Inside Infinex: Founder on Token Launch, Perps, Polymarket, and InfoFi

[00:02] interviewing Kane from Infinex to talk upcoming token launch in just a couple days on or tomorrow by the time you watch this video on the 30th. So Kane, welcome to the show and thank you for

[00:14] >> Yeah, thanks for having me. >> Awesome. So let's just jump right into it. By now I'm sure everybody has seen Infinex on the timeline, but if you can quickly give us the 30 secondond elevator pitch, that'd be great.

[00:26] Yeah, I think um the the idea behind Infidex is make everything that you do Infidex is make everything that you do on chain as easy as doing uh what you would do on a centralized exchange. So um you know the the goal is uh for us to

[00:41] um you know the the goal is uh for us to be able to support uh users um across any chain, any asset um without gas, without any of the annoyances of doing crypto stuff. Just make it super easy. Um, so it feels like uh anything else

[00:55] you would do online. >> Yeah, that's a really great experience. don't want to deal with wallets. They don't want to deal deal with gas and all this stuff. You guys are incorporating a lot into the app and it's a narrative I

[01:07] think we're hearing a lot lately. I mean, like the everything app narrative. Coinbase uh did like a big presentation where they want to be the everything app. Even platforms like OpenC, which were originally NFTs, now they're trying

[01:19] to do everything. We have >> we have wallets like Phantom and MetaMask incorporating prediction markets and and per you have Hyperlid and Binance going headto-head both of them adding like stocks and commodities.

[01:31] What how are you looking at the landscape with all these competitors and you to win in this kind of environment? I think there are um you know some interesting like parallels to like previous technology cycles right um

[01:46] where you have these large incumbents who had a particular business model that you know worked really well for them and then something changed in the environment and they had to adapt to it or um you know they would die right um

[02:00] that is the situation that I think centralized exchanges find themselves in where there was a long period of time where the the majority of the activity that people wanted to do was trade tokens. You you were just, you know,

[02:12] swapping tokens back and forth. There wasn't much to do on chain, right? Um and then we got into this mode where all of a sudden there was a lot of things that you could do on Ethereum, on Salana, on, you know, other chains. Um

[02:24] and centralized exchanges could not support that because they were just an order book for swapping tokens. Um and so the the world over the last probably three years post FTX has really shifted where the majority of the activity is

[02:37] happening outside of centralized exchanges but centralized exchanges still control distribution in terms of like token trading and and volume and all of those things. Um so the question then is like given this environment that

[02:51] is changing this pressure that all the exchanges are feeling to transition to this onchain world how will they adapt to it and what are the advantages that a to it and what are the advantages that a pure play company project uh approach to

[03:06] this right where you don't have the legacy business of swapping tokens back and forth inside of a database. You can just come at it from like first principles and and attack the problem. um you know how does that play out right

[03:19] and most of the time when we look at technology cycles the incumbents lose they can't figure out how to you know survive and adapt and you know very rarely do they do they pull that off um and so I think that you know the pure

[03:34] the approach that wins because you don't have all of the legacy um you know things that that would hold you back. I feel like the the major I haven't used a centralized exchange in a very long time. I think the only use case I see

[03:49] them for now is onboarding and offboarding from banks. Like if I need on a lot of these platforms and they don't even let you. Is that something that you can do directly on Infinex? >> Yeah. So, so this is probably one of the

[04:02] last unsolved problems I think. um connecting pure onchain platforms, non-custodial platforms to Tradfi and and of course a centralized exchange which is basically Tradfi is going to have an advantage connecting to Tradfi.

[04:16] Um you know they have KYC, they have all of the things that a Tradfi uh on-ramp off-ramp will be looking for. But a bunch of people in the last three, four, five years have invested a lot of money in solving this problem and directly

[04:30] connecting an on-chain platform to trify rails. Um we are we have integrated a couple of them. Um we're looking at a bunch more. Um I think this becomes a really trivially solved problem in the next like 12 to 18 months. um where DAPs

[04:47] and other you know pure onchain platforms can connect to Tradfy Rails through like debit cards, credit cards, Apple Pay, um Google Pay, those sorts of things. Um and even, you know, virtual bank accounts where we're we're starting

[05:01] to see emerge as well. Bridge has like this virtual bank account solution. Um so that is one of the remaining advantages that I think centralized eroded, right? And you know, if you look at the trajectory here, almost every

[05:15] advantage they've had has disappeared um or is is in the process of disappearing. It's why all the exchanges are trying to figure out what I what am I like? How do I become this hybrid off-chain onchain thing? Um you know, you see Coinbase and

[05:29] got wallets, they've got all these different things, but it's just much harder as a giant incumbent company to reorient yourself around a new world.

