打造代币化时代的 Citadel Securities｜DeFi Frontier

Chris, thank you for joining us. How are you doing? Congratulations.

Greetings. Thank you for inviting me.

This is a new episode of our DeFi Frontier series. We are excited to learn more about your latest announced product, Axys Prime. Axys Prime, as I understand it, is similar to Citadel Securities, but for the tokenization era. Ideally, you will work with neobanks, brokerages, funds, and businesses working with digital assets.

1. From trading commodities to cryptoasset arbitrage

We want to know everything about this “balance sheet as a service,” so let’s get straight to the point. Chris, why don’t we delve a little deeper into your past? Remind us again what you worked on before. You have a long history of trading in this area. How did that lead to the creation of Axys?

I joined the crypto space about 9 years ago. I was the first employee hired at QCP Capital, a market maker based in Singapore, and later founded a market-neutral hedge fund that focuses on arbitrage strategies at the intersection of crypto and currency markets. Today, we are building Access, a cross-asset global liquidity provider.

We just launched our first RFQ platform to provide two-way conversion liquidity for fintech apps and fintech firms.

Chris, we want to know more about Access Prime and what you do at Access in general, but before we get into that, I will say that few teams have been trading in the crypto space since 2018. This is not a long list.

I was looking at your results, and you’ve had a 26.87% annualized return since 2018, even before Axys launched. This is a Sharpe ratio of 4.89. You had 1 loss-making year, and you can probably guess that it was 2022.

Maybe tell me a little more about what you were doing in the crypto sphere at such an early stage, because it always amazes me that people were already applying high-level strategies back then, while I was just trying to buy VeChain or something like that.

Of course. Let’s start with the background. Before coming to crypto, I worked in commodities and forex trading and got into crypto because of arbitrage opportunities when we saw a price gap in Bitcoin across the market. This was already ongoing at the institutional trading level at the QCP hedge fund, so I’ve been involved in arbitrage for almost 10 years.

For me, the most interesting thing about the crypto industry in general is that crypto assets are fungible and also cross-border in nature. But I would say that the source of profitability for our strategy is market structure and volatility, and crypto assets are at their peak here.

Unlike stocks, where there is only 1 exchange for trading a particular asset, there are dozens of them here, and if you count all the DEXs and regional exchanges, perhaps hundreds. We trade price divergences on crypto assets, stablecoins, and stocks, whether it’s Binance, Hyperliquid, or CME. We are connected to all these platforms.

I would say that we manage to get such returns because these discrepancies are constant. Returning to the market structure, the same asset trades at different prices around the world.

Although the volatility of crypto assets has been decreasing for the past few months, perhaps even a year, there are many interesting developments happening in this area right now. Centralized and decentralized exchanges are adding traditional financial assets, which means more liquidity providers are needed to synchronize prices and, in essence, provide liquidity across different platforms.

2. What is Axis Prime?

So, Chris, you recently introduced Access Prime. This Access Prime is what I call balance as a service. I think many people perceived Axys primarily as a DeFi protocol for generating returns, but Prime looks like you’re building something much bigger.

What does Axys Prime actually provide? Is this a real strategic direction for Axys now?

Axys Prime is our RFQ platform for fintech operators who can access aggregated liquidity without the need to pre-fund each exchange. We also offer flexible terms that will help fintech operators reduce the burden on their balance sheets.

Our goal is to become the leading global provider of cross-asset liquidity for all of these types of indices through our platforms.

3. Axis’s first six-figure OTC trade for a leading CEX

Let’s talk a little more about who needs a service like Access Prime. We have already mentioned neobanks and brokerage companies, but how exactly do they need this, and what is the reason for the popularity of this new service that you provide?

Over the past 10–15 years, we have witnessed the rise of fintech companies such as money transfer platforms, payment services, and even new brokers. These are exactly the types of businesses that need liquidity for conversion, and they all operate through OTC desks.

Currently, they all work with many liquidity providers at the same time. I think this figure has been steadily increasing over the last 3–4 years along with the spread of stablecoins.

We see a big gap: there is a missing link of liquidity providers who have access to different markets and asset classes and also combine them to provide cross-asset conversion. We see a growing demand from the fintech world, and there is a big mismatch between that demand and supply.

4. Balance sheet as a service

Chris, when I spoke to Ashwin from your team, he made a very apt argument that I think captures this idea perfectly. He said fintech companies would access the balance sheet in the same way that software accesses computing power on demand, instead of owning the infrastructure.

Can you elaborate on this a little more so we can better understand what problem you’re solving?

Fintech companies implementing stablecoins and other tokenized assets must work with many over-the-counter liquidity providers. For Robinhood, one of these is Citadel Securities. This means that they partner with trading departments that can offer instant transactions, but with flexible calculations. For your end customers.

When you go into the app to buy shares, the brokerage firm works with a liquidity provider on the backend, which provides prices for fintech brokers or payment platforms to form the final value.

As for us, I believe the need for balance is growing due to the era of tokenization we are currently witnessing. Stablecoins now come in a variety of formats and standards. Stocks also now come in a variety of formats and standards. There are so many versions of Nvidia stock, for example.

You need an institution that will come in, aggregate this fragmented liquidity, and also synchronize the prices. This makes it easier for fintech operators to provide their services.

5. Betting on neobanks and fintech adopting stablecoins

So, Chris, is Access betting on neobanks and services like payment apps that implement stablecoin infrastructure? Are you trying to take such a position in the market to really win? Does this make sense?

Yes, and this is no longer just speculation; it is a proven fact. We see from the data that the adoption of stablecoins in various capital markets is indeed happening.

Now let’s move on to tokenization. I would say that the non-crypto community, namely the fintech world, has found the real application of blockchain: the storage and transfer of value, right? Everything else, in my opinion, is just speculation.

At this point, it’s inevitable that tokenization, including stablecoins, will change the way the financial world functions. If you look back at the old era, it is said that the digitalization, or electronic transformation, of capital markets pushed the foreign exchange markets toward liquidity providers rather than banks. Now non-banking structures occupy up to 40% of the market, as opposed to banks, and I think that in the era of tokenization, this will only accelerate.

Regarding how Axis Prime works, the service you provide is not entirely clear to me. Are you replacing another partner or service, or is it a completely new service that specifically serves businesses related to digital assets?

Yes, we are now in a new world where a new type of demand has emerged: conversion from stablecoins to various currencies, and now to tokenized shares. There are several different examples of what goes on behind the scenes.

Let’s say you click “buy” on a certain asset in a brokerage app, and the platform simultaneously requests a price for conversion from a liquidity provider like Axis in the background.

Typically, such platforms work with several of them. There is no single liquidity provider that gives the best price 24/7, 365 days a year. Therefore, they have to aggregate offers. When executing a transaction, the operator uses our price liquidity for the conversion without needing to maintain a large balance to conduct these transactions.

Another example: a money transfer company accepts Singapore dollars, converts them to USDT, transfers them to Canada, and withdraws them in Canadian dollars. In fact, it has conducted an operation to convert Singapore dollars into Canadian dollars. In this workflow, you must collaborate with a liquidity provider that performs these cross-asset conversions. To put it simply, we are a B2B platform that does not work directly with retail customers.

6. Opportunity to serve fiat x crypto conversions

When I think about swaps and deals between digital assets, this service looks pretty competitive on the web, at least from what I understand about the DEX aggregators that exist. However, when I think about fiat to stablecoins, fiat to any cryptocurrency, or vice versa, it's a “black box” for me that I've never fully understood. I know there is a huge demand for stablecoins, and they are still a staple of DeFi and the crypto market.

So I wonder if this is a big opportunity for Axys Prime to serve this type of business. Is there a huge demand for the ability to switch between stablecoins and fiat? Is this a service that your clients, say fintech companies or neobanks, demand?

Yes, definitely. We internally call this “silent volume” because it is not reflected on-chain. Many of the volumes of public exchanges are quite visible, but on- and off-ramp volumes are not so obvious to the network world. However, there is an influx of off-chain volume as all these payment and remittance companies start using stablecoins. So I think, at this rate, with all these fintech companies turning to over-the-counter (OTC) platforms for conversion opportunities, it's not going to slow down anytime soon.

Besides the actual conversion possibilities, there's also the issue of balance. Crypto-to-crypto can work on the network, but it has to be an atomic exchange. This means you must have a supply of assets to convert one into another. But fintech operators cannot do this. They can't keep 100 million on the network for conversions and another 100 million in reserve for customers. This is where we come to the rescue, allowing these fintech operators to trade with us without pre-funding. They do the calculations later, so they don't have to have double or triple the capital and take out additional loans.

7. Why do neobanks and fintechs need Axis Prime?

Chris, let's talk a little more about the B2B clients you help. I saw a tweet that Axis completed its first OTC transaction for a major centralized exchange. I was a bit surprised to see this because I didn't even know about the Axis Prime business line, but it looks like you're already fully operational. I don't know if you can name that partner, but what other types of partners do you plan to work with, or are you already working with now?

Yes, we just launched Axis Prime. We started with one of the leading exchanges as our client, for their basic conversion needs. We are also in talks with a number of fintech partners to help address revenue bottlenecks. I would say we are still in the very early stages of developing our RFQ platform. The fintech space in general is in dire need of liquidity. As I said, a lot of fintech lending is actually geared toward this, but we skipped that step to do the conversion right away.

8. Why Axis Prime benefits from the Origin Vault and sUSDx

Chris, I think it's becoming much clearer to us why you started with the Axis Origin Vault and why Prime is coming out now. Putting the facts together, it seems that you needed this pool of capital, this crowdfunding pool, to implement your arbitrage strategies, and also for on-demand liquidity or balance-as-a-service purposes within Prime. Does this sound logical? Is this where USDX and sUSDX become relevant now?

Yes, that's right. Maybe it's worth taking a step back and describing what we do. Axis is the world's first global liquidity provider to rely on DeFi for capital formation to provide itself with working capital. Access assets, including sUSDX, are used for arbitrage, as well as for market making and providing liquidity to fintech companies.

Our ultimate goal is to become an infrastructure for settlement liquidity, as opposed to speculative liquidity, which is what 99% of crypto projects focus on. If we take, say, Ripple, they have released a lot of products and infrastructure designed for fintech: on-demand liquidity, cross-border payments, and so on. As an early adopter or beta tester of Ripple products, I realized through market making and arbitrage that ultimately what matters is not the coin or stablecoin itself, but the infrastructure that connects the different elements, especially in the era of tokenization, when markets are fragmenting and we have imbalances around the world.

I would say that our main goal, starting with blockchain capital formation, is to synchronize liquidity around the world.

9. USDx, sUSDx, and the Origin Vault

Even before we learned about Axis Prime, you launched a profitable product—sUSDX. There was also a thing known as the Origin Vault, which launched, I think, a little over a month ago. This was on Upshift. What can you tell us about this? What is USDX? What is sUSDX? And what is the Origin Vault?

Of course. USDX is a synthetic asset to provide liquidity, and sUSDX is, of course, a staking version that receives rewards for participating in staking. We are going to launch many more Axis assets in the future, starting with BTCX. These can be of different denominations.

Ultimately, I would say that we're just getting started. Even though our Origin Vault deposit lock-in period has already ended, this is just the beginning. Now it is transitioning to an ecosystem storage format, which includes sUSDX and various DeFi activities to earn points and real profits.

Going back to USDX and sUSDX, which are our flagship products, if you want to make full profit, you can buy USDX and send it to staking.

10. Axis yields over last 30 days

Chris, can you remind us what the Origin Vault has been doing over the past 30 days, and are there any predictions for what it will be doing in the future?

Of course. Origin Vault's return over the past month was around 11%. This means that our sUSDX, depending on the staking ratio, yielded over 20%. Because of this yield application, and also because volatility funding rates are generally increasing in this area, we've been fortunate to capture a lot of these returns. I think this space of opportunity is growing.

We see a lot happening on the Robinhood network, even on centralized exchanges in the public space. So I think it would be a pretty lucrative source of income. It's worth noting that there has been no precedent for a complex HFT-level revenue stream actually returning profits to participants.

Typically, a Web2 liquidity provider issues bonds and borrows capital. A lot of the market-making guys in this space, like the token market-making guys, are creating very interesting structures to borrow a lot of assets from token projects. There are many ways that all these liquidity providers are raising capital, and I think this will be the first time for us that this will become a major channel for capital formation.

11. Where does sUSDx yield come from?

Chris, the income that these sUSDX owners are getting ultimately comes from Access Prime? Do I understand the connection correctly? So the revenue comes from what we call Access Prime?

That's right. The USDX and sUSDX inventory reserves are used for our arbitrage and market making, whether it's on centralized exchanges, in DeFi, or through our RFQ platforms. This means that we are engaged in market making for fintech applications.

If I put on a trader's hat, it's still classified as spread trading. You buy low and sell high at the same time. So, in that aspect, yes, the same inventory is used, and ultimately, the profits are funneled back to the stakers.

12. Global onchain capital formation + service to licensed fintechs

One last question to summarize this connection between Prime and sUSDX. We recently had Ri [?] on the podcast, and we described them as a regulated fintech with an on-chain, permissionless capital pool. Is it a similar structure here? You have a front-end business that works with exchanges, fintechs, and neobanks, but the capital that fuels that business is permissionless and on-chain through USDX and sUSDX.

That's right. Yes, I think that's an apt description. We want to emphasize that we provide liquidity to licensed fintech companies.

13. Challenge of trust + transparency with actively managed yield

Listen, Chris, another question about trust and transparency in this structure. We have seen many profitable stablecoin protocols fail over the past few years. At Access, users trust this active management strategy, and some of the capital is stored on centralized platforms. So how do you provide enough transparency to earn their trust without compromising the strategy itself? It seems like a pretty difficult thing, a real tightrope walk.

Yes, I completely agree. There is a misconception in the DeFi space that every detail of trading strategies must be publicly disclosed to be considered transparent. I don't think this is an institutional standard. If we do this, not only will profitability suffer as other trading firms use this information, but there will also be security risks, making us vulnerable to attacks.

We don't want this to happen, and to protect our LPs, we strive to ensure that the integrity of the strategy is securely protected. But that doesn't mean we don't want to be transparent. We are trying to find a balance between what institutional-level transparency means and compliance with DeFi standards. We will work with more independent attestation centers and institutional validators to help verify reserves without disrupting operations and risk levels.

14. How do you earn the trust of DeFi lenders?

By the way, while preparing for the podcast, I was visiting the access.to website and noticed that profitability had increased to about 21%. This is exciting, but at the same time, we hear our fellow investors online asking: Why even invest in any service with a return of 20% or 10% if I can potentially lose everything? This is especially true given some of the failures this year and other failures that have occurred with other protocols.

So, how do you work with this? How do you build a service through Axis Prime that can deliver that kind of revenue, and how do you gain trust with that kind of risk-reward ratio for investors on the network?

Yes, definitely. I think the whole liquid-staking trend is causing some PTSD from the unsecured stablecoins that were around a couple of years ago. There are also yield-bearing stablecoins, where reserves can be quite illiquid and there is a significant mismatch in terms of maturity.

For us, our reserves are fully liquid, and we have a 24/7 risk-management protocol that is managed by traders and engineers on a rotating basis, so we have full coverage across different time zones. We also track proof of reserves for all the different exchanges. Large inflows and outflows from such platforms are also under control, and we rebalance and reallocate our capital based on these metrics.

One last point: I think we are the only team in the crypto space with experience generating profits over multiple cycles. I think that's our unique trait.

15. Has the market bottomed and bull run begun?

So, actually, on the last question, Chris, I want to go back to your experience. You've been in the markets forever. You've been trading crypto for ages. I want to know whether we're in a full-blown bull market right now. I'd like to know your predictions for where digital assets are headed by the end of 2026. What is your prognosis?

Listen, none of what I'm saying is financial advice, but if I were pressed against a wall, I'd say we've hit rock bottom. That doesn't necessarily mean we won't have a correction, right? But from the way things look, I'd say it's just begun.

Looking back, I think this cycle made everyone an expert on cycles. Everyone was waiting for October. If you go to TikTok, the girls there say, “Don't buy; wait for October.” Everyone was expecting a “black swan,” and it was something like MicroStrategy had to fall before the bull run could begin. I think, given all of this, maybe people were taken by surprise.

And yes, the situation is similar to what we saw last cycle, for example, the PEPE or Unibot phase. I think we're starting to see this on the Robinhood network. Some call it financial madness, but that's what it is. There is a lot of movement there, and I think we have a good future ahead of us.

16. Could Axis earn from the Robinhood mania?

As you mentioned, regarding the financial madness and all this mania and trading activity on the Robinhood network recently, I'm thinking of 2 mobile apps. One caters to this activity on the Robinhood network and is called FOMO, and the other is a trading app focused on highly liquid perpetual contracts and swaps. Either way, both are very easy to use.

I'm not encouraging people to go there and play with meme coins, but I see opportunities there for Access Prime. So before I finish, I'm curious: When you look at a business like FOMO, for example, it gives you 7 or more wallets, and I hear a lot of complaints about slippage, commissions, and a bunch of other issues as people try to trade on this craze. Is this an opportunity for Access Prime?

Yes, 100%. At Access in general, we use free capital for arbitrage strategies. We go beyond simple cryptocurrency. Obviously, we have the most basic strategy on perhaps the 100 most popular coins, but we also apply it to stocks. We have tokenized Nvidia shares, and we also have perpetual futures on Nvidia.

These spot positions are interchangeable, as I mentioned earlier. These assets can be used for atomic arbitrage strategies, where profits are realized instantly rather than relying on an expiration date or price conversion. So yes, we are expanding to Robinhood, Solana, Canton, and Base.

Today, many different formats of tokenized assets are emerging. For whatever reason, there is a significant price discrepancy between real assets, prices online, and on centralized exchanges. I see this craving and excitement happening in a rather unexpected way. But, be that as it may, there are many requests for streams, which gives us opportunities both on and off the network.

“Price divergence” is a polite way to describe the fact that people are paying incredible fees to exchange funds for boner tokens on the Robinhood network. By the way, I don't own this token—just kidding. This is not a recommendation or a call to buy this token.

17. Closing

Anyway, I think this is a great time to start wrapping things up. Chris, thank you for joining us. Keep up the great work.

Honestly, I didn't realize that Access Prime was a true vision from the start, and it really reminds me of re. That was what really attracted us to re. You have, let's call it, regulated fintech with capital that can fuel it. So now we see how these businesses can grow online, but also operate outside of it and use the opportunity to aggregate capital online. Do you have any final words for us before we wrap up?

Thank you for inviting me. Thank you very much.