Odd Lots · Oct 15, 2026 · 58m · 49m saved
With Jeff Yan, CEO & Co-Founder of Hyperliquid Labs
In August, President Trump said the CFTC was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a compliant and legal way. Jeff Yan, CEO and co-founder of Hyperliquid Labs, told Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway on the Odd Lots podcast that he had no warning the remark was coming.
Most crypto venues pitch themselves as a replacement for Wall Street. Jeff argues Hyperliquid is the next step in market structure, the way screens followed trading pits, and that banks and regulators can build on it.
"Electronic trading was a step function improvement over pit trading only a couple of decades ago. We view Hyperliquid, the protocol, as a step function improvement over electronic but fragmented markets." — Jeff Yan
Jeff joined Hudson River Trading straight out of college and started Hyperliquid in 2023, after watching centralized crypto exchanges find real demand for perpetual futures.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 58 minutes of audio, 10 minutes of reading.
Here are the 11 arguments that matter.
Key Takeaways
Hyperliquid wants to be neutral rails for banks, not a rival that displaces them
Jeff compares today's skeptics to early doubters of AWS
Regulation could land on deployers rather than the protocol, the way TCP/IP sits unregulated under regulated financial systems
Oracle prices can move no more than 1% between updates, a hard rule at the protocol level
A 2% push gets clamped to 1%
Running a validator takes consumer hardware, about "128 gigs of RAM"
Market slots are sold in a daily Dutch auction that resets to twice the last clearing price
Most wealth creation is over by the time a company worth trillions goes public, which Jeff calls a failing of the current system
On-chain balances can be audited by anyone, a property traditional finance gets only through trust
1. Housing All the Finance
Jeff describes Hyperliquid as a protocol rather than an exchange, with an ambition that covers every financial market.
Jeff Yan says the community's goal is to bring all of finance onto Hyperliquid
"Hyperliquid is a protocol. The tagline, or aspirational goal, is housing all the finance, and I think the community is serious about that." — Jeff Yan
The platform is not yet a household name. Earlier this year it was used to trade oil during the Iran conflict, and Trump's August comment put it in front of a wider audience.
"I was not aware that he was going to be talking about Hyperliquid. That was a huge surprise to me." — Jeff Yan