[05:41] products that you guys are integrating. So, you've done a lot already. You have spot trading, you have per trading, uh not only for crypto, but for uh stocks and commodities. I saw there's gold on there, which has been all the rage. Uh

[05:54] you have the ability to earn directly on the platform. You have a multiple you guys? I mean, is there going to be prediction markets? Is there going to be all this stuff? >> Uh I think the there's like short-term

[06:08] road map next uh kind of 8 to 12 weeks. let's call it um two two to three months. Um there are many many things that we have kind of almost got ready to launch. Um TGE which is coming up you you mentioned has been a little bit of a

[06:23] distraction uh around that. There's a lot of work that goes into launching a token and so um that has kind of derailed some of these things. Uh but as soon as we get through TG in the next day, you know, 48 hours, whatever, um we

[06:36] day, you know, 48 hours, whatever, um we have a very very packed road map of mentioned like prediction markets. Um we've got uh shielded sends. So talking about one of the other advantages that centralized exchanges still have um is

[06:51] they uh often for people are the way to kind of break the connection between two wallets. If you want to trade memecoins on one wallet and you want to trade ETH connect those two for, you know, some reason you don't want people to be able

[07:05] don't want people to counter trade you on memecoins or whatever. Um, kind of one of the only ways to do that and and the easiest way that most people use today is deposit into your centralized exchange, withdraw to another wallet,

[07:19] exchange, withdraw to another wallet, right? um that that uh I think that use case is another one of those use cases where like we have the technology now to to roll out a few different solutions for this. Zcash is one. Um Houdini swap

[07:34] is another. Um there's solutions on Ethereum like rail gun um and privacy pools and and you know so solving that problem and and just finding all the exchanges have and just kind of ripping them out.

[07:48] >> Yeah, I like that. Uh right now pers are available. They they actually just on they were hyperlquid only and now it lighter that I saw? >> Lighter is Yeah. So So that's going to

[08:00] go live uh probably in about a week. Um we're I just saw like the final final final gold master demo of that yesterday. It's looking really good. Um and so you will have basically a perp aggregator. Um one of the first per

[08:15] there that have popped up where you can easily move your funds between hyperlquid, lighter, synthetics, trade on any of those markets. You know, different advantages. Lighter has really good commodity markets, right? Um you

[08:30] know, uh Hyperlid has all of the um S&P stuff and individual stocks. And so, you know, having them all in one place where you don't need to think about where your margin is and how to move it is is, you

[08:42] trader that wants exposure to all those different asset classes, not just trading crypto on leverage. >> Are you still involved? I saw in your in your uh bio you were part of the or I guess you're the founder of Synthetics.

[08:55] because that's still operating. >> It is. Yeah. So, Synthetics just relaunched on mainet um on Ethereum mainet about a month ago. Um, so synthetics went through a long period of

[09:08] uh trying to figure out what it wanted to be when it grew up um and not really not really being able to figure it out. So this is the fourth version of a per protocol that synthetics has launched. Um we were one of the first projects to

[09:23] leave mainet and go to L2s because we saw the scaling challenges. Um in the interim over the intervening 5 years the tech has gotten a lot better. um mainet's gotten a lot better and so now it is actually viable to run a per

[09:37] exchange on mainet um and so synthetics has come back to mainet and and has come back to mainet and and relaunched um and yeah I'm I'm not um I don't kind of make day-to-day decisions but I help with strategy and and you

[09:49] these days. >> I think I know the answer but I was different projects my thought was why not launch Infinex as part of synthetics? How come they're two separate products?

