The Perps Market Could Grow 100X - Here’s How Lighter Plans to Win

Trevor King (0:00)

We think it's 10x more competitive over the next five years as the US markets open up. So we think we'll be competing with a lot more people than just Hyperliquid.

John Gillen (0:08)

The Clarity Act has failed. The SEC and CFTC are rushing to roll out regulatory clarity for the digital asset industry. And everyone is wondering who is going to win the perps wars once they open the floodgates. And most importantly, what do we need to know about all of this? Hello and welcome to Milk Road Crypto, the show that knows that when your project is up more than 500% since March, people are gonna ask a lot of questions. I'm your host John Gillen and I'm here to ask questions. Today is Wednesday, September 23rd, and today we are joined by Trevor King, who is the head of investor relations and growth at Leiter, the zero fee, ZK powered, perpetual futures exchange built on Ethereum. We're gonna find out what that means and why it's so bullish.

If that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe, share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. As a reminder, today's podcast is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Nexo, the digital asset platform that lets you trade, earn and borrow all in one place. So keep an ear out for more information on them later in the episode. But for now, welcome to Milk Road Crypto. Trevor King, how are you?

Trevor King (1:07)

Good. That was a mouthful of an intro, man. Well done.

John Gillen (1:10)

I'm getting better at these things. Thank you.

Trevor King (1:12)

Thank you.

John Gillen (1:12)

Thank you.

Trevor, we crossed paths here in New York City and got to have a quick conversation about LIDAR. And something that jumped out to me from what you said was that you were already pretty full-ported into LIDAR before you started working there, and you left Delphi to come to LIDAR because you said it was, quote, a generational company. Talk to me about your conviction in this relatively small project and what got you so excited about LIDAR.

Trevor King (1:35)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, maybe some background is for the prior two to three years, I'd focused solely on on perps for the most part. And so I've gotten to know the team really well. And I believe perps was the fastest growing vertical in crypto outside of stable coins. And now I would argue it's growing faster than stable coins. And so if I look at tech more broadly, I think it's the second fastest growing vertical in tech outside of AI and AI include robotics. So I really want to lean into perps. This is a place I feel like I have edge. I have somewhat of a network in crypto. I don't in AI. I have no edge here. Let me lean into the edge I have. And so I spent a lot of time speaking with various teams in the perp space and lighters kind of always stood out. I remember meeting them here in Miami. Those are on base now. I remember meeting them 18 months ago and was very impressed and so kept close tabs on them. And then over the months and quarters of spending more time with them, underwriting them for my personal portfolio, doing some work for Adelphi on that side as well. Just getting really close to the team. And I remember actually being somewhat critical of going into their TGE and I thought, valuations might have been a little bit lofty.

Actually, I thought valuations were actually probably pretty fair, but I thought the metrics were probably a bit overinflated. And I think anytime you see incentives, I think it's safe to discount some of that volume. And how you want to discount that is up to you. For me, I generally speaking said somewhere between 60% and 80%, I would discount the volume there. And so I think you saw that post TGE. And then I remember spending more time with the team after that and just spending more time with them, their advisors, well priced as well. I remember coming to the office when the token was down 60-70% in a matter of whatever, six weeks it was. And the team was incredibly locked in. A lot of times when you come visit teams and the token's down 60-70%-80% in a few weeks, morale is really low. Morale was definitely low here, but you usually have people almost looking for the exit.

And there was none of that. There was no one had resumes open on their computer. I think everyone was very much locked in. Like, hey, what we built is truly incredible. And we just, we realized what we need to do to kind of like come to market in a better way. And so I saw them really lean in. That's when I personally really started putting a lot of my chips on the table.