Tristan and FTX stories
[MC] - Raúl Badillo, Country Manager of @FTX_Official Mexico.
Tristan Yver, Head of Strategy @ftx_us and advisor to @ProjectSerum
The FTX Podcast: http://linktr.ee/yver
1:08 - according to your Twitter you are FTX’s swiss knife
started in an operational role when only 15 people FTX. Now Bizz Dev, marketing, strategy, content…
3:23 - who is Tristan Yver?
born in Hawaii (Maui) from Chilean mom and Chilean-American dad. Very traveler life since child taught him rapid adaptation. Finally, 8 years in Chile until pre-university tests. 2 days after → Hawaii for the adventure - big accomplishment (expensive ticket).
18 y.o. in Hawaii - [Tristan mom like: not uni? Ok, but figure it out yourself] - Did many things: gardening, construction, electrician, waiter, went to Alaska as a commercial fisherman. Very adaptable to new situations. After Alaska, saved money to start uni. working part-time + studying. 2 years after, bacteria problems in Hawaii - 12-day comma, multiorgan failure… luckily Tristan made it through - It was the start of 2017, and a 6-8 month recovery only allowed to spend time with the computer - found crypto and started learning business and finance. Did very well on paper but not sold the peak. After -99.8% downturn, rekt with leverage. However, always very engaged with crypto. 2 years forward, finished uni and started 9-5 at a software company - decent starting job but boring. Always #AfterWork 3-4h crypto wire.
Heard about Alameda Research. Always followed Sam. When FTX started, always followed - realized that Sam could change the world with FTX. Tristan, not willing to go into IB, wrote a sincere letter to Sam (I do not care what I do as soon as I can be part of what you are doing) → call → emails → Hong Kong interview (March 2020).
16:59 - accelerated path. How has the journey been?
Lots of learning. Thinks that FTX is the best company in the world (highest growing company on earth - from $250M daily volume to $15B in one year). In the beginning, 15 swiss knife people - lucky to have lots of new things to pick up, cuz he always willing to pick them. With time, he earned respect and got involved in more important projects. Very positive and energetic, so good at kick-starting ideas (getting initial impulse and right people in place) and once it rolls on, look for the next thing. Lots of new initiatives at FTX like that.
20:15 - how is it to be working with Sam?
In many aspects, Sam is a young man like you and me - cooks and invites to have Sunday dinners. But also works 20h/day, 7 days a week, and never goes out of the office - he sleeps on the couch near his desk. Also, he is one of the most intelligent people you’ll ever meet - can be meeting with a mega-company whilst playing LOL. Company very flat. Self-starter people and if it is sufficiently important and requires Sam’s opinion, one just asks him. Sam is the one who knows all the different things going on FTX and has the last word. Self-starter culture, people work on things that interest them.
22:38 - Lots of exchanges before and whilst FTX. Which do you think was FTX’s main differentiator?
One big differentiator was technology. FTX is a cross-collateral derivatives exchange (one can use funds all over the place without having to change accounts) whereas many exchanges one account per product (Futures, margin, spot… ). Very simple platform - one knows the whole position by only looking at one place. Also, instead of doing inverse products (Against BTC), lineal products (Against USