Alex Cutler: The Aerodrome Bull Thesis for 2026 (Expansion Plans)

**Robbie** (0:00)
Alrighty, guys, we are back here in the Tokenization Tower. I've got the Aerodrome founder, contributor, CEO of Dromos Labs, Alexander Cutler. Alex, welcome to the tower, buddy. Good to have you.

**Alexander Cutler** (0:10)
Dude, it's great to be here. Beautiful day in New York.

**Robbie** (0:12)
Nice view, right?

**Alexander Cutler** (0:13)
Not bad, huh? Vibes are immaculate. Nixon 5, amazing weather, tokens are pumping. I'm in hell of a time to be here.

**Robbie** (0:20)
Tokens are pumping. What a weekend for news from the kind of broader macro climate. The Knicks won, the Carolina Hurricanes won, the World Cup started.

**Alexander Cutler** (0:31)
Yeah.

**Robbie** (0:31)
Yeah.

**Alexander Cutler** (0:32)
Yeah, it's a great time to be here. And it's been a bit of a winter in the token world. But it's a great time to be up in the tower here talking about tokenization because as of today, seems like people like tokens a lot more than they did yesterday. Right?

**Robbie** (0:49)
Well, Alex, man, you guys have been putting in a lot of work on quite a few facets of Aerodrome. Maybe just it's been nice since DAS. Maybe just catch us up on the latest of what you guys have been locked in on. And then we're going to get into kind of thinking about token value flows, predictive allocation, and just more of this kind of broader conversation.

**Alexander Cutler** (1:10)
Yeah.
It's an exciting time because Aero and Metadex 03, what we announced in New York last November, right? And that we've been talking about on a few different occasions between now and then. It is officially in audit right now.
That is like nearly two years of work, right? That we've been putting into what we think will be the leading on chain exchange for spot markets. It's in audit. We're ramping up to our launch. And this launch for us will be the moment, four years in the making. It's actually four years now since we launched Velodrome, where we're going to expand to Ethereum mainnet. We're going to grow on to Circles ARK. And really, our objective is to be the definitive on chain exchange for spot, just in the way that hype is for derivatives markets. We want to be the New York Stock Exchange of the on chain economy, just like, I think you've seen Hyperliquid, they are the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, of the on chain economy. And here we are right on the precipice of it.

**Robbie** (2:19)
Yeah, and that statistic, I think from, I think I saw on base, on Aerodrome, this is the number one spot volume, liquidity and volume for Bitcoin, ETH and a couple other key assets on chain.

**Alexander Cutler** (2:33)
I mean, think about what are the top traded on chain assets and some of the most important assets in the world right now. Certainly you would say Bitcoin. And yes, most days, we are the number one exchange for trading Bitcoin anywhere on chain. And that is incredible to think about. Most days we are also that for Ethereum, which will be on most days the second most traded asset. And we are doing volumes higher than some even centralized exchanges. And this is the sort of shift we're seeing with hyperliquid, where it is beginning to outpace many of these centralized exchanges as well. But then the third one is super critical because this is going to be a major growth area for the on chain economy, I think, in the next two years, which is we are doing more FX volume.
EURC, USDC, than every other exchange on chain combined. And think about that, Aerodrome today services a single network in base. And we are doing as much as exchanges that service all the other changes that service, 24 different chains and all this sort of stuff. And that is why we think we have this right to win as we expand outside of base and the Optimism Superchain into Mainnet Ethereum, to ARK and really across all of EVM. We want to unite all of that. We want to be the venue that people are trading, not just all the amazing assets and tokens we have on chain right now, but a growing FX network, tokenized real world assets, equities. We want to be the exchange layer. And by the way, we want to be that, because if you look at the last year and you look at where value accrues in the on chain economy, other than stable coins, no vertical of the on chain economy produces more value than spot exchanges. I think last year about $4.5 billion in fees on spot exchanges. I think derivatives exchanges like 2.53, something like that, so less.