[10:03] >> Yeah, it's it's kind of a weird path dependency thing. Um when in 2023 when I came up with this idea for Infinex, the goal was to do it separately from synthetics so that it didn't need to be as decentralized. Um so you know

[10:19] synthetics is purely decentralized. It's a DAO, you know, had all of these very decentralization maxy features, right? Um the community was very very much aligned with that. Um, and I saw an opportunity to build something that

[10:34] would kind of wrap that decentralized thing in a more centralized layer to thing in a more centralized layer to make the the experience better. Um, that was the kind of genesis point for for Infinex. And then as we did more and

[10:47] more research over the like first kind of 3 to six months, the opportunity just looked a lot larger and it ended up, you know, making sense to kind of build it as a separate parallel project. I would have guessed funding, you know, it's

[10:59] know what the treasury looks like for synthetics, but uh something this massive as as Infinex, especially when you're taking on all these competitors, give it a go. >> Yeah. I you know, for the first 18

[11:13] months of u of Infinex, I just bootstrapped it myself. I spent about $10 million on it myself. We didn't we didn't raise money. Um and uh the synthetics treasury is is in a pretty good state. um you know post DeFi summer

[11:27] even still um so so you know synthetics didn't really need um didn't need capital but Infinex did um and then we got to a point where we're like okay >> to your point if we really want to do this the scale of this thing is is too

[11:41] big for me to keep paying for it um you know we need to scale up um and really go hard at this and so uh we went and did an NFT sale um in in late 2024 uh did an NFT sale um in in late 2024 uh raised about $60 million um so that was

[11:55] point. We went from a 20 person team to a 50 60 person team uh and really kind of, you know, tried to speedrun it. >> Yeah, I saw I was the next point was the the NFT sale. So, I guess we can get into that. You guys raised $67.7 million

[12:10] into that. You guys raised $67.7 million in 14 days. Extremely impressive. Um, now you also just did another raise, which was a public token raise, but you only raised 5 million. Why? Why do the raise? And also, why raise such a small

[12:23] token sale? >> The the goal? So, NFTTS, as you um you know, you got a Pudgy Penguin behind you, so I'm assuming you have a sense of uh of the the state of the NFT market at the moment. It's not amazing. Um and so,

[12:38] you know, we we did this NFT sale and the people who were interested in holding an NFT for a bunch of reasons um was a pretty small group of people. So, we ended up with only about 2,000 holders. Um, and uh, you know, raising

[12:52] $67 million from 2,000 different people were a lot of whales and and you know, OGs and stuff that went into that sale. Um, but we were never really able to get kind of wider distribution. It was this

[13:05] kind of wider distribution. It was this very niche thing. Um, and so the goal of doing a token, converting from an NFT to a token that could be on, you know, uh, exchanges like Coinbase and and, you know, various other places, um, was to

[13:18] broaden that audience. But given that people kind of faded the NFT, we're like, we'll give people one last chance to buy the token before we do the TGE. attention, who might have felt sidelined because the NFT is expensive. It was

[13:33] like, you know, $3,000, right? um give people a chance to to go into the sale. Um the challenge was we said we don't want people who are just here for a quick short-term flip. Um so you know in order to go into the sale you need to

[13:47] the NFTs in fairness, right? There were there were locks on those. Um three rounds for the NFTs, right? Three. >> Yeah. It was it was a layered it was a liquid price but the majority people chose the locked price which was a

[14:01] three-year lock. Um, and so we're like, "Oh, people prefer locks. We'll just do it locked and we'll give them good price." People in 2025, 2026 do not >> It was a different world in 2024. And so the the response to lock tokens was uh

[14:17] >> We will kill you. We're trying [laughter] to lock our tokens. Um, and so it was a bit of a miss to be totally honest. Um, in the end we ended up closing the sale, but what we didn't achieve was any new people coming in. It

[14:30] was all of the existing holders who were like I have a few NFTts but I want to double down here who bought more. U I don't think we I think there were 700 shocked if there were 100 new people honestly who who came it just it was a

[14:45] still a very niche thing. So um hopefully with the launch of the token centralized exchanges we will get a bit better distribution. I think the SNX token has something like a few hundred thousand holders. um you know onchain,

[15:01] not even you know not even including centralized exchanges. Um so we're a couple of orders of magnitude away from even synthetics in terms of like holder work to do. >> That's really interesting the stats you

[15:14] said of the of the people you think only 700 aren't existing holders. Uh that's pretty crazy. Uh you you mentioned uh adjusting the sale and all. I know you originally were going to raise at 1 billion and the timeline wasn't the

[15:27] biggest fan of that. You had a couple riffs with the timeline. Yeah. Um the feel vindicated now that Twitter has said like Kaid or I don't want to go stuffy? >> Yeah.

[15:40] like and now Twitter's rejoicing like they always agreed all along even though there's there's a couple of elements to it. One is you have people who are

[15:52] it. One is you have people who are incredibly mercenary um who are purely engagement farming, right? And whatever is in the zygeist, whatever is in the meta, they will be behind that, right? They're they're not contrarians. There's

[16:05] no contrarian takes. They're just like, "Oh, we all agree on this thing, like was good, they're like, "Infoifi is amazing." And then when it was bad, that's ever happened." Um, so you know, you have to somewhat discount some of

[16:19] those voices that you see on the timeline that are are just kind of going wherever which way the wind blows. Um, I think in terms of the the infoi meta, it

[16:31] it actually I'm not I don't feel vindicated. I feel a bit sad. um because I strongly believe that like the right incentive mechanisms and and you know well-designed incentives are the most powerful driver behavior. [snorts] And

[16:46] so what what Kaido started out as what InfoI started out as was an incredibly welldesigned incentive scheme for driving attention to projects and then they ruined it. And

[17:02] the the way that they ruined it was trying to scale it um you know vertically by instead of having a curated group of people that had and incentives it's incentives all the way down. So, as a person who has built up

[17:17] an audience and has 150,000 followers, right? Um, I have a strong disincentive to no matter how much money you pay me, start slopping up my timeline and posting nonsense and gming people and all kinds of whatever the the bad side

[17:34] that. There's no amount of money you could pay me to get me to do that. Um, but if you are offering me airdrops and incentives and exposure to tokens, I'll some stuff that I like and I'll be like, actually, I wouldn't have found this

[17:50] thing. It's actually really cool. You guys should check it out. Because that's part of what crypto Twitter is about, like finding alpha, sharing it, you know, creating that kind of that that community vibe. So, um, OG Kao, that

[18:04] it was really really good. There was a curated group of people that had a aligned. They weren't going to just start saying nonsense, right? There was start saying nonsense, right? There was a downside to them uh you know um uh

[18:19] going going in a different way. And then as soon as there was no filter, as soon as there was no curation around who could do it, it became positive EV for you to try and max extract run bots, run bot farms, GM slop, AI slop, like all of

[18:34] that stuff. And so it is a tragedy of the commons sort of situation that um you know a good incentive scheme that was unfortunately scaled out in the wrong way not just took down itself but there's an argument that it it partially

[18:49] took down crypto Twitter and and blew up crypto Twitter and you know caused X to have this backlash against crypto and these cryptobots and bot army and slop nonsense and has reduced the reach of everyone on crypto Twitter. And so when

[19:04] people are gravedancing Kaio now, I can I understand why. I can see why they're like, "No, you ruined this good thing that we had." Um, but the sad part is the original vision was actually really good. And so it was it was the somewhere

[19:21] in the mix it just got up. >> Yeah. Well, hopefully the new changes are good. I'm glad they're expanding platforms, too, not just X YouTube. That >> on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Um, so back to the sale. So you

[19:35] guys were originally going to raise at or it's it's 300 mil. If you want to sell on day one, it's one bill. You revised that. You made it roughly 100 mil. Uh, and if you want to sell on day one, 300 mil, and there was a cap, I

[19:49] believe 2500 that you could put in the raise. You guys, after like a day or two, you got rid of the cap and people started aping way higher amounts. Uh, but you did keep the one-year vesting. Why keep the vest? I think the vesting

[20:03] How come you kept the vesting? >> Um like obstinency is probably like one one one argument, right? That like just being like a bit uh a bit like no, this

[20:15] it. I don't care if it doesn't work. Um you know, one one of the things I think uh being a second time founder in crypto is you can do things that are unpopular and not really give a right? And people just have to deal with it. um it

[20:30] doesn't mean they're going to like you or like the thing. Um and in fact, Because they look at a thing that you're doing that they don't like. They know you can get away with it and that really pisses them off because they're like,

[20:43] be doing and you're doing it anyway and it's going to work and I hate you for it." Right? Um and so, so I think even when you look at the unlocks, right? The unlock structure that we did, this is not a novel structure. Um there have

[20:57] been many many people who have had uh unlocking penalties right like the meta for a long time especially in like pool twos and and a lot of staking schemes was come and do this thing stake it and if you leave there's an early exit

[21:12] penalty right I never loved that I always thought that that as an incentive always thought that that as an incentive design was very punitive um and was actually you you know you get this weird perverse uh incentive for people to not

[21:26] enter at all. And so you see people participating in the staking scheme. don't. What you don't see is the large group of people that would have participated but otherwise don't. Right? And so the the view that I had and and

[21:40] the reason why we inverted that scheme was let's do a thing where instead of you being penalized and you losing something, you can opt to pay more to get the optionality of leaving early. Right? It's kind of the same thing, but

[21:53] it's it's a slight different take on it. Um, what I did not anticipate is that raise at a billion dollars. >> Um, and and you know, the reality is we billion dollars the entire time. There was a decay curve. It started at a

[22:09] original price over the course of a year. So, at any given month, you were paying, you know, less to get out and and, you know, this option sort of decayed um, as the the time decay kicked in. Um, I thought it was an elegant

[22:24] design. Um, many people on the timeline thought it was uh the worst thing they'd ever seen. Um, so, you know, we'll we'll see who uh is right in the end, I guess. >> I think it's also there was an article or not an art or I guess like a Twitter

[22:39] the statistics on every coin that's launched in the last year and like 80 people are just too scared to put in then be at a loss. Especially the opportunity cost that you're taking by

[22:52] not putting money somewhere else. And then ICOs recently, we had I mean you guys did you hit your you went above your targets, but we had a few like I they went way above their targets and they were just like

[23:05] keep 10 and 14. >> Um [clears throat] for what it's worth. There were projects that like changed, you know, uh changed the rules in the middle of the ICO and and you know, a bunch of uh a bunch of

[23:19] different things that happened. Um you know, uh increase increased demand or whatever. I mean, synthetics actually, interestingly, um you know, the first FUD that I ever really dealt with in in crypto Twitter was Ian Bolina. Um, so I

[23:33] Inbolina was this guy. Um, if you don't know who he is, uh, you can look him up. He's washed now. But he was he was this guy that was like the ICO whisperer, right? Um, you know, people would come turn up, pay him a bunch of money, give

[23:47] him a sweet deal, whatever. Um, a discounted ICO allocation, and then he would shill it on the timeline. That was his job. Um and um and we had a $30 million hard cap that we had proposed and then stable coins just blew up.

[24:03] bunch of people that wanted to go in and we didn't have any cap left, right? And so we said we're considering raising the cap from 30 million to 50 million. And find it. I'm sure it's out where this guy is like in Bali in a pool um

[24:19] the pool being like these guys are the worst guys I've ever seen. This is the worst guys I've ever seen. This is the worst thing that whatever. Um and uh that was the first time that I had like a fudstorm about me. So not my first

[24:32] you kept >> We didn't. We ended up we ended up keeping it because and it's funny. I was talking to my co-founder about this a couple weeks ago actually. He he reminded me of it. Um, and at the time,

[24:45] you know, there was this very, and I've said this before, like crypto is so reflexive, right? That the difference between people wanting to do something and not wanting to do something is like so finely balanced. And if you if you

[24:59] shift things like a little bit in one direction or the other, uh, it can it can really go badly, right? So, the we were in a position where we were like, to be fine if we only raise 30. no big deal. Um to risk the whole thing

[25:15] deal. Um to risk the whole thing collapsing for an extra 20 mil just does not make sense. Now his take my this is my co-founder is like we should have he's right it would have closed but at the time I was like um usually I'm very

[25:29] not riskaverse. I'm not a risk averse person. I'm willing to just yolo things but I was like we are so close to pulling this off and and you know it's for the next 5 years. It would be insane for us to risk that and and risk this

[25:44] opportunity uh you know for for some extra um at the time, you know, wasn't money. It was about we wanted wider dist. It was the same like idea of like people were saying no to. We had strategic investors that wanted, you

[26:00] know, to write a $5 million check that there was no room for it. So, um you there was no room for it. So, um you know, bad bad execution on an idea that I think was was a good idea. And in the end, that extra 20 million probably

[26:12] wouldn't have made a huge difference, but um you know, cuz synthetics is still here. Um but if it had made the difference and synthetics had run out of money in 2018, then I would have felt pretty stupid.

[26:24] >> Yeah. And everybody would be calling you rugger. Oh, project ran out of money. What do you want me to do? Like >> um so those are the bad ICOs. We had one actually today. BB, I don't know if you were watching. U

[26:37] >> Yeah. It's a and it's an NFT coin. A lot of people, I mean, even myself, were showing that it was going to be around 100 mil. I think they're at 450 mil haven't done the unlocks yet for the Soulbound tokens or or even for the the

[26:52] NFTts, but it's one of the projects that's just proven all the Polyarketers wrong. I was looking at your Poly Market numbers, and I have it here. It's roughly 27% or 3/4 of people think it'll be under that 300 mil number within 24

[27:07] hours, which if you're locking up for a year, you're at 100 mil, but if you want year, you're at 100 mil, but if you want to get out day one, it's at 300 mil. Uh I know when it came to the raise, you were at like 1.4 mil and you publicly

[27:19] said, "You want to bet us go you want to bet bet against us, go ahead, but we're same view here with the current poly market numbers? like the people who are saying oh it's going to be under 300 mil. Yeah, look I I think you know um

[27:34] the market is everyone is pessimistic right now right and so of course poly market is expressing that pessimism that's its job right poly market is not always right it is an expression of what the belief of the market is right and if

[27:49] going to happen if the market is super pessimistic then yeah like there's an arb there someone could you know come in and and say well hang on a second I've done the numbers you know But this is not the presidency where there's some

[28:03] own polling, right? Like there's not that efficient a market. But if someone were to really look at the structure of this sale, there's one thing that is a this sale, there's one thing that is a big difference between what we are doing

[28:17] and what I think almost every TG looks like, right? um for the last year or for over a year for the last 15 months we have had a liquid market in the NFT that has been the representation of ownership of the project right that market is

[28:32] liquid and it's trading at 300 plus right now um so you have to have a very right now um so you have to have a very interesting thesis as to why all of the

[28:44] all of these people who hold the NFT are going to get the INX token but this is not a pudgy penguins pangu situation where like pudgy penguins the NFT continues and the token is just an extra

[28:58] thing right and they kind of you know are split off from one another um the INX token replaces the patron NFT so the patron NFT we fully expect the price will go to from $3,000 down to like 100 bucks or something like that right all

[29:12] the value that existed in the patron NFT will transfer to the INX token right um will transfer to the INX token right um so if your if your thesis theis is that and even if you look at something like pangu right market cap of pudgy penguins

[29:27] at the time was like a billion dollars right and then uh pangu was like four billion even today I think it's like 300 million or 200 million for pudgy penguins and you know 1.5 billion right so tokens are worth more than NFTs like

[29:42] that's pretty clear right so you have a market that's saying the NFTs are worth 300 million the people who are the sellers the potential sellers of the token are these same people that are operating in that market. Um, they're

[29:55] going to get the INX token. It feels very strange to me and I I would love to know what the thesis of a poly market better is there that a person who's not willing to sell something for $300 million today in two days is going to

[30:08] decide that they're willing to sell the exact same thing for $100 million. That you're not looking closely and you're not paying attention, I can see why you' be like, "Oh, no. Of course, it's a TG. TGS at the moment are the first chance

[30:23] of liquidity that people have had in cases sometimes like three years. illquid thing for three years. Finally, they get some liquidity. Of course, they dump into that liquidity, right? Um that's not the situation with INX. Um

[30:39] but you know, if you're pattern matching to the last 50 token launches and how you get yourself there. >> Yeah. How exactly do the NFTs work? So, tokens, >> correct?

[30:52] >> Okay. Uh, speaking of the token, um, let's talk a bit about utility. I going to be doing buybacks with the revenues that you're earning. Maybe we that you've already announced for the token.

[31:05] token. >> Yeah. So, so primarily uh the patron NFT over the last year has given people early access to impacts, early access to early access to impacts, early access to features, fee discounts, um discounted

[31:17] beta periods where there's no fees where you can try out the thing. Um you know, a bunch of of different uh kind of early user early adopter advantages. Um uh access to the team, access to you know, alpha, etc. Um and and that will all

[31:34] transfer to the INX token. So that all of you know there's like a gated our holders that are there where you know we ask them questions about should think about this protocol versus this protocol. There's a very uh tight

[31:49] and what we're building. That all switches to INX. So if you're an INX holder and you have 100,000 INX then you get access to that channel. Um, and you'll be able to, you know, have all the benefits of of, you know, fee

[32:03] Eventually, this will probably evolve into something that looks more like a centralized exchange VIP program where there's, you know, maybe staking levels or staking tiers. You look at Hyperl, they've got staked hype and they've got

[32:17] a matrix of like volume and staking and, you know, if you have a certain amount of volume and you stake a certain amount of tokens, you get 0% uh maker fees, which is awesome, right? So there's things like that that I think

