Unchained - Will Perps Eat All of Finance? Ex-FTX.US CEO Brett Harrison Bets Yes - Ep. 940

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Crypto’s most controversial trading product might be Wall Street’s next obsession. In this interview, Brett Harrison, former president of FTX.US and founder of Architect Financial Technologies, joins to explain how he’s aiming to take perpetual futures — crypto’s 24/7 leveraged trading engine — to traditional markets like stocks, commodities, and FX. Will this be the next big shift in global finance? Thank you to our sponsors! Mantle Guest: Brett Harrison, Founder & CEO of Architect Financial Technologies  Links: The Defiant: Former FTX US President Brett Harrison to Launch Perpetuals Exchange Timestamps: 💡 0:00 Introduction 🏗️ 1:43 What problems Architect is trying to solve 📜 4:27 The two licenses Architect holds — with the SEC and CFTC ⚖️ 6:18 The key difference between CFDs and perpetual futures 🌐 8:15 Who Architect’s products are designed for 💥10:02 What crypto learned the hard way from the Oct. 10 liquidation event 📊 15:25 Why reputable benchmarks are critical for pricing assets 💰 18:02 How leverage actually works in these new exchanges 🛡️ 22:03 How Architect’s insurance fund is built 🎯 22:46 Whether prediction markets will ever offer leverage 💵 24:35 Why Architect includes interest rate swaps 🔗 25:27 How tokenization could affect the derivatives trading space 🚀 28:50 How Architect plans to attract users and market makers 🔥 31:50 What Brett is most excited about next Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm particularly excited about rolling out the full array of asset classes on our exchange. To me, the really interesting capital efficiencies come in when a single customer can build a portfolio out of perps across multiple asset classes, you know, energy products, metals, stocks, stock indexes, currencies, and build, you know, a long, short portfolio that's cross margin all within the same system. Hey everyone. I'm executive editor, Steve Ehrlich, and I'm really excited to have with me today, Brett Harrison. Brett is the former CEO of FCXUS, but we are most excited to talk to him today about his new venture architect and some of the really exciting rollouts that he's announced, I think, last week, and sort of the future of what he's building. Dovetails very nicely with some of the big trends and themes that we've been seeing over the last week. last month or so, especially in crypto. Mantle is pioneering blockchain for banking, a revolutionary new category at the intersection

of TradFi and Web 3. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Quick pause. If you're deep in crypto, but TradFi and Macro is a different language, or you're in Tradfai and Crypto feels like chaos, we get it. That's why we created Bits and Bips, a podcast that bridges those two worlds. No jargon, no gaykeeping. Just, smart, clear breakdowns of how these systems actually connect. So you stop feeling lost when one side starts speaking their language. If this sounds like something you need, check out bits and bibs. You'll find the link right in the description. Just scroll down. So Brett, welcome. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Good to see you. Yeah. So let's just kind of get right back. Let's get right to it.

I mean, architect, I was really excited. I mean, I guess it was a year or two ago when you, when you announce this new venture, and then I think you've had two rounds of funding so far. And the announcement you had last week, basically perps for everything, not just crypto, but it could be gold, commodities, it could be indexes, et cetera. Why don't you just kind of walk us through that? And at a really high level, I'd love to know specifically the problem that you're trying to solve and why it's like the current offerings in TradFi are. insufficient.

So perpetual futures or perpetual swaps are an old invention. They were invented around in the 90s in the U.S. And they never really became popularized until crypto-derivatives exchanges really made it so in the early 2010s. And the thinking behind there was unlike traditional futures products for underlions like physical commodities, you know, soybeans, wheat, corn, a derivative or a future on something like cryptocurrency, which is 24-7, it's digital, there's not physical delivery tied to a particular tenor or expiration. People want to go long and short with leverage, but don't

necessarily want to have to deal with expiration. And in the modern age, in 2025, very few futures contracts are actually taken to delivery. I think it's less than 2% of all futures contracts are actually expired. People either roll them to the next month or they close their position before expiry. So in many ways, perpetuals are a superior derivative product to an expiring future for being able to get lasting 24-7 trading leveraged exposure to some underlying asset class. And indeed, for cryptocurrencies, perpetuals on things like Bitcoin trade vastly more than the actual underlying spot. It's something like, you know, seven to ten times more volume trains and perpetuals than the actual underlying spot cryptocurrencies. But all

also on any exchange where both expiring futures on Bitcoin and perpetuals on Bitcoin are listed, the expiring futures almost never trade, whereas perpetuals are extremely liquid and valuable. And so the insight we had, and we're not the only ones, of course, who had this insight is, you know, why not, now that people really understand perpetuals, bring that instrument to the traditional underlying asset classes like foreign currencies, single stocks, stock indexes, precious metals, rare earth metals, energy products. And that's exactly what we sought out to do in a licensed and regulated way with our new exchange, AX. So let's talk about those licenses, because I know

you have a few, and I want to make sure you understand what they allow you to do. I know that you're, I think you're registered or licensed as a broker-dealer with the SEC, and you also have a license with the CFDC. Can you explain what those mean? Sure. So prior to getting licensed for this exchange, that we're building, we also launched a U.S. regulated multi-asset electronic brokerage. So first, we got licensed under the CFDC as an independent introducing broker, which allows us to introduce customer flow to futures, options on futures, and event contracts. And then we later got a broker-dealer license under the SEC, which allows us to allow our customers to trade stocks, ETFs, options on stocks and ETFs.

like cash treasuries, fixed income products. And so we think of us like a modern day competitor to interactive brokers. We have full API access and user interface trading for US customers and non-US customers to get access to licensed and regulated US products. So that's sort of the first half of our business that's very much located in the US and domicidal in the US. For the exchange, we separately got regulated in Bermuda under the Bermuda Monetary Authority. And we got two licenses out of there.

The IBA license, which is a traditional sort of investment business activity license, allows us to, under our business plan, have an exchange for derivatives on traditional asset classes like FX and stocks. But then in addition, we also got the DABA license, the digital asset business license for the purposes of allowing us to take stable coins as collateral for these traditional asset perpetuals in addition to fiat currencies like, US dollars. Okay. One question I also had too is I was trying to make sense of perps for for more traditional assets is how that aligns with CFDs, which are used for non-U.S. investors to sort of make cash focus bets or place cash focused positions on various asset classes. So can you kind of compare and contrast that for me? Yeah, absolutely. The biggest difference between a CFD, a contract for difference and a perpetual

is the market structure around them. So when you trade a CFD, they are non-standardized contracts, and they are swaps that are traded directly with a broker. And in which case, the broker is taking the other side of the trade against you. And so what typically happens in the CFD market is, if you do too well, the CFD broker basically shuts you off. It's almost like a local sports book.

It's the reason why, you know, Kalshi is in many ways becoming more successful than local sports books is because Kalshi is hosting a centralized, regulated, transparent, anonymous order book where buyers and sellers are anonymously matched, and the exchange itself doesn't have any skin in the game between them, where we're doing the same thing on the perpetual side, where it's a standardized contract, we host it, we do not have any internal market making or internalization, it's purely hosting third parties on the order book trading with each other, and that's the biggest difference between them. Of course, there's other differences like the funding rate mechanism, the actual thing that keeps the future in line with the underlying price for perpetual is this funding rate mechanism by which if there's a discount from the perpetual to the underlying asset, longs will owe the shorts at every funding period, whatever that premium is.

