transparent system like DeFi, you at least can assess counterparty risk in real time as these things are trickling in. And like anyone that went through 2008 or has seen the picture, you know, you don't have a good understanding of counterparty risk. You don't have transparency into the solvency of your counter— like Bear Stearns or Lehman. And I think at least I definitely agree with you. So, so what is the— just focusing a little bit on the policy side, uh, I do hear you. Like, we had Rebecca on a couple weeks ago talking about the Clarity Act and the state of that. Not a lot was discussed around DeFi, but give us more insight into the state of DeFi regulation And what can we expect, uh, over the next, you know, 1 or 2 years in this crypto-friendly administration?

Sure. Well, uh, you know, not surprised you didn't get deep into DeFi in talking about the Clarity Act because the Clarity Act isn't about DeFi, right? The Clarity Act is about centralized spot markets and specifically it's about how do we properly regulate the issuer of a new digital asset, right? Someone who is creating and selling a digital asset in an ICO or something like that. And then how do we regulate the secondary markets, right? The centralized exchanges and custodians and brokers who are in some way involved in trading in that asset. The bill is not meant to regulate DeFi. It's just far too early still now for us to understand where are the risks in DeFi, how do we address them through proper regulation in the form of federal statute in a way that is very unlikely to change for the next 100 years, right? If we're going to pass a market structure bill, just like the securities laws from the 1930s, We're going to be stuck with this thing for a really long time, so we've got to make sure we get it right. So what we're trying to do in the Clarity Act is legislate what we really understand, which is what is the risk of a centralized exchange that has custody of its users' funds and is maintaining a market in a very traditional sense. What we're not trying to do is regulate software developers who are building non-custodial protocols. And right now, that is the sort of key, uh, challenge getting the Clarity Act across the line in the Senate, among a few other issues that are still being worked out, like stablecoin yield, for example. A main question is, are we going to put into statute protections for developers of non-custodial software so that they are not misclassified as money transmitters that would be required to KYC users, something they are fundamentally incapable of doing on a pseudonymous blockchain, and to protect them from being misclassified as securities or commodity derivatives intermediaries forcing them to perform functions that, again, they are not capable of doing because they do not have the same level of control over smart contracts as a traditional intermediary does in the traditional financial system. This is also getting worked out in the Senate. I think it's absolutely crucial that we ensure that those protections are in place because there is no crypto market structure if there's no useful crypto in the world. And in my view, there's no useful crypto in the world if we don't protect DeFi. So that's a key issue that's getting worked out in the bill right now.

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Yeah. So I, I left Uniswap last summer to start Native Markets because I felt like there was this convergence happening that we are all experiencing now between, uh, DeFi, um, which I, as Jake said it so well, like is about ultimately to me, like more open, uh, competitive and, and expensive Transparent Financial Services. It's just convergence between DeFi, fintech, CeFi, and TradFi. And it was kind of like all going to happen. And it was an opportunity to start a stablecoin company or a new sort of like truly on-chain native from day one. What you might think of as almost a financial institution, but doesn't look or feel anything like one. That's building products on-chain, on DeFi, taking advantage of that. And that sort of like lower cost that that enables. And so I had gotten to know Hyperledger Infrastructure from a competitive perspective, just being like, what is going on over there? How is this growing so fast? Why is it getting so much adoption? Like, what should we, you know, my prior company be doing to kind of make sure that we are attracting, retaining users? And was just incredibly impressed with how performant the chain was. And if I, you know, reflect on when I started digital assets at BlackRock in 2015, and so much of what we wanted to build then still hasn't materialized and is only just now on the horizon because blockchains have been too slow, too expensive, um, and have had a lot of market structure challenges. And so Hyperliquidized fast, super fast, um, no network fees subsidized by the trading fees, so free transfers, um, uh, cheap overall. And, um, and having real liquidity and a clear market structure was incredibly compelling. So I was interested in building on Hyperliquid. That's why I decided to build on it. Um, the process you're talking about for USDH, the ticker— so the Hyperliquid team created a competitive RFP process to get USTH ticker. I had just, you know, I self-funded the company. We were working in my apartment, my kitchen table. We didn't have a website. But we, that my co-founder Max was deep in the Hyperliquid community and had been wanting to build a Hyperliquid stablecoin actually for like 6 months and had tried before. And that was how I reached out to him, found him. And so he and I basically our approach, well, our competitors and the people bidding in the process had a lot of resources and a lot of other products on other chains, but we wanted to start the company specifically to build a hyper— a stablecoin for Hyperliquid and spent that week literally reaching out to any and every validator, meeting them all, talking to all the major token holders, like running it like a, a speedrun, you know, campaign basically to just say, look, this is an opportunity to bootstrap a whole new stablecoin company with a team that is like DeFi native, committed to DeFi, and will prioritize the product. Um, and so we ended up winning and I think Look, I mean, it was an incredibly intense week and process because it wasn't clear what the governance process was going to be. It wasn't clear how any of it was going to work. But I really appreciated it because I met so many more members of the Hyperledger community and ecosystem rapidly all at once in a week, right? And I was so struck by how kind of rational and committed the user base was, like the validators and also those who are, um, uh, kind of especially early adopters and really wanted, um, kind of a, a community that was like a little disillusioned by a lot of crypto so far, but still wanted to believe in something and felt like, uh, this could be a platform that pushed through a lot of what hasn't, um, led to materializing all the stuff we've hoped for for a long time.

Yeah, maybe to unpack a little bit of that, like what is the argument to have a native stablecoin when you have USDT, USDC, Um, like, why, why do you need to have like USDH in this case?

Well, at the time there wasn't another stable— there wasn't a stablecoin that was actually like minted on the chain, right? So the USDC was all bridged. Um, and like when we were launching UniChain at Uniswap, like we almost set our launch date around when we would have native stablecoins because it felt like a risk that we thought serious market participants wouldn't be comfortable with. So that for one was important. It seemed like that might, uh, that that was a, a gap. Um, the second was to share economics with the ecosystem. So we proposed that we'd share, um, half the yield, uh, which we do, um, to buy back the HYPE token. That's different from the other stablecoins that are on Hyperliquid. Um, so yeah, it's economically aligned and consistent, um, as well as like lower risk, uh, and, um, and built, designed, and designed specifically for it, specifically for perps, which as we said before, just be stablecoins and prices.

Yeah, and so it really comes down to if you're trading in and out of pairs, oil, you know, some other stuff on Hyperliquid, you go back to USDH versus USDC or some other, and if you do that, you know, if you're a long-term holder of HYPE, then you benefit because you guys are directly aligned to, you know, sharing some of the interest in buying back Hyperliquid. Is that the appeal for traders?

Yeah, basically. That's it. And then we also are— we're building out our, um, uh, we'll launch some products over the course of the next month that will make it like really easy, just like a lot easier to like, uh, mint and redeem. So we've onboarded about 100 institutions and, um, power users so far who have, uh, instant free mint redeem. So you can go from your bank to the, to the market within a couple minutes.

Um, and that is a much faster, more seamless user experience than, than you get with other I think recently, and last question, Jake, I want to let you chime in here. I believe Circle just got native deployment on the HyperEVM. And how does that, like, why would, I guess, what do the numbers show in terms of like USDH versus USDC? And like, since you've got the mandate, like, how is that? Like, what terms of liquidity volume have you guys seen? Since then?

So USDH is only supported in the HIP3 markets, spot markets. If you think— let's take a step back. So Hyperliquid is HyperEVM, which is, um, many different DeFi protocols, AMMs, um, lending and borrowing, um, uh, options. Uh, so USDH is used in all of those protocols. It's permissionless like USDC and USDT. And then, um, Hypercore has the HIP3 markets, um, and they choose one margin asset. And 7 of the 12 or so that have launched or are launching chose USDH as their margin asset. and then the core, uh, perps that are approved by the validators are, are still in USDC. Um, and then HIP4, which is forthcoming outcome markets, um, will be in, uh, in, in USDH. Uh, so today, look, I mean, today our growth has been all organic. Um, many stablecoins that are out there today are, are, um, are, you know, growing a lot of ways that are like not that sustainable, frankly, and not organic. But our growth's been all organic. It's about $90 million of TVL, just the HIP hit 3 markets.

Got it. On the regulatory side, Jake, maybe you want to chime in here before I go there.

Yeah, if you don't mind. I— and, and just to add a little bit of my experience, um, watching MC do her work and then also watching the Hyperliquid community, you know, embrace native markets, but also how the Hyperliquid community, um, has expressed sort of its vision for where it wants to go. And this, this honestly is, is one of the most important reasons why I decided I wanted to commit this next phase of my career to Hyperliquid. You know, I've been in DeFi for a really long time and I have not felt energy from a DeFi community like I have in Hyperliquid in a really long time. And I actually was involved a little bit when, you know, MC was putting forward the proposal because there was a lot of discussion in selecting the winner for the USDT ticker about regulatory compliance and who was going to be best suited to satisfy the requirements of the Genius Act. And there was frankly a lot misunderstanding in that conversation about what it meant to be Genius compliant, quote unquote, even though we still don't actually know what the rules are for the Genius Act. And so I, you know, made a few posts on Twitter about this. And it was just honestly amazing to see how, number one, people were deeply engaging with the substance of this choice. And number two, truly, this was decentralized governance in its best form. It reminded me of the very early days back in DeFi summer when decentralized governance was this bright idea that we had that we wanted to see come to fruition, and that really is the energy in the Hyperliquid community. I think it's unlike anything else in crypto today. And I also think, just to address why do we need something like USDH, in addition to the reasons that MC said, I really think that Hyperliquid is this sort of best form that we've seen of a group of unaffiliated dispersed developers, people who are not working at the same company, a decentralized group of developers developers building the same project together with the same vision for what it should become. And the way that the Hyperliquid Labs team describes this and the community does is the house of all finance. And it also reminds me of early days of Ethereum where the idea was, look, we're all building this thing. We're not building it literally together because we're not working at the same company, but we're building this grand vision of what this world's computer is going to be together. And I think that's worked to some degree with Ethereum. But I think one challenge is having sort of the same ideal of what you are driving toward. And in Hyperliquid, there is the ideal of being a blockchain that can house any type of financial activity that can be produced on a public blockchain in a permissionless and decentralized way. And it's so important to have a stablecoin built in that is mission-aligned with Hyperliquid's goals. And that's why personally, I'm, I'm really excited for Native Markets to be building USDH.

