Wall Street Wealth Creation Model Unsustainable for Most Participants: Hyperliquid CEO

Wall Street’s traditional wealth-creation opportunities, such as company stocks, remain largely inaccessible to the investing public until they list on exchanges, meaning that retail participants miss the most significant pre-listing gains, according to Hyperliquid co-founder and CEO Jeff Yan.

“Some assets are only tradable by a few people for many orders of magnitude of its growth, and then ultimately tradable by the public only after all of the growth has been realized by a select few people with privilege,” said Yan during a Tuesday fireside chat at Token2049 Singapore. 

While he saw this dynamic as a byproduct of the broader economy, Yan added that this wealth-creation model is not “sustainable.” 

Yan argued that Hyperliquid’s growing revenue is a byproduct of creating more global access to blockchain-based wealth creation opportunities through the decentralized exchange. 

Hyperliquid co-founder and CEO Jeff Yan, speaking at Token2049 Singapore. Source: Cointelegraph

Hyperliquid’s mission is financial openness, not ‘optimizing’ for revenue: CEO

Hyperliquid’s main mission is creating more access to wealth creation opportunities and fostering more participation in the financial system, while revenue is only a byproduct, explained Yan, adding:

“We’re not really optimizing for revenue. That’s a byproduct of providing value to users.” 

He said that Hyperliquid’s success is partly due to its perpetual futures contracts having no expiry dates, which reduces the number of decisions made by traders and prevents liquidity fragmentation.

Top 5 DeFi protocols by 30-day fees. Source: DefiLlama

Hyperliquid ranks as the third-largest revenue-generating protocol with $72 million generated during the past 30 days, according to DefiLlama. 

Related: NYSE parent ICE pushes ‘level playing field’ for 24/7 onchain perps

Onchain perps may challenge Wall Street: Pantera

Perpetual futures may become one of the dominant trading instruments in global finance due to their structural advantages, with Hyperliquid demonstrating how blockchain infrastructure could challenge traditional markets, said blockchain-focused asset manager Pantera in July.

Hyperliquid’s growth also drew attention from traditional finance participants, including the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), whose CEO, Jeffrey Sprecher, urged regulators to create a “level playing field” for launching 24/7 onchain perpetual futures contracts. 

In March, the NYSE partnered with tokenization platform Securitize as part of a broader effort to develop blockchain-based stock trading infrastructure with 24/7 trading and settlement for Wall Street. 

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