Unless you’ve been missin-in-action since 2011, you know that crypto can be one of the most volatile assets out there ($22k Bitcoin, anyone)? Options trading has been an answer to de-risking for stocks, but has been largely unavailable on crypto… until now! Let's open up this week’s drop with Opyn.
⚾ The Elevator Pitch:
For the longest time, trading cryptocurrencies has been seen as risky, inaccessible, and complicated. Trading platforms for cryptocurrency trading like Coinbase and Robinhood have only recently become mainstream but even so, they lack one vital component — being able to hedge cryptocurrency risks. Anyone can fall prey to volatile stocks, with one trader even losing 99% of their holdings.
Opyn is the first company to bring a bedrock financial instrument, 'options trading', to Ethereum, a popular cryptocurrency. Opyn is making buying puts & calls available to anyone in crypto as long as the cryptocurrency is on Ethereum and follows the ERC20 token standard. All option trades are public - on the blockchain - or in other words, they can be traced back to their address.
👇 The Drop Down
Site: https://opyn.co/#/
School: UC Berkeley
Founded: 2019
Stage: Seed (Dragonfly Capital, Balaji Srinivasan, Version1 Capital, etc)
Tech trend: Crypto
Traction: $20mil worth of transactions (per month), huge crpyto following interested + using their product, backed by leading blockchain investors
Team - Blockchain Experts that came out of UC Berkeley
- Zubin Singh Koticha - Founder & CEO
- Aparna Krishnan - Founder & CTO (Thiel Fellow)
- Alexis Gauba - Founder & CPO
🔍 Why we like it
- 🤯 Opyn is #1 Player in the Space
Opyn emerged when the founding team realized that many users were excited about cryptocurrency trades but had no easy way to hedge options for themselves. The founders of Opyn realized there was a need in this space, and users were desperately finding alternate paths to get what they wanted. The team had the perfect technical know-how to implement what was needed to streamline the options platform. As such, they built out a prototype, raised funding, and are the first in market. Since conception, several other players have emerged in the crpyto-options trading arena but Opyn is ahead by miles. - 📈 Their team is the equivalent of Bitcoin at its $23,00 Peak
The founding team lives, breathes, and works blockchain. In college, they worked together in Blockchain @ Berkeley (the world's top blockchain collegiate organization) and since then, have researched in the blockchain space, built at companies like Mechanism Labs, and have collaborated with leading blockchain researchers. On top of their blockchain knowledge, they have also been able to put together an all-star international team of research engineers, software engineers, and scientists to execute their vision. - 🎳 They are gaining traction ... fast
As mentioned in point #1, people were looking for ways to hedge their risks but there simply weren’t available options (no pun intended 😂). As such, when Opyn launched, it should be no surprise that their usage skyrocketed. Within a couple months of operation, they are already transacting $20 million dollars worth of options trades per month (and it's only going up from here).
🎤 Founders Corner
🤝 Get involved with Opyn
- Check out their product at Opyn.co
- Join their Discord to ask questions, give feedback, and meet the founders
- They are hiring! Check out their hiring page for job opportunities!
- Want the nitty gritty blockchain stuff? Check out their white paper.