Yeah, I mean, I'm going to get to it, but like, I think Hyperliquid is not offered to US people. And, you know, I want to address maybe the elephant in the room here, which is like, how do you, how do you, like, you have this USDH stablecoin. I believe you guys don't have a US entity. Hyperliquid has no US entity. So how do you tread that line? I mean, how do you— how are you compliant? I appreciate, like, the Genius Act, like, is now law, but there's still a lot of things that need to be worked out. But, um, walk me through the— that piece. Like, you know, you have the stablecoin that is, I think, custody by BlackRock and Superstate. It's being offered to people that, uh, presumably are not in the US. Um, how does that— how does that work with the current Genius Act?

It's the same as USDC and Circle and every other stablecoin, right? So it's like you can have a product that's available globally to use around the world, but the bet— I mean, look, we put forward in the proposal that we were going to offer a Genius-ready, um, because as Jake said, the Genius rules and regulations haven't been fully written, but Genius-ready, um, stablecoin. Because our view, my view, is that like it would be important in the long run to become— to be fully regulated in the US to have massive adoption. So even if you're not being offered to US users today, then you still want to be planning for that future where, um, uh, where either there's more clarity in the US for, for perps, um, uh, but certainly that stablecoins are, are now have a regulatory regime that the US has led. So it's the same as USDC. So USDC is Genius ready as well. Um, so, uh, USDH is issued, um, by, uh, Bridge, which has money transmitter licenses and, um, has submitted for, um, the OCC has just gotten the contingent approval for the Office of the Comptroller World of Currencies licensed to be a stablecoin issuer. And then we use, as you said, the reserves are managed by BlackRock and Superstate for the on-chain portion. It's custody, but JP Morgan has access to banking rails in the US. So you can have a completely US-compliant stablecoin that is available in other countries. The barrier is US users accessing hyper liquid, the protocol and the frontend. It's kind of future-proofing, I guess, is what I would say. It's future-proofing.

Yeah. And, and maybe also just to drill down and be a little bit more precise, Hypercore, the Perps DEX, is not available to US users. But if you say Hyperliquid, you might also mean HyperEVM, which is an EVM-compatible chain with many different products, many of which, most of which are perfectly lawful for US persons to use, right? USDH, as MC was saying, is perfectly lawful on HyperEVM for anyone to use. The, the reason why Hypercore which is again the Perp DEX, is not available in the US is because of this issue that the Commodity Exchange Act does not allow derivatives to be traded off exchange. Now, that's something that we think that the CFTC has all the statutory authority that it needs to solve, but they haven't done that yet. And so for that reason, there's a geofence on the Hyperliquid front end to the DEX. But otherwise, you know, the laws are the same for Hyperliquid as they are for Ethereum and Solana. And, you know, every other public permissionless blockchain, much of that financial activity is perfectly lawful to be conducted in compliance with U.S. laws and regulations. And we're moving forward just like, you know, others are moving forward with the SEC to get tokenized securities up on-chain in a, you know, lawful and compliant way, with, you know, opening up access for Americans to trade perps on Hyperliquid as well.

Yeah, maybe a question— this is obviously And I appreciate a lot of these products, like it's not just Hyperliquid issue. It's like, so on the front end piece, um, so Hyperliquid, like that can't be used by US persons. Like, and so can you walk me through like US DH, like say that you have a per— a US person that is using US DH and HyperEVM or whatever, and then they start using Hyperliquid with a VPN or something. And you, you know that, I don't know if that's the case, like you have purview into that. Um, but presumably, like, if, if a user KYCs somewhere, you know, they're US people and they, they cuss, they have USDT in their wallet, and then you see wallet activity go in a hyper liquid, um, do you have a responsibility at that point to either censor, notify them, uh, report them? Because in that case, it's a gray area. I appreciate a lot of the stance in crypto has been like, hey, look, like, we're not going to police it. Like, the laws are the laws. We'll put a terms of service, you try to geofence it, but people find a way to work around that. Um, as we've seen, I think the three-letter agencies would go after and have a problem with that, especially well-resourced, like, well-known entities, like, you know, some of which are your prior firms. So like, what, what is the, what is the responsibility of an issuer or a protocol at that point if you know that your user is based in the US and is still using your protocol?