Or if there's a discount, shorts will owe the longs that funding rate period. And it's that funding mechanism that establishes an arbitrage between the perpetual and the underlying and keeps it in line. Okay. So, okay, that's helpful. So let's talk a little bit about, and your company, your product, I mean, right now you're just onboarding institutions, hedge funds, like crop, I guess crop shops, like those types of entities. Do you see yourself primarily as like customer-facing or you have like front and back in, you offer a white label service? I mean, what is your overall, what's your overall ecosystem going to look like? So there's the exchange itself, which is, you know, really a matching engine and a clearing system that helps, you know, compute real-time margin and understand sort of

of the collateral value of accounts and issue margin calls and do all the sort of the risk management that is related to an exchange and clearinghouse combined. But we also have a front end. We have a web-based front-end where people can place trades very similar to, you know, your standard crypto derivatives exchange. And then we have APIs as well for people to do programmatic trading and portfolio management. And so, you know, with our exchange, you know, we're taking a hybrid go-to-market approach where absolutely a customer can onboard directly to us and sign up for an account and trade either via our GUI or our API. But in addition, our plan down the road is to work with other intermediaries like

brokerages and prime brokers and international FCMs to distribute our products through their systems. And that could just be that intermediary provides some kind of, you know, like capital or kind of omnibus account services for their end customers. Or it could be a white label type arrangement where they're hosting our products on their retail app, their individual-focused app or their institutional-focused app that people are already used to using for other products that that brokerage offers. Okay, great. So let's talk a little bit about what happened Black Friday, because like anytime I hear about Perps, just naturally that's where my head's going to go,

at least for the next couple weeks or months. What were your impressions of it? I mean, clearly there were some, I don't know if market structure breakdowns is the right word, but there were some hurt feelings, there were some significant losses, and a lot of people heard the term ADL for the very first time. So, why don't you kind of just walk us through

kind of like what your experience was that day, as I think a bit more of an outsider, but someone who is very well versed in these terms in building something that is going to, compete with like the likes of hyperliquid, but looking at asset classes that are substantially larger in size than than even Bitcoin. Sure. So I, one thing I love about the digital asset space is that in many ways, projects in

crypto have completely leapfrogged market structure and traditional finance. But on the other hand, sometimes I see crypto market structure re-learning the lessons from traditional finance that were sort of hard earned over, you know, decades. And one of those is sort of traditional risk management and what happens during, you know, violence, price movements or dislocations or absence of liquidity in the market. So to me, what I saw was there was a temporary, you know, lack of liquidity on a major exchange. A number of other exchanges were using that major exchanges price to compute margin requirements and determine whether accounts were becoming underwater and therefore needed to be liquidated.

I'm sorry, just to be clear. talking about finance and those few different pools there in assets. Absolutely. And in traditional markets, there are many safeties to prevent these kinds of flash crashes that existed on Black Friday. For example, price spans, you know, saying that, you know, the price can't move more than a couple percent, let's say, from a moving average or a previous close without taking a pause, giving market makers and liquidity providers and a chance to reestablish liquidity, to take a break. And a breath to make sure that that price is, you know, not actually permanent, but if it's an ephemeral price, it kind of bounces back and that you don't automatically liquidate customers based on

just one wick down. That was the first thing I saw that went wrong. The second thing for me was that in traditional finance, in traditional central clearing counterparties like the CME or LCH in London or ice clear, there is a concept of, you know, tear-ups where you have to take. tear up positions in order to kind of make whole, but it is never used. It is an absolute last resort. It is not a primary risk management tool. To me, what it looked like was there were liquidations. They couldn't liquidate fast enough, and then they went immediately to tear ups to be able to fill this hole. And that really breaches the trust and confidence of the people who are trading on the exchange, because if you have your wins clawed back from you, or even worse, if certain participants

are given preferential treatment and their winds are not clawed back, but your winds are clawed black. It's really hard to kind of reestablish the trust in the exchange going forward. And so in a traditional clearinghouse, there are many layers of this waterfall. There's price bands, there's, you know, margin calls, there's some liquidations, there's a backstop insurance fund or a default fund that, you know, the clearinghouse itself provides. There's another layer where members of the exchange can post collateral and in exchange for some kind of a yield or rewards, they're the second backstop. Insurance in self can play a third backstop. And then ADL or tear-ups is at the very bottom of this waterfall and should almost never be used. And that's,

