Why a Perp Exchange Asked Carmen Li to Make a Market in Her Own Index

**Carmen Li** (0:00)
A few things, at least all to me from traditional, again, market participant point of view from capital markets is, one of the things that's so bizarre is they ask me, hey, Carmen, aside from licensing indices, will you consider become market maker of your own indices?
And I thought they were joking, right? Because clearly, there's a huge conflict of interest by me treating my own indices that completely erode the neutrality from index provider point of view, right? By them asking, I thought they were completely joking, and I realized they were not joking.

**Steven Ehrlich** (0:34)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Bits and Bips, the interview. My name is Steve Ehrlich. I am the head of research at SharpLink and also your host. We've got a really exciting show today. But as always, before we begin, nothing that you hear or see on the show should be considered financial or investment advice. For full disclosures, please see unchainedcrypto.com/bits and Bips.
And let's take a brief pause to hear from one of our sponsors to make the show possible.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:03)
This episode is brought to you by CAPE, America's privacy first mobile carrier. Same premium service you'd expect from any other carrier, but designed so your number, your location and your data actually stay yours. Get 33% off six months at cape.co/unchained.
Fidelity has been investing in blockchain since 2014 They're not wondering if digital assets will shape the future. They're hiring the talent to help ensure they do. Explore opportunities today at crypto.fidelitycareers.com. Fidelity is an equal opportunity employer.

**Steven Ehrlich** (1:42)
All right, welcome back. So really exciting guest today. We have Carmen Li. She is the CEO of two different companies, Silicon Data and Compute Exchange. And she's basically created an entire industry focused on tracking the price of GPUs during this just exponential increase in demand. So welcome Carmen.

**Carmen Li** (2:04)
Thank you. Glad to be here.

**Steven Ehrlich** (2:06)
Really excited to have Carmen, you as a guest, and we've been friends for a long time ever since our days at Citi. Really impressed with everything that you've been doing since you left Citi, I guess, since we both left, I became a journalist and now I'm at Sharp Link. You went to Bloomberg and I think led all enterprise data partnerships at Bloomberg, which anyone who has a Bloomberg terminal knows is a pretty big job. Then you got involved in building an index tracking GPUs for the first time.
Excellent foresight given where everything has gone and you're building out your entire enterprise to not just track the prices, but also build the financial plumbing, the infrastructure that will underpin all of it. So really excited to have you on today.

**Carmen Li** (2:51)
Thank you. It's always nice to speak to a friend.

**Steven Ehrlich** (2:55)
Look, we're going to talk a lot about potential areas of overlap, similarities and differences between what you're doing and areas of commonality with crypto. But just to make sure everyone understands what you do, what your two different companies offer. Can you please just give me the two-minute elevator pitch on Silicon Data and Compute Exchange?

**Carmen Li** (3:18)
Yeah, of course. Silicon Data is the Bloomberg market intelligence layer of compute. Think of us as the Bloomberg S&P for compute, meaning we have indices who are alternative to data, we have benchmarking, we have everything around intelligence layer. For example, our GPU indices, topo indices, things can actually very soon can be tradable at different exchanges. You need data, need information, need financial products, that's Silicon Data. Compute Exchange, the other side is the marketplace for compute resources procurement. You could actually get compute resources.
Full contracts, reserve contracts, refurbished GPU, you actually can get servers from us, and token packages, which will be announcing very soon. You can get actual, physically deliver compute resources at Compute Exchange.

**Steven Ehrlich** (4:14)
Great. Your progress has really been tremendous. Maybe talk a little bit about that.
In particular, anyone that has been watching your progress, you've been on CNBC and Bloomberg, you were just on Odlots.
You're launching futures contracts that are going to be traded on CME. I believe their cash settled at some point in the second half of this year. We'd love to hear more about that. Then just in particular, in a world where there's so much demand for GPU resources, how do you build an index that tracks it? I'm not a tech person by any stretch of the imagination, but I know enough to know that there's all different types of setups. This is not a homogenous commodity, as much as GPUs perhaps are becoming commoditized. How do you integrate that into an index that can just track the price so people can hedge exposure or speculate?