In the 2026 capital market, it's hard not to glance at Hyperliquid. This early player in the space, seemingly a cryptocurrency Perp's trading platform, has carved out a significant market niche with the launch of HIP-3. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange couldn't withstand it and vehemently demanded permission to open 24-hour trading. Morgan Stanley's traders now have to check the TradeXYZ quote on Hyperliquid before the market opens to place orders.
The surging trading volume has also attracted many whales wanting to participate, aiming to leverage Hyperliquid's platform. Although HIP-3 sounds like a great tool, reality can be quite harsh. A platform called Ventuals, which operated on HIP-3 for 7 months, exited with a $260,000 loss. Other HIP-3 platforms didn't reap the profits we imagined either; for example, both CASH and Felix have shut down. In this market, TradeXYZ basically monopolizes the scene.
But Trasia is determined to move forward.
Trasia has just announced that it has raised $35 million and completed a $1.75 million seed round, with leading crypto industry firm Multicoin Capital as the sole lead investor, to establish an HIP-3 trading platform targeting Asian assets and users.
Co-founder Mable Jiang, who was an early partner at Multicoin Capital and later dived into the arena as Chief Growth Officer of the Web3 phenomenon app STEPN as an angel investor. This time, she saw a new opportunity. BlockBeats interviewed Mable to hear her thoughts on HIP-3, TradeXYZ, and Trasia's core competencies.
TL;DR
· In the next 24 months, a plethora of high-quality and fairly priced, or even undervalued, assets will emerge on Asian trading platforms. However, the barrier to entry for retail investors is high, and existing tools are overly focused on U.S. stocks.
· Funding rates are not a natural flaw of Perp but a crucial mechanism in cross-platform arbitrage, news trading, and momentum trading. For traders not seeking long-term positions, Perp is the most efficient price discovery tool.
· Early-stage HIP-3 platforms find it challenging to profit on a large scale. The key lies in seizing the market with capital, capturing user mindshare, igniting network effects, and subsequently having the opportunity to make money through moats.
· TradeXYZ's success stems not only from Hyperliquid's ecosystem support but also from the post-market price discovery mechanism, cold start advantage, understanding of user needs, and rapid execution speed.
· What assets to list is not determined by what is hottest on the market, but by whether your core users really want to trade. Truly effective asset selection is the intersection of user demand and market trends.
BlockBeats: First of all, let me ask, why did you propose HIP-3? What market gap are you mainly trying to fill?
Mable: The premise of our product is that in the next 24 months or even longer, we believe that Asian trading platforms will see a large number of high-value, high-quality assets listed for trading, with fair and even undervalued prices.
For such assets and markets, there are currently several key pain points:
· Extremely high entry barriers
It is very difficult for ordinary people to trade these assets in normal times and they face various bottlenecks. For investors lacking channels, even if there are many high-quality assets on the market, they cannot access them at all. This has been a recognized industry challenge for many years.
· Misalignment of existing market tools
Currently, in overseas communities such as TradeXYZ, there are not many audiences for the type of assets I mentioned.
Although star assets like CXMT (ChangXin Memory Technologies, traded pre-IPO on trade.xyz), Unitree, and DeepSeek are indeed sought after by everyone, there is still a huge market gap beyond these. Moreover, Asian retail investors and traders are much more familiar with U.S. stocks than Western investors are with the Asian market. At the same time, mainstream trading tools and asset categories on the market are mainly designed around U.S. stocks and do not effectively serve the needs of Asian investors to purchase local assets.
· Lack of supply
Because Western investors are unfamiliar with the Asian market, there is naturally no strong demand for trading, so no one specifically develops these markets.
Against this backdrop, we hope that through this product, we can bring these high-quality asset markets to more people in a more lightweight and asset-efficient manner. It is based on this idea that we are providing this product.
BlockBeats: In fact, Perpetuals, which are currently popular, are not unique to cryptocurrencies anymore. Traditional finance is also paying attention. However, Perpetuals clearly have issues with funding rates. In extreme cases, holding costs can be greatly amplified. It seems that only assets with stable trading volume and stable market value are more suitable for Perpetuals. What is your opinion?
Mable: Regarding the fee rate issue, I think this is the biggest concern for everyone. However, in fact, I believe this is a feature rather than a bug.
· Firstly, Cross-platform Arbitrage Opportunity
The current trading tools and market infrastructure are becoming increasingly sophisticated. For many players engaged in cross-platform trading, this actually provides a good and stable source of income. They can profit from cross-exchange arbitrage, which is the first reason why I consider it a feature rather than a bug.
· Efficient Information Dissemination and Trading
The dissemination of global asset information is very fast now, and the market price reflection can be understood as the most efficient. This has led to a large group of users who trade based on breaking news and information dissemination. These users are very core and have great potential to continue growing, making them essential Perp users.