So, so I'm not MC's lawyer, but I am happy to take, take a first shot at that. Um, and I'm obviously not anyone's lawyer who's listening to this, so don't take any of what I'm saying as legal advice. Everyone, everyone knows the drill. But I, I will start by saying, um, there is no obligation in US law currently for a stablecoin issuer to identify the holder of a stablecoin other than at the point of minting or redeeming the asset. Right. So, and this is true for every single stablecoin issuer. There is no such requirement as end-to-end KYC for holders of stablecoins. This is something that's been proposed at some points, and it's possible that in the implementation of the Genius Act, there may be additional KYC obligations beyond just the point of minting and redeeming. But my personal view, and again, this is my personal view, not legal advice, is that it is not and should not be the obligation of a stablecoin issuer or any other market participant in crypto to surveil without a warrant the financial activities of any other person unless they are obligated to do so by law. And I'm sure that MC will tell you that she's got the best lawyers in the world, as she definitely does, and that they are absolutely responsive to requests by law enforcement. And I'm sure they're doing everything that they're asked to do. But I do not believe that it is our obligation to overcomply and to invade the privacy of people who are trying to use these decentralized, public, and permissionless financial systems. So I'll leave it there, MC. I'll, I'll let you answer that. It's a question for yourself.

Yeah, I actually have a law degree, but, uh, I'm not my own lawyer. Um, uh, so look, Circle and USDC really led the way in many ways on this. And so again, like, there are other stablecoins that are on Hyperledger with all the same considerations. So stablecoin issuers, as Jake said, um, do have some— if you want to be GNS compliant, you do have obligations. You have obligations to make sure that you're you're fully backed 1:1, that you're managing reserves in certain ways, um, and that you, um, uh, can, uh, freeze, um, uh, for compliance with the US sanctions. But you don't have an obligation, uh, to know who is holding your asset. In fact, you can't, right? Because, um, you don't, uh, you, you don't necessarily know all the information about, about wallets. And that's consistent across stablecoin issuers, including those that are Genius-ready or Genius, uh, will be Genius-compliant. So, uh, we follow all those same rules. Rules and so have that same level of compliance again. So, but I also want to add there's a lot that you could— I think USDC will expand well beyond what we think of as hyperliquid today. I mean, hyperliquid is an extremely performant, cheap chain, and there's tons of other applications for stablecoins, and not least among, you know, payments. And there's so much excitement about payments, and transfers in hyperliquid are actually free because, again, the cost of the chain is covered by the fees generated from trading. So I think there's a tremendous amount— there's a lot we can do and build with USDH that is actually well beyond perps. And again, the vast majority of— or not the vast majority, but like much of the activity today is in HyperEVM. And so it's not even actually in perps.

Yeah.

By the way, I mean, the reason I asked that question is long-time investor in DeFi, and I get asked this question by founders quite a bit. But nonetheless, I'm curious now to transition to a little bit more, maybe a lighter points on the conversation. Like, what is— I mean, both of you guys have dedicated now your careers to building on Hyperliquid. We touched on this earlier, but give us the— like, what is your view on where Hyperliquid goes over the next kind of 3 years? Obviously, you've seen a lot of activity with HIP3. But yeah, I'm just kind of curious what you— on the both— not just policy side, but also just where markets go, like markets on everything kind of thesis.

Yeah, look, I think Hyperliquid's already leading, will continue to lead in like 24/7 markets on, uh, on everything, but especially for what we think of as real-world assets. Um, and because you can have spot and derivatives essentially in the same, uh, in the same, um, surface area, that, that will be so much more effective in driving adoption of like on-chain trading and, um, and DeFi's infrastructure. So, um, I think what we, what we do to get there is we You know, in Native Markets, we're trying to build simpler user experience and also stablecoin applications. Jake's work is going to be critical in helping make sure that the benefits of DeFi and hyperliquid are represented and understood and can be adopted broadly. So yeah, I think in a couple of years, it's just going to keep growing. And I think we'll have more, certainly more builders, but most importantly, like more liquidity and more users from all over the world.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think that often in crypto, we try to come up with the next big thing. And to me, Hyperliquid is already doing the thing that is going to become absolutely massive, which is decentralized perpetual derivatives trading. I, like I said, I think perps are a fundamentally better derivative than futures and options for the vast majority, not everyone, but for the vast majority of traders. I think DeFi is a fundamentally better underlying infrastructure for finance than basically everything in TradFi. I think very, very few people are aware of the opportunity in Hyperliquid, and very few people are currently able to access it, both because of US policy, but also because of the user experience improvements that are needed, as MC was saying. But I think we're at the very beginning of the hockey stick for decentralized perpetuals, and I think that perps will basically take over the derivatives markets and DeFi will take over finance. So when you add those two things together, I do think Hyperliquid has the promise to become not just the most successful crypto project of our generation, but the most successful financial product of our generation. I think if you add to that HyperEVM, which is an open and permissionless environment for other developers to come and build their own products that benefit from being in that same environment connected to a fully on-chain central limit order book, something that we have not seen succeed in DeFi before. There's no telling what other types of financial applications will, will be invented by the random developer who no one saw coming. And so the perp stacks itself is an unbelievably massive opportunity, and then there will be other unanticipated, unexpected, amazing opportunities that flow from that as well.

Goddamn, Jake, I mean, your hyperbolic language there, but, uh, not very lawyerly, but I get it. Look, I, I want to get both of yours take on like what Jake, on the policy side, like, what will it take for Hyperliquid to, like, be available for US users? I mean, obviously, like, I was early investor in Polymarket, like, they now enter the US after many, many years of not being able to serve US customers. Um, what's it going to take for US people to be able to interact with Hyperliquid?

It's a great question. Um, I, I think it requires rulemaking first from the CFTC and then potentially from the SEC as well. And, um, without giving you all the nuance of the legal issues, As I mentioned, the Commodity Exchange Act requires at this moment derivatives for the most part to trade on centralized exchanges that can register as a designated contract market, which no DeFi protocol can do. So for starters, what we need to do is for the CFTC to write new rules that apply to on-chain markets that essentially say, here are all the risks that we were trying to address with the rules that are imposed on DCMs when they go into registration.

Register.

Here is how we can address the same underlying risks in a decentralized environment without having that same type of registration. Right? The goal is not let's just take on risk that we didn't want to take on before, because it's too bad and the opportunity in DeFi is just too great, right? That, that's not the argument. The argument is that DeFi, by virtue of its technological nature, inherently addresses many of those risks without the for imposing regulation on an intermediary. We then need to take that same concept and apply it to every other level of the tech stack. So for example, that would also apply to the provider of the frontend interface who is not acting as a traditional introducing broker or futures commission merchant. They're not taking custody of user funds. They're not exercising discretion on behalf of the user, how the user's assets should be invested. Nonetheless, it may be that there are some regulatory compliance obligations that should apply in order for the frontend provider not to be registered with the CFTC. And then what we need is an exemption from the requirement that the contract itself must trade on an exchange. Right. What we have to say is these things don't need to be on surveilled, intermediated systems in order for the regulator to have a good understanding of where the risks are. Because in this environment, a public blockchain, the regulator can just just look at the chain and see every single transaction in real time and assess the risk in that way, not by getting reports from, you know, the development team that built the protocol. So there's a package of exemptive relief that we need from the CFTC in order to open up the US market for access to DeFi perps. We then need the same thing from the SEC when it comes to equity perps, right? And as we've been talking about HIP3, equity perps, super exciting from a technical perspective, really very similar on Hyperliquid. To commodity perps, right? The main difference is just what is the reference asset underlying the perp. But in U.S. law, very different, right? The federal securities laws treat security-based swaps very differently from commodity derivatives. So we need the SEC to do that work as well.

Yeah. Um, MC, I want to get your perspective. I mean, stablecoin wars are all the these days. I mean, there's just a lot of people have strong opinions about how stablecoin, you know, who's going to dominate. What is your— I mean, you started, and at the time there was a plethora of competitors. You've been very— I think the only one that's been super focused— I mean, I guess like Tron had— I mean, USDT, like Tether, had Tron, and Tron was instrumental in, you know, USDT getting adopted. And that's why, in large part, my estimation, they've held like pretty big market share. Tether, because they've done a lot of the heavy lifting. USDC is kind of fighting back, and I think they've gotten some interesting stuff cooking. But I'm curious, what is— what's your view on stablecoins? Like, is this going to be like an oligopoly? Is this going to be a monopoly? Or is there going to just be a plethora of stablecoins? How do you compete? Is the yield going to be like— Tether obviously doesn't share yield with users. That doesn't matter. So I'm curious, like, as a builder, like, how do you see the stablecoin market evolving? Um, yeah, what gives, what gives defensibility to your protocol and, and your stablecoin versus others?

Yeah, well, first of all, it's so much fun to be building stablecoin and in stablecoins right now because it's changing so much. Like, it's changing so much and so fast. And it's like, as like a founder and a builder, it's just, it's like so energizing to build where like the industry structure, the market structure, like the rules, um, what users want, what the use cases are, like are all changing really fast all at once. And I mean, just think, as you mentioned, there's essentially a duopoly right now of two, two leading players, and they have different business models. And so that to me demonstrates the, the range of opportunity to build stablecoin businesses, right? If two leading players actually make money in different ways from somewhat different user bases, uh, and we have only just begun the potential that was unlocked when Genius passed. And now every person, or any person around the world with an internet connection and can have access to a dollar account. Um, so I think there's— but there's still a huge amount of innovation and change that has to happen to go from today's level of use case, which is really still for mostly for crypto trading, even though some others are growing, and collateral crypto markets, to the total addressable market that, you know, people talk about on Twitter and social media, uh, where, you know, any and all payment flows, uh, any and all the world's collateral can be stablecoins. There's a bunch of stuff that has to change. We need to have ways to have customizable transparency or confidentiality, right? If you think about moving different kinds of money flows and use cases, we need to— you need to address for the fact that these transactions are permanent and have some recoverability. You need to address data, the fact that data doesn't necessarily move with a stablecoin the way that it does with payments or other kinds of money movement. So anyway, that's just a handful. And then also, how do you couple it with like identity and other forms of other forms of things that ultimately achieve compliance for different kinds of actors who have different compliance obligations. So that's a lot of— those are big areas of innovation that no single player has cracked. There are now individual companies springing up to attack them, but we have to, as a field, as a collection of companies, address all of those to realize like the full potential of stablecoins. And that can be like all the world's money. So it's pretty big and it might be the most important thing was focus and focusing on a user base and a user base and an ecosystem that was going to have the right sort of had a use case that was already where they already really needed a stablecoin that was focused on designing for it, for the user, for the markets. But that was going to grow.

Yeah, I'll tell you from our perspective, like my whole thesis is I want to buy a traditional business and slap it with this technology, make it more efficient, like deeply unsexy businesses. But in our fieldwork, I think the crypto industry overestimates where stablecoins fit in, in many, many businesses. And the AI hallucinator will tell you, yeah, you can really make FX markets, like FX businesses really, really efficient. And I can tell you from our work, there's very narrow but very specific cases where a stablecoin really does wonders for a business. But I'm curious, like, on the B2B side, I think you're seeing a lot of traction. I think that's where, like, if you look at the Artemis reports, like, that's where most— or the Visa on-chain analytics reports— like, there's just a lot of really interesting stuff happening on the B2B side, treasury management side. What is like your most controversial take on stablecoins that perhaps other people just— good or bad, right? I'm just kind of curious, like, you live and breathe this 24/7, but what is the most— you hear someone talk about stablecoins, you're like, yeah, that's definitely wrong. um, or, or, or, or something that is very underappreciated that perhaps we should discuss here?

Um, I maybe two. One is that like, I think that in time it's not clear that it's, it's not clear if we'll have just Genius as the regulatory global regulatory framework. Like we might have others pop up that, um, are appropriate for different stablecoin applications. So that's part of why, uh, we built USDH. We're not, we didn't We're not pursuing becoming an issuer ourselves because it could be that as Genius rules are written and as use cases develop, there are, you know, whether it's other governments and money centers around the world that come up with other rules, I think that that's not done. That's one. And then, yeah, look, I think that the other I would say is that like many stablecoin businesses today are destroying their business at the outset. And so like, right, they're just like not— they're just trying to Um, they're assuming that power law rules from software are going to apply to what they're doing, and they're giving away everything, or they're not— they're not building sustainably. Um, and I think that that will lead to a bunch of companies that like don't necessarily have product-market fit because you can't tell. Yeah.

Jake, I want to go to you in a minute, but I've heard this criticism from TradFi folks, which is like, honestly, stablecoins— like, I get it, they're a digital receipt, but they still have a whole set of like, you know, you've seen the meme of like, like, you know, a huge complicated machine. It's like threading by like one single thing and it's very fragile. There is still risks when you talk about like stablecoins, whether the issuer, the custody of it, the, you know, depegging event, you have to trust the audit and the reserve backing. There's like a number of things that look not like impossible or not like, you know, they still make stablecoins great in many ways. Um, but I'm curious, like, say that you couldn't deploy on Hyperliquid and you had to do totally something else. Where would you be going and, and, and why?

Um, well, I think when I was like really pretty focused on this, uh, and I just was focused on it and I didn't really think about what I would do next, uh, what I would do next probably is find another, I think that you need to find a specific use case that like already has some level of adoption where being, uh, being faster, cheaper is going to make a difference. Um, I think that those will emerge with real-world assets and tokenized assets, but they don't quite exist yet. I think payments is, um, is really crowded, but you need to have a very specific kind of niche corridor use case set of users. Um, so I— yeah, I probably would have looked next at other like scaled markets and trading markets just because also that's what I'm interested in, it's my background. Um, and I think that like payments, the distribution questions and payments Um, there are other players that might have an advantage in distribution, um, a lot of incumbents.

Yeah, Jake, before I go to you, I want to double-click on something you said earlier around you feel like a lot of stablecoin issuers are destroying their business model. I think we certainly saw that in the RFP, like everyone was just willing to go to bare minimum or lose money on to win the contract, but they didn't. Um, I think like Agoras of the world and PayPal even came out of dormancy and just said, hey guys, we want to throw our hat in the ring and Um, is this a race to the bottom when it comes to stablecoin? Like, like the core business model of a stablecoin issuer, basically a lot of people are saying, look, the fee compression is very real and you just sort of have to believe the value-added services on top of that will like make up for it. But it's very much like on the come. Um, I'm curious, like, is that going to be the case that like future stablecoin, like the market just becomes more competitive? So if you have distribution or if you own a customer relationship, where you're very entrenched in an ecosystem where you have loyalty, like, that makes up for itself? But, um, or is it just the case that it will just continue to be very, very much competitive for, for just the underlying, the traditional business model of the stablecoin issuer?

Are you asking me?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you could argue, like, very much have been degrading, even though Tether has continued to maintain its dominance. Everyone else is kind of fighting for that pot that will grow for sure, but the take rate, I guess, goes down and you're sharing the interest and yeah.

But I think it should, like, I mean, so there's two different ways. There's a way to say the take rate goes down and the way that it should because of competition. And then there's also where are, where are, where are teams paying to grow in a way that is like really unsustainable, right? And those are two different things.

Things.

And that was what I was trying to say when you asked me, um, some of my takes, is that I think you're seeing a lot of players who are trying to just achieve a certain level of distribution and are paying for people who don't really actually want their stablecoin, don't really want to use it, right? And so, um, I don't think that will last. Um, but I think that like, yeah, you have to, you have to, um, get to a certain level of scale and outpace your growth or keep your operations extremely efficient. Um, but you can do that, right? Uh, and as you said, there are more, a little more operations, and there's certainly more risk management in, uh, launching and running a stablecoin. Than maybe was broadly recognized in the market in like the fall when many, many companies all want to launch their own stablecoins. But I think that's being digested and internalized quite quickly. And so, you know, many of the branded stablecoins haven't gotten tremendous, haven't gotten that much adoption and are, I think, not necessarily going to pay for themselves. So, look, I think we'll see these sort of like closed-loop stablecoins that will work as driving efficiency or driving incremental revenue. For fintech businesses or for financial institutions. I think that we'll see some that have a very specific focus, a distribution focus, like we do, like US DH does. And then a lot of what you said where you said that, you know, you guys are integrating stablecoins or blockchain and crypto in more traditional businesses and see the limitations of the use case. That's part of what I was trying to get at when I said there's actually a lot of innovation that has to happen to make stablecoins like appropriate as the solution for a lot of money movement or uses of dollars. Today.

Yeah, Jake, you've been quiet for a while, and that's my fault, but I'm curious, like, as we round up the, the app, like, um, anything on the policy side that is top of mind or you're really excited about or that we haven't discussed?

Um, I, uh, am happy to be quiet, and, and, you know, I'm not an expert on stablecoins, and I love listening to people who know more than me talk about them, um, because I do think that they're the first obvious use case for crypto, and I do think that we underestimate, as I said before, how much activity will move on-chain and just how obvious it is that, you know, these assets will get used. The business model, of course, is a different matter. I think to that point, we're underestimating how much of the financial market will move on-chain thanks to the work that the SEC has been doing over the last year. So, you know, Chair Atkins and the Crypto Task Force for the last year or so have been working on Project Crypto. They've been very explicit that the goal of Project Crypto is to move the financial markets on-chain. Blockchain, and they've been working on a number of different priorities, but two that I think are worth calling out that hopefully we'll see come to fruition fairly soon. One is around token taxonomy, so some sort of safe harbor or distinction between what types of assets are securities under the Howey Test, something that thankfully we've not had to talk about as much as we used to over the last year, and which of them are commodities properly within the CFTC's jurisdiction over the spot markets under their anti-fraud and anti-manipulation authority. The second is around tokenized securities. So how are we going to move actual securities on-chain in a meaningful way? And my view, you know, always has been, as I've said, that DeFi and, you know, on-chain finance is just fundamentally better in so many ways than the traditional securities market, especially the infrastructure developed for a pre-digital era, which is still sort of, you know, stuck with us in the form of many legacy incumbents that slow down the system and, you know, extract value from the system in a way that is not additive. I think that this SEC really wants to upgrade the financial system in that way. And hopefully in the near term, we're going to see an innovation exemption or some other type of exemptive relief or rulemaking or guidance from the SEC that really starts to allow tokenized securities and other assets like that to thrive on-chain. And I think that'll be very exciting for all of us.

Yeah, maybe last question. I mean, I think there's been obviously a lot of conversation and controversy around the Clarity Act. Coinbase has stirred up the pot in many ways. And does that worry you? Like, obviously there's a lot of willingness from this administration, night and day from prior administration. Um, two questions. One, like, is the Clarity Act, uh, like, are we exhausting some sort of goodwill by, like, not passing that or making it more difficult? In your conversation with regulators, like, are they, um, more— like, are they losing patience?

Or—

and the second question is, what happens after this administration?

Administration?

Because there's a lot of talk around, hey, look, uh, if, if you have a different administration, maybe a different party, um, are they going to try to unwind or just go back to the prior model? Is that possible? Like, how do you see that risk, uh, in the case where, like, you know, you have a very different administration?