[32:29] we will we will introduce over time. Um but uh but the main utility I would say of the token is that obviously um you know there are buybacks from revenue that is generated that go into the token. Um the buyback meta is looking a

[32:45] might say there's there's some people who are kind of questioning this buyback meta. Um but you know hype's back to 35 bucks so that probably changes and people go actually it's fine. and Pump just went, you know, went 25% in the

[32:58] met. Who knows? glad it's going up. And same thing, Pump. I think people are realizing like whenever degeneracy happens on chain, it happens through Pump. Um,

[33:11] >> that should be their tagline. >> Wherever there is degeneracy, it happens with us. [laughter] >> Yeah. Uh, speaking of of numbers, so what do your monthly active users currently look like? And what do the

[33:23] you had announced revenues previously. I was watching I think on bank list you announced u the projection was like something like 25 mil but you recently just turned on the fees for switch because swapping and bridging was free

[33:37] for a long time on Infinex. >> Yeah. So, so if you look at DeFi Llama, I think the projection the yearly run rate right now is about 14 mil um that that uh we have right now. Um we have an incentive scheme, so that skews it a

[33:51] little bit. Um this this voucher scheme um but the voucher scheme that we have been running for the last three months uh becomes a lot more powerful when you're getting vouchers that allow you to buy discounted tokens, but the token

[34:06] of banked them up and they don't really know what to do with them. Um once the exercise those straight away and buy discounted tokens with them. Um so I incentive loop becomes much more powerful. Um so that could drive more

[34:22] revenue potentially. Um we also have you know prediction markets coming out. There's no fee mechanism around prediction markets. It'll probably be prediction markets. It'll probably be fee free um for a while. Um and and

[34:36] know private send that I talked about. Um we've got advanced order types. Uh we've got a trading terminal coming up. Um there are a number of different uh vectors for new revenue streams um to emerge out of. Um so at the moment it's

[34:52] kind of concentrated in uh hyperlquid builder fees and a little bit of Switch. with that and then some of those other products to catch up and and add. Um, you know, ideally we need to get to a run rate of like 50 to 100 mil in in

[35:07] revenue. That's that's the um the ideal target. Um, obviously the market's not amazing right now and volumes are down and activity is down. Um, but that won't last forever and and so, you know, we'll be well positioned when the market comes

[35:19] back to to capitalize on that. >> Yeah, I'd seen you guys are second uh markets. Have you already announced if it's going to be Poly Market, Koshi, or that's still a secret? >> Uh, we've had some leaks. Uh, Kelshi is

[35:32] >> Uh, we've had some leaks. Uh, Kelshi is tough for us because KYC. Um, so so uh and there isn't really like an onchain way for people to do it. Um, so so at different markets. We've been looking into uh Poly Market. We've been looking

[35:47] into predictf fun. Uh, myriad, there's some longtail markets as well that are out there. Um the nice thing about being an onchain aggregator is like once you solve the direct problems adding additional providers is is pretty easy.

[36:01] So with Switch we started with five um we kind of nailed that. We understood the edges. We understood what all the trade-offs were and we went from five to Then we got to 20 and we're like this is actually fine. You start to get

[36:14] diminishing returns adding new new providers. Um same thing with chains. We started off with seven chains. We're now at 20 plus chains. Um we'll probably have 50 plus chains by the time we get to the end of this year. Um and and you

[36:28] to the end of this year. Um and and you know we we kind of try to spend at least feature, understanding it, understanding what users want before we go and expand it more broadly. Um so I expect a similar thing with prediction markets.

[36:41] Eventually we'll probably have 10 different prediction markets on on there >> Wow. Do you think prediction markets are I mean they're trending right now. It's I made a poly market video and it's has 5x the views of my other tutorials. Do

[36:54] you think it's more just a trend? Do you think prediction markets are something that's going to last for a long time as like the future of trading? to it. One, a lot of the volume's coming from uh sports betting right now across

[37:08] interesting thing about prediction markets versus like a classical sports markets versus like a classical sports book, um, is, you know, we've had PvP sports books before, right? Like they they exist. Um, most of the time I think

[37:24] the challenge with the with them has been that liquidity is bad. Um, one thing that crypto does a really good job of is solving liquidity. It makes it really easy to move liquidity around, makes things global. Um, and so there's

[37:39] prediction markets will never work because the longtail of markets no one cares about, they'll be too illquid, etc. We're sort of seeing that thesis unravel a little bit where even some really niche markets, you've got