What they care more about is not holding assets long term. The funding rate issue you mentioned only exists among those who want to hold long term. So, if traders just want to profit from understanding information dissemination and capturing value, then Perp is definitely the most efficient and best tool because it can conduct post-market trading through its price discovery mechanism.
Of course, if exchanges like the NYSE and Nasdaq achieve 24/7 trading as they have this year, then there would be no need to worry about price discovery issues. However, in many emerging markets, this may still be premature.
For these types of assets, during official non-trading hours, Perp is actually a very good tool. For those who enjoy Momentum trading or News trading, it is indeed very ideal, and the funding rate will not be a problem.
BlockBeats: Doing HIP-3 is actually very costly, the cost of HYPE, the cost of auctioning TICKER. Many projects are losing money, such as the recently closed Ventuals, which lost $260,000. How do you view the issue of profitability for Trasia?
Mable: I think the market has a very clear answer.
What has been evident since the end of last year is: if you don't have several tens of millions in your pocket, it will be challenging to "sit at the table and eat" in the upcoming second half. We are probably most familiar with examples like the $50 million financing announced by Variational a month ago (even though they completed it last year), including the financing completed privately by TradeXYZ in October last year, which is also a large amount of money. These are two very typical examples, with at least $50 million in financing already in their pockets. Of course, having money does not guarantee success, but it is a basic prerequisite for participating.
The current stage is similar to the early days of ride-hailing and food delivery companies, where rapid land grabbing and user acquisition are achieved through funding. While everyone understands the clear revenue model of a trading platform, it is precisely because of this certainty that early market dominance has become crucial.
Therefore, I believe that Hyperliquid's introduction of a Growth Mode for HIP-3 is aimed at enabling the HIP-3 representing the DEX to better capture the market. You could even say that this mode is specifically designed to provide policy support for TradeXYZ.
From a profitability perspective:
· Early Stage: It is necessary to rely on collecting a fraction of a basis point fee per transaction to capture market share.
· Later Stage: It may be possible to monetize through the established moat.
Therefore, the key to the profit issue is that you must accept that you may not be able to make substantial profits in the next 12 months. Because you must first burn in the network effect and market share before you can eventually profit.
BlockBeats: We definitely have to talk about TradeXYZ, after all, they are an absolute leader. What do you think has been their moat up to now?
Mable: First of all, I think many people like to say that TradeXYZ is Hyperliquid's "brainchild," but this statement actually greatly overlooks the team's own efforts. Other major players also have their own widely acknowledged "brainchildren."
I think TradeXYZ has several core success points:
· Innovative design of the initial market
When creating the initial market, in the case of no external price input after hours, their designed Pre-launch price discovery mechanism (such as HFP3) is highly innovative.
· Strong cold start advantage
They did benefit from Hyperliquid's existing core traders and supporters, who were friends of TradeXYZ's founders or key community members. Undeniably, the initial organic traffic did originate from these individuals, giving them a cold start advantage.
· Precise market insights and product selection ability
They have a very precise grasp of market demand and user psychology. I was actually discussing this with TradeXYZ founder Shoku yesterday, talking about how in product selection, you can't just focus on what users want. Although meeting users' short-term, explosive needs is crucial, you must simultaneously evaluate whether the asset itself has long-term trading demand from an Equity Research perspective.
Balancing short-term user demand and long-term transaction value to decide whether to list a certain asset is crucial. In fact, there is no such thing as a "holy grail." In our discussion the other day, Shoku mentioned an interesting point: To achieve something, besides a huge amount of effort and a bit of luck, you must have a very clear understanding of the product—knowing what users and the market need, and understanding what should and should not be in the product.
Of course, you could argue that they have a massive amount of hype and support from core users, but I think that alone is not enough. There are too many entrepreneurs around us who were born with a silver spoon, but why haven't they succeeded? Therefore, TradeXYZ's success is more attributed to their design of the post-trade price discovery mechanism and their excellent curation capability.
If we must talk about a moat, these two points are key. Furthermore, their ability to continuously convert users into long-term users is also very critical. It can be said that with their excellent product practices, they have basically captured the mindset of the majority of English-speaking "whales" who prefer to trade on-chain.
As an overseas team, their execution and response speed are almost as impressive as what we commonly refer to as the "Asian team speed."
BlockBeats: TradeXYZ just listed Changxin's perpetual (CXMT), with a trading volume exceeding a million in 10 minutes. How do you plan to compete with them in terms of asset selection?
Mable: Asset selection itself is not a moat. As I mentioned earlier, you must combine your judgment on asset selection with "what your users want to trade" to make it meaningful.
If all our trading flow today and XYZ's come from the same pool (the same group of traders), then we can say we have no chance of winning, no point in even thinking about it. Ventuals and Felix, which have ceased operations for HIP3, are good examples: Previous HIP3 entrepreneurs thought they needed to find a niche category that XYZ had not explored, such as what Ventuals did with pre-IPO assets. However, if you are still targeting the same group of users, then XYZ can easily outcompete you. So, as mentioned above, asset selection itself is by no means a moat.