Um, I'll say a few things. I'll start by saying Everyone wants to get market structure legislation done. We've been working on this, I mean, for the last year, but honestly for many, many years, right? This is probably the 6th time that I've worked on a market structure bill going back to the— I can give you all the names of all the market structure bills that I've worked on over the years, right? So everyone wants to get this done. I don't think that the regulators, the CFTC and the SEC, are sitting around waiting for the bill to get done. I think they, you know, they would love to have the added authority they would get from the bill, but they have plenty of authority now and a ton of work to do this year and next year and the year after that. So I don't think they're sitting around waiting for a bill to get done, feeling put out because Congress hasn't gotten the bill done yet. I'll also say, um, as much as I want to get a bill done, it needs to be a good bill, right? And I've said this before and I'll say it again, it is better for us to have no market structure bill than a bad bill that makes the situation worse for us. And when we think about something like stablecoin yield, for example, not necessarily the, the issue that is closest to the work that I'm doing, but I think it's very important that the holders of stablecoins be able to earn yields on those stablecoins. And I think there is no good reason to prevent that other than the existing banking system wants to maintain a regulatory regulatory moat to protect their business model against innovation. And I don't think that we should legislate that way. And similarly to your question about what happens in the next administration, the main benefit of getting market structure legislation done, in my view, aside from setting up a well-regulated market that gives investors a sense of confidence and lays down helpful ground rules for developers and issuers to build products and, and launch new assets is to protect the industry from a return to a Gary Gensler who wants to destroy this industry in the guise of regulation, but actually seeking to ban the technology from the country. And the problem is, in any version of market structure legislation that we do, we will by necessity be expanding the authority of the agencies over crypto. This is why I say over and over again, to me, the most important priority in market structure legislation is protecting DeFi developers from being misclassified as money transmitters or as intermediaries, because otherwise we will get to that next administration having handed over authority to regulate DeFi. And then Gary Gensler 2.0 or his or her compatriots at the Department of Justice will go after every other DeFi developer the same way they have after Roman Storm, saying that Roman Storm committed a crime by building non-custodial software that he did not control, that was abused by some bad actor after he had launched that technology. And that's the end of crypto in the United States. So to me, we want to get a market structure bill done, but the best way to protect ourselves from a return to a hostile administration trying to ban crypto isn't a market structure bill that gives the agencies unlimited authority to regulate and ban crypto however they want. So to me, that is the priority in looking at the Clarity Act.

Yeah, look guys, we're on the hour. I promised we'd keep it efficient of your time. I know you guys are incredibly busy. Anything else, like parting thoughts? Uh, you know, it's been real, real treat. I mean, Hyperliquid, I could tell you just something you guys said earlier. I was, uh, when, when the war broke out, uh, two weekends ago, I was, uh, over the weekend I was sitting with a PM and I was— they were debating what Monday was going to look like in markets. I'm like, guys, uh, Have you looked at this? And they're like, you could just see the future, right? By their reaction. There's still reasons to your point, like why they don't use it or don't want to use it. But it was just like, I think you said it, Jake, which is the only time I've felt that was back when I was at ParaFi. I would tell people, go use a stablecoin. And that was the pitch to convert them as LPs. They were like, they come back and say, holy shit, I never want to send a wire transfer again. And I feel like I feel like, uh, for better or for worse, that's like the— we have to tokenize commodities at a time where everyone wants— is a commodities expert and it's all the rage. That, uh, it's really exciting, honestly. I mean, obviously there's still a lot of stuff on the technology side, on the regulatory side that needs to be figured out, but you see the future if you've traded on Hyperliquid. I feel like, um, anything else you guys want to touch on? Parting thoughts?

No, I, look, I agree. I've, um, I've been in the space for almost 10 years and it's exciting to feel like all the stuff we hope for is finally becoming, uh, can become real and more useful. So, um, yeah, I think this is really still just the beginning.

I agree with that. And I'll just say, um, I think everyone is in sort of a bear market mood right now. I think, you know, sentiment is sort of low. Um, but I, you know, having gone through a handful of cycles, I will say it is usually at this moment when sentiment is low that the most exciting things are happening, and you just have to stay engaged and pay attention to those things. And for me at this moment, that thing is Hyperliquid. So I'm really excited to be working in the ecosystem, and frankly, very excited to push policy forward, not just for Hyperliquid, but for the entire DeFi industry. I'm hoping that many different DeFi projects in the Hyperliquid ecosystem and outside of it will thrive. There's plenty of room for many different projects to succeed, and I think we will see that happen over time.

No doubt, just don't get liquidated. Uh, but also let's not forget, Jake, you were at Compound. Compound was an early pioneer in the money market space. Um, and MC, you've obviously bought Bitcoin in 2011 and were in BlackRock. So it's really exciting to see folks like you have been around the space, like, continue to double down your careers and focus on this specific protocol, Hyperliquid. And so anyways, thanks for putting up, um, thanks for coming on and having a good conversation.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.