[37:52] arbitrageers, you've got bots, you've got, you know, protraders who think they can predict anything in the world. Like, you've got a bunch of different actors that are coming in and liquidity is aggregating and it's building up. And

[38:05] market enjoyer for a long time. I was a poly market seed investor. Uh, and uh, and you know, like even going back to the Augre days, like Augre was the most

[38:17] exciting project, right, for me when I got into Ethereum in 2016. Um, and so, you know, I've I've always had a view that this would work, that you combine longtail permissionless markets with deep crypto liquidity and global access

[38:33] and that it will work. It's taken longer than we might have liked, but I think we are starting to see that flywheel really get going. I think that's really going to work out. They're supposed to.

[38:47] They're supposed to. Uh so I mean you guys have your TGE by the time I post post this uh tomorrow on January 30th. I don't believe you've announced any exchanges. Uh any surprises you can give us or we're going

[38:59] timeline? >> Uh I think Coinbase has now uh publicly announced that they will support us. Um so we're expecting a few more to announce uh over the next like you know 24 hours. Um but you know Coinbase is a

[39:13] big one. Um, you know, it's interesting the the Coinbase situation. They they've been talking about this, I think, for basically the last year, right, about how they were going to make uh listings better, more efficient, more open, etc.

[39:28] Um, a lot of people say a lot of things. Um, and you know, most of the time you can kind of discount it, especially from a big org. Um, I think I'm probably one of the few people that has the data on this on as the counterparty to this

[39:42] this on as the counterparty to this because we listed Synthetics in uh 2020 on Coinbase. Um, and now a new token in this new Coinbase era, this, you know, roll out the blue carpet era. Um, and I

[39:54] can say definitively as someone who has played both games, they have massively uh improved their listing process um, in terms of like the efficiency and terms of like the efficiency and transparency. Um it it is just it was

[40:07] much clearer. Um I don't think listing a token is ever a fun experience but like it was at least clear what was happening the entire time. I think when we listed synthetics um you know it took almost a year. There were multiple rounds and

[40:24] were involved and it was just really hard. It was really hard at that time for Coinbase to list new tokens, especially DeFi tokens, especially the regulatory environment. I think there were a bunch of really well-meaning

[40:37] people that were trying to do the right thing and get the good tokens listed and it was just really hard. Cut to 5 years later and they seem to have solved most of those problems. It was a really smooth process. uh really easy to you

[40:52] questions like all the things you know it wasn't just like rubber stamp list anything they they went through a very clear process but um it was much much better this time around so whatever they're doing it's definitely working um

[41:06] and and you know it feels it feels like um they've actually delivered on that carpet and and figuring out their listing process. presentation they did, I guess maybe two months ago now, uh was really

[41:20] forward even trying to get into memecoin stuff. So, uh glad you guys are getting that listing. Really impressive. Um anything you want to leave us with? Um I don't I don't think that I've got any

[41:37] uh any alpha leaks or anything like that to to drop. um if I'm supposed to. I [laughter] it's been a long week already. Um I think uh I think probably

[41:49] the the main thing is if you haven't used Infinex, um you know, it's very easy to be mercenary and just think about everything as a trade, right? Like this token go down? Do I like this project because of the token, etc. Which

[42:04] exchanges? Um, but at the end of the day, you know, we have to build useful things in crypto. If we're not building useful things that people actually want useful things that people actually want to use, um, then we are kind of playing,

[42:17] you know, a zero- sum game. Um, and so I I feel really strongly about what we've built at Infinex. I use it myself. It has solved a lot of my problems. Um, it makes doing crypto stuff so much easier for me. Um, and so if you haven't used

[42:32] it and you've just been looking at it as this like very kind of black and white, would encourage you to like actually try out the platform and and see what we out the platform and and see what we built. Um, it is genuinely the best user

[42:46] >> Yeah, I really I mean I made a tutorial for it. I really like the platform, especially how easy it was. I set it up on my desktop and then I just set up the app or the the web app on my phone and everything was just already logged in. I

[42:59] wallets and everything. Uh, so I really enjoyed the experience. So, I'll put down below. We're going to end the interview here. Kane, really appreciate you coming on my show. Uh, thank you everybody for watching. Hit the like

[43:12] button, subscribe. Thank you for watching another Crypto Grill interview. watching another Crypto Grill interview. Peace.