The real moat is the users you can reach. This may sound somewhat counterintuitive, as user acquisition seems like something the frontend should handle. But if you cannot have your exclusive flow, reaching users that XYZ cannot reach, and you still want to have overlapping trading pairs with them, then we have no chance of winning.
Therefore, although doing HIP3 is about doing a protocol, the only thing that could possibly make a difference is genuinely putting in the effort to access transaction flows that other Western teams find it hard to reach. These users are not familiar with Hyperliquid and XYZ, nor are they accustomed to traditional on-chain transactions. That's why in August, we will launch a mobile app specifically designed to serve our own users and are exploring exclusive transaction flows through various channels.
BlockBeats: XYZ was recently featured on ZHIPU, and financially, it can also acquire other Hong Kong Stock Exchange tickers. While you can also be listed on Smart Spectrum, the selection is critical. What if XYZ lists an asset that Trasia has already listed?
Mable: Why did XYZ get listed on Smart Spectrum (ZHIPU) a few weeks ago? Because the discussion in the West around the open-source model is indeed very intense. Everyone is talking about how Smart Spectrum may catch up with a certain generation of the Anthropic model. However, the reason it was listed is due to the demands of the core users. XYZ's core users are mainly the European and American crowd, and recently, Mark Andreessen, Elon Musk, and the entire crypto community have been discussing Chinese models, making GLM5.2 a hot topic.
If we look at it from the perspective of funding speculation, Smart Spectrum has experienced many waves of speculation since its listing early this year, and the trading volume on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange is also very active. So the core logic of the current listing still lies in the fact that users themselves have a trading demand.
In fact, a few months ago, when the "LLM Duo" just went public, Shoku and I suggested considering listing MiniMax and Smart Spectrum. At that time, the trends of these two assets were very similar, basically in a mutually rising state. However, they observed for a long time and didn't act because the demand from their own users was not there.
Although they also knew that assets like the current Hong Kong Stock Exchange's "LLM Duo" are excellent choices, compared to other more urgent user demands, priorities must be set. The most crucial point is: on a platform like Hyperliquid, no asset can rely solely on "shadow liquidity" as in centralized exchanges. Your money on the order book has to be in a specific position in reality. If your users have no trading demand, even if this asset is hot elsewhere in the world, it will not have any substantial impact on your platform.
So, in the end, it still comes down to serving the users. The key point is that you must be able to find assets that intersect between "user demand" and "market hotspots." Ultimately, the selection of assets cannot escape the question of "who your users are."
We aim to bring a batch of users who are not currently trading on Hyperliquid to our platform. Therefore, some of the assets we offer are also assets they may have a strong demand for. These assets, as well as the ones TradeXYZ will list for its Western users, will only have some overlap. So I have never felt that we are in a competitive relationship with TradeXYZ.
We believe that the core competitiveness and moat still come from:
· Your understanding of what the people you serve want to trade.
· Your ability to effectively meet these needs.
· Whether there is enough demand to support you in providing such a service.
BlockBeats: Asian Asset Underlying, Any Compliance Concerns?
Mable: For any product like TradeXYZ or TrasiaXYZ, users do not hold any actual securities. Users only trade based on its marked price, price fluctuations, and funding rate.
So you can understand it more as: you are trading the price movement of an asset itself, rather than the asset itself.
BlockBeats: Compared to U.S. stock assets, Asian assets have shorter trading hours, requiring a higher standard for oracle design. What are Trasia's considerations in mechanism design?
Mable: This is a very good question. But the core issue is still whether there is enough retail trading flow and willing liquidity providers' funds that reference the price itself, and so on. Once our HIP3 is launched in a while, we will provide a detailed introduction.
BlockBeats: How attractive are Asian assets to foreign users? Can listing Asian assets provide Asian investors with funding rate arbitrage opportunities?
Mable: Currently, there is a very small group of Asian assets that Western investors would be very interested in, such as the examples I mentioned earlier like ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Unitree. However, apart from these, there are many other assets with great potential that overseas users are not aware of. I think there is a significant opportunity here for reverse user education.
Because investors worldwide are certainly more familiar with U.S. stocks, but overall, they are aware that the Asian market is the world's second-largest capital market after the U.S. There are many high-quality AI infrastructure and robotics-related assets that will be listed, especially under the backdrop of Chinese companies not going public in the U.S. Currently, the market has a strong interest in high-quality assets and sectors in this region.
However, currently, research in this area is insufficient globally. We hope to become a benchmark in the market, ensuring that the assets we list are types that are widely recognized and in high demand in the Asian region. Through these organic trading flows from Asia, we aim to attract real Western investors. That is our next step. Regarding arbitrage, I believe this opportunity should not be limited to Asian investors. Because once we list an asset, anyone can engage in cross-platform arbitrage. This is also a critical part as mentioned earlier in one of the previous questions.
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