again, something that we are, you know, hoping to bring through our exchange being, you know, centrally, you know, organized and regulated and licensed to make sure that we have the appropriate risk management procedures in place should there ever be sort of an extreme volatility haul. mantle leads the establishment of blockchain for banking as the next frontier. UR is the access layer that transforms Mantle network into a purpose-built vertical platform, the blockchain for banking that enables financial services on-chain. UR unifies and vertically aligns Mantles focus on payments, trading, and assets. MI4, MEE protocol, functions of VTC, supported by developer grants, ecosystem incentives,

and the industry-leading distribution platform through the U.S. UR app, Reward Station, and By-Bit launch pole. All economic activity within UR will be captured by Mantle Network to further drive value to token holders and establish its significance in blockchain for banking. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Quick pause. If you're deep in crypto, but Tradfai and Macro is a different language, or you're in Tradfai and Crypto feels like chaos, we get it. That's why we created Bits and Bips, a podcast that bridges those two worlds. No jargon, no gaykeeping. Just smart, clear breakdowns of how these systems actually connect.

So you stop feeling lost when one side starts speaking their language. If this sounds like something you need, check out bits and bibs. You'll find the link right in the description. Just scroll down. So let's talk about specifically what that means for you. I mean, for one, you're going to support a whole spectrum of assets. Where do prices come from? I would imagine they come from all different places, because that's just a new share of different types of assets.

But like, how do you pick those various, like, quote-unquote oracles? And then obviously, given what happened a couple weeks ago, I mean, that just understood the importance of making sure that your price feeds are accurate. And I guess incorruptible might not be the wrong word, but even like inadvertently manipulated. Absolutely. So I think there's maybe two things to mention that are important here. both the Oracle used for our perpetuals and then also how we determine leverage in the system, which I think is sort of the third thing that I saw go wrong in Black Friday. So to answer the first question, it is absolutely critical when you design a derivative product.

If you want it to closely track an underlying asset and you want it to be not susceptible to manipulation, to strike that derivative product to a well-understood, recognized third-party best, benchmark. So for example, for our currency perpetuals, you know, we are using the official WMR 4PM UK fixing rates for spot, you know, ISO currencies. And these prices are used for lots and lots of other derivatives like futures, ETFs, OTC swaps around the world already. It's a very well-trusted benchmark that's been in place for a very long time. And we're leveraging this industry standard benchmarks so that I can track as close as possible other kinds of derivatives on the same underlying currencies. When it comes to our design of stock perpetuals or precious metals

perpetuals, we're taking a very similar approach of getting explicit permission for and getting the licenses for these third-party benchmarks that are sort of trusted and not calculated by us to be used to come up with the funding rates for these perpetuals. And then finally, when it comes to kind of computing initial margin requirements and maximum leverage, we are taking a product-by-product approach where the amount of leverage we allow per product is based on a VAR model that takes into account the last 10, 20 years of price history to ensure that we are covered in sort of like a worst-case loss over the last 20 years. Compare that to a lot of existing, let's say, decentralized exchanges that say 1,000x leverage on everything, kind of regardless of how volatile

the assets are, whereas they really should be taking a product-by-product approach. Yeah. I mean, for the life of me, I can't figure out why anyone would need 100x leverage on something. I mean, there are elements of finance that are pure speculation, and I guess that's fine. But even that... If the exchange offers a max leverage of X, then someone will take the max leverage of X. Like, asking people to be more responsible and take Y for Y is less than X, I think is not realistic, sometimes I think exchanges are trying to make liquidations a business model, as opposed

to something that they want to avoid at all costs. Yeah, it's the same idea of, I mean, if someone's willing to lend me money to buy this house, I must be able to afford it. It's a similar type of thinking there. Okay, so I'd like to just kind of, I don't know if quantifies the right word, but I'd like to just get a little more tangible with some of these leverage examples, because I think it's important. Like, let's talk about gold, for instance, if that's one that you have on top of your mind because of how much has been happening in the gold market over the last, I mean, frankly, year or so. I mean, how much leverage can someone take out if they want to put a position on gold? And can you maybe just walk us a little bit through the step by step of how

