AI Summary
5 min readWhen a Crypto Perpetual Exchange Sets Its Sights on "All of Finance"
Jeff Yan, co-founder and CEO of Hyperliquid Labs, came to the Odd Lots podcast with a straightforward tagline for his project: "housing all the finance." That is not a modest claim for a protocol that, as of this recording in October, still has no Wikipedia page (one was deleted by a moderator who called it "typical crypto spam"). But Hyperliquid has been growing fast enough that the CFTC and even Donald Trump have mentioned it by name, and Bloomberg now lists its 24/7 markets for Brent, WTI, the S&P 500, and single-stock perps on names like Nvidia, Micron, and SK Hynix. Yan walked through how the system works, who does what on it, and what it would take for the entire financial industry to eventually operate on a single on-chain network.
What Hyperliquid Actually Is
Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.
Read Full Summary →Free • No credit card required
Never miss an episode of Odd Lots
Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
What you'll learn
- 1 (02:01) **Introduction & The "Inverse Pyramid" of Finance** - Joe and Tracy set up the episode by discussing the explosion of financial instruments built on top of underlying assets.
- 2 (06:06) **What is Hyperliquid? The Protocol's Core Ambition** - Jeff Yan, co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs, gives the big-picture definition of the platform.
- 3 (07:34) **The Trump Mention & US Regulatory Landscape** - The hosts discuss the surprise public mention of Hyperliquid by Donald Trump and the current US access restrictions.
- 4 (09:50) **The "Protocol" Explained: Validators & Shared Truth** - Jeff breaks down the technical concept of a blockchain protocol and why it's crucial for finance.
- 5 (13:03) **Anatomy of a Trade: Perpetuals, Clearing, and Liquidation** - Jeff walks through the mechanics of a trade on Hyperliquid, from order book to liquidation.
- 6 (19:02) **The Deployer Model: Who Creates Markets Like the NVIDIA Perp?** - The conversation shifts to the role of "deployers" like Trade XYZ in issuing perpetuals on Hyperliquid.
- 7 (25:23) **The Dutch Auction: Allocating Scarce Deployment Slots** - Jeff details the on-chain mechanism for deciding who gets to deploy a new perpetual market.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Traders and market watchers around the world started talking about a crypto platform called Hyperliquid earlier this year, when speculators used markets built on top of it to trade crude oil after war broke out in Iran. What Hyperliquid allowed for was a 24/7 market on the blockchain. Then in August, President Trump said the CFTC was working on bringing “Hyperliquid into the United States in a fully compliant and legal fashion.” Hyperliquid currently operates outside the US, but that hasn't stopped it from growing prodigiously in the last year. Jeff Yan, CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs, joins us today to explain how exactly the platform works: He walks us through the protocol he and his co-founders built, the ecology of actors and assets that are tied to Hyperliquid (like the platform's cryptocurrency HYPE), how perps are bought and sold on the platform, he explains what a blockchain oracle is, and he discusses what has to happen for Hyperliquid to start operating in the US.
Read more:
Strategy’s Saylor Sees Bitcoin Moving Back Up Beyond $100,000
A $90 Million Spyware Hack Sparks Review of Crypto Wallet Sales
Only http://Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox each week, plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlots