There is a new player in the race for a faster crypto exchange. BULK, built on the Solana blockchain, launched last month. It lets traders bet on crypto prices with contracts that never expire without handing over control of their money. Before launch, early users deposited nearly $26 million — on top of an $8 million funding round backed by one of Solana's co-founders. Joining us is Kobie McGlashan, Co-Founder and CEO of BULK. Kobie, welcome to the show.
A pleasure to be on. Thanks very much for having me.
Walk us through what BULK is and how it is different from other places people can trade crypto.
BULK is essentially a futures exchange that focuses on bringing the gold standard of CME SPAN on-chain. What that essentially means is that we have managed to build a portfolio-aware risk engine that evaluates and offsets things like hedges and basis trades — and it does this while requiring up to 70% less margin than the on-chain standard today. The reason this excites me so much is because we are meeting this next wave of users where they are currently trapped by moves on-chain when the offering is comparable or better. Without structures like these, firms require more capital to do the same notional as they currently trade traditionally.
You have done about $8 million in trading volume with more than 2,500 people trading every day. What is behind that fast start?
We have the benefit — and at the time the disservice — of essentially building our own network. It typically takes longer than a standard exchange. Despite that, during that time we were able to amass quite a diehard community over the last 18 months. That has translated into the activity you are seeing on an early exchange today. I think we are on track after our first month to hit $1 billion in volume — and long may that continue.
Your exchange is built to be as fast as the big centralised exchanges — but users keep control of their own money. Why does this specifically matter to traders?
When you talk about what the future of on-chain finance looks like, and we are now entering this hyper-tokenisation of the world, it is going to come down to not just how fast things are and the cost of execution — but people are going to start looking at how they can stretch their dollar further. On a traditional venue, for example, you have all of these correlation discounts that massively enhance the capital efficiency of the user. That is not comparable anywhere on-chain today. We are particularly excited to be able to offer that and eventually offer more traditional instruments like traditional futures and CFDs.
What are traders most interested in right now and which markets are getting the most attention?
It is no secret that there has been a big shift on-chain between crypto futures and equities. There has been a meaningful shift — now a majority of volume share is shifting toward traditional equities. I think that will continue to grow throughout the centralised landscape as we push forward into this next stage of evolution.
What do institutions need to see before they move on-chain?
Is the experience comparable? Am I able to trade the same notionals with the same margins? Then it comes down to — which venue has the liquidity, what is the execution cost, and eventually how is my margin more efficient here than on another venue. That is something we are really looking forward to facilitating.
Looking forward into the next 6 to 12 months — what are you planning?
At the moment we are starting with perpetual futures, but we want to move to a complete offering that includes spot, options, and money markets. And then as I mentioned, move into more traditional futures and even CFDs to accommodate that new wave of institutional users we are planning to onboard. One of our slogans is one exchange, infinite markets. If we are building global borderless exchanges, we need to be able to trade everything — wherever something major happens in the world, we want to be able to trade that news as fast as possible.
Kobie, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me.