they might have to post additional margin or sort of like help stabilize their position in the event of a big reversal like we saw over less week? Yeah, absolutely. I think maybe using two more extreme examples would help. So let's take, for example, a Euro-USD perpetual versus a perpetual on Tesla stock. So for Euro-USD, we may offer anywhere from 12 and a half to 25x leverage, or in other words, require as little as either 8% or down to even 4% initial margin to post to be able to open the position. And again, that's based on what we understand as the kind of worst-case price move in an extreme circumstance for euro based on looking at historical price trends and its historical volatility. Compare that to something like Tesla, which is a lot more volatile of an asset than euro,

although not as volatile as Bitcoin. And for something like that, we may require a max leverage of only maybe eight to nine times or something like a 12% initial margin. So it really is going to depend on the asset, what kind of margin we allow. And in addition, sort of to answer your second question, we set our initial margin levels and then our maintenance margin levels. As their position moves against them and it gets between initial and maintenance margin, we are issuing frequent alerts on the user interface over API and then soon in the future to email and even to over text to phones saying, you know, you're getting close to your maintenance levels. you need to top up. And then to top up for the margin call, they have a choice. Either they can send in traditional fiat currencies through traditional rails like Fedwire,

ACH, you know, SEPA, SWIFT, whatever is required to get money into the bank. Or they can send us stable coins like USDC over a blockchain, the latter which is likely going to be a lot faster and easier to sort of track, especially if they have to make an immediate margin call, and especially if they make a margin call on a weekend where the traditional banking system might not be open. And then finally, if the position gets too close to zero, then we will begin sort of an orderly wind down

of trying to sort of sell bits of their positions without having too much market impact in order to get them above water and make sure there's not a margin breach in the exchange. And what do those positions get sold off into? Currently, the order book. Although we're also sort of exploring a similar type of system that a lot of exchanges employ where there might be a sequence of market makers that have signed up to backstop those positions to take on failed portfolios in the event of a liquidation. Okay. And do you have an insurance fund? I mean, what does the Rennedy Day Fund for architects look like?

That's right. So we've made an initial contribution into our insurance fund. It's our intention to, one, contribute a percentage. of our revenues into that insurance fund on an ongoing basis. Second, that we might explore in the future, you know, specific kinds of fundraising, not necessarily maybe equity fundraising, but potentially debt fundraising, to be able to finance a larger insurance fund. And then also that in the future we would consider allowing, you know, large participants to actually be able to contribute to that fund themselves with some kind of a yield based on, let's say, you know, the revenues and exchange trading fees

that we earn the exchange. Okay. All right. That's helpful. I'm also curious to you mentioned prediction markets a little bit in the beginning. I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on that. I can imagine, because I don't believe polymarket or calci, and correct me if I'm wrong, I don't believe they allow leverage. So I see a lot of potential interest from traders to use leverage to bet on sports outcomes, election outcomes, et cetera. What are your thoughts on that? So you're currently the derivatives clearing organizations, the U.S. regulated clearing houses behind both Polymarket and Kalshi do not allow for leverage. And one of the biggest reasons for that is that they

currently allow customers to onboard directly to their clearinghouse. And in the typical sort of CFTC organized exchange market structure, in order to allow for margin or leverage, you need to be able to allow for FCMs for these futures clearing firms to be in the middle of this and to be able to post on behalf of customers and deal with the risk associated with that. I don't know this firsthand, but they might be looking to expand their services to allow for margin. And maybe that will, one, allow them to do margin trades on prediction markets and potentially let them get into other things like futures or maybe even perpetual someday. You know, I think that, you know, our approach is sort of from the opposite end of the customer spectrum. You know, we're not looking

to onboard, you know, retail that are betting on, you know, sports and elections. We're looking for, you know, institutions that are looking to speculate and hedge, you know, important, you know, economically critical commodities and financial products and underlying assets necessarily for business. And so we're kind of approaching from the institutional angle first, in which case, you know, we think some of these products aren't necessarily as relevant for our customers. I think I saw interest rates, though, on your, on your website. Is that? Absolutely. Absolutely. Where does that kind of fit into it? I mean, that's clearly much more essential to your business than who's going to win the World Cup next year. Sure. So interest rate futures are some of, if not the most liquid futures on the CME.

And interest rate swaps are by far the most liquid derivative in the world. I mean, OPC interest rate swaps are trading between banks in the order of 10 to 20 trillion notional per day. So that's sort of the arena in which we're competing here. But there's an actual contract that you're mimicking just in perpetuals, then just speculating on what the Fed's going to do in its December meeting. Exactly. One that actually sort of tracks in a kind of market-derived way, kind of, let's say, the on-the-run curve for the two-year or the five-year.

Okay, got it. A couple more questions, and then we'll start to wrap up. I'm interested in how tokenization, like the drive towards tokenization fits in with what you're doing. I mean, obviously, if you're structuring contracts where people basically just, use funding rates to compensate each other for taking various sides of a bet. tokenization is not quite as critical to your business, but you are taking stable coins as collateral. And obviously, tokenization, the liquidity of it is going to have an impact in how the markets that you offer are going to trade moving forward.

So what are your thoughts there? I am most excited about tokenization when it comes to new forms of derivatives collateral. A perfect example of this. is that there are a number of on-chain money market type instruments that sort of mimic like a CD, but in the form of a token. And what's nice about that when it comes to derivatives is that it mimics something like a USDC or USDT in that you can move it instantly on the blockchain in and out of your collateral account on an exchange, but it mimics a money market fund in that you can continue to earn interest and yield

on your collateral while it's locked up being used as margin for. a futures trade. And so the more types of these kinds of things that exist, I think the more, you know, options people will have to kind of maximize their capital efficiency and their total yield by using them in concert with trading derivatives. And that's similar to like, I know like I think Falcon X and maybe a couple other primes, they accept Biddle as collateral. I know I think some are accepting what USYC or some of those types of things. So that's that's sort of where you'd like to go next. Absolutely. There's Bill Bill Bill from Black Rock. There's Benji

from Franklin Templeton. There's USYC, which was hash note that got acquired by Circle, which is Circle is actually also regulated in Bermuda in addition to being in the US. And so there's a lot of potential overlap there. These are the kinds of things we're very excited about over time. We're also excited

about stable coins for non-US currencies. So for example, we have a Euro USD perpetual that we're launching. It would be great to also be able to one day accept EURC, the Euro stable coin or the Japanese yen stable coin in Japan as, you know, collateral because then people can make a kind of perfectly hedged instrument between a fiat currency and a perpetual and collect the yield that is derived from the perpetual product.

What would be the, how big of a step would then be to move to like Bitcoin or accepting like Ibit shares or potentially like that shares and other things like that moving beyond just like cash and cash like instruments. Sure. It's difficult for, you know, a non-U.S. regulated entity like our Bermuda entity to be a custodian for, you know, U.S. regulated securities and provide margin on that. But, you know, there's a lot of, you know, rules that are changing and things that are in flux right now with both the SEC and the CFC, such that, you know, there might be, you know, possibilities in the future, for example, to leverage our U.S. broker dealer for, you know, being the custody, or working with, you a custodian, a clearing broker-dealer to custody securities and provide kind of margin

lending on top of that, such that people can create a perfectly hedged position. And if anything's on the table for the future, we're going to start off very simple to start mainly with just with kind of currency and currency-like instruments. Gotcha. Okay. And one question I want to ask you as well, we're in a world now where a lot of major exchanges like crypto exchanges, I mean, Coinbase coins itself the everything exchange. I mean, Robert Hood's offering token shares and they're offering perps, track and doing the same thing, tokenized stocks. I mean, it seems like there's sort of this run for everybody to offer everything.

And I know that that's not quite what you're doing. I mean, you're focused more on on perps and derivatives, et cetera. But it's easy to see, like, this big exchanges coming next few months and saying, well, we're going to launch perps in the U.S. for crypto. Why don't we start doing this for everything else that we're going to support? Like, how do you, like, what's your plan to sort of build a critical massive of users in order to, I mean, I guess a couple things. One, have some defensible size.

And then also, I'm curious, too, like how you're going to build, are going to onboard market makers or what are going to do to make sure that funding rates are tight enough that there's not these, like, massive spreads and that you can create orderly markets for what appears to be a very wide menu of choices for your clients. Sure. So, to answer the second question first. So we are offering multiple kinds of incentives for day one market makers that are going to establish liquidity and satisfy our market maker obligations, you know, being X percent

wide, this amount per side, 80 percent of the time. And that's, we have multiple market makers that are already signed up for that program. And so that's how we'll establish our day one liquidity. And, you know, having those market makers there, you're absolutely right, is critical to establishing, you know, tight spreads and deep order books that are necessary to have any, you know, reasonable connection between the perpetual and the underlying asset. To answer your first question, you're absolutely right that in the world of sort of retail brokerage apps, which, yes, Coinbase is in exchange, but when you think about how they monetize, it's the millions of customers that are coming through their retail app and paying brokerage-like fees for trading

crypto and other products. Same thing is true for Robin Hood, for Cracken, for Rebo, for public. It's really a competition over retention. and even if crypto is the most profitable business line for all of those different applications, they need to have everything else or else people's attention will be drawn to some other app, which is why you see Robin Hood added prediction markets and Coinbase is looking to add stocks. And, you know, Coinbase is a multiple-time investor and architect, and we're very appreciative of the, you know, the collaboration and partnership with them.

To me, I see the future where we could potentially distribute our perpetual products through their kind of front ends. You know, we don't want to do the business of going out and acquiring millions of individual customers. There are plenty of other companies that have done that. We'd rather partner with them the way that, let's say, Cali has, and distribute our products that way. And that's where we sort of think the future of our business lies, as opposed to trying to

compete to be, you know, the everything retail app. Got it. Okay. So last question. I'd love to know one thing that keeps you up in night about your business. And then what's one thing that you're really excited about or one development you're looking forward to that could really drive your business forward? Yeah, I think, you know, with any exchange, you're solving a very difficult two-sided cold start problem of getting the makers and the takers. And the question is, you know, why will the makers be there if there isn't, you know, juicy taker flow on day one?

Why will the takers be there if there isn't sufficient liquidity on day one? So the biggest thing for us is really trying to establish both sides of that market as fast as possible, which we think we have a really good handle on and we're very excited about. So I think that's, you know, the biggest challenge for us as an exchange operator is making that happen. And then, sorry, you're a second question. Oh, just something like, what do you think is going to really unlock your business or just purpose in general? Like, what's one thing that you're particularly excited about? You know, I'm particularly excited about rolling out the full array of asset classes on our exchange. change. To me, the really interesting capital efficiencies come in when a single customer can

build a portfolio out of perps across multiple asset classes, you know, energy products, metals, stocks, stock indexes, currencies, and build, you know, a long, short portfolio that's cross-margined all within the same system. That's really exciting to me. For example, let's say we have a, you know, a currency perpetual in some traders, local home currency, and then we have a test, or a Navidia perpetual, the idea that they can create a local currency hedged position by going, let's say, long Tesla short Korean wand. You know, that's to me really exciting. And so the biggest unlock for me, I think, is when we have all of these different assets

together on the same exchange. Got it. Okay. Anything else you'd like to add before we send off? Sorry, I went my dog bargain there. Yeah, so the exchange is called AX, the architect exchange. And, you know, we just got our approval and we're launching imminently. And so, yeah, we're excited for any institutional customer.

It's interesting learning more to visit our site, Architect.exchange, and getting content with us. All right. Great. Well, Brad, thanks for joining us. We'll have to have you back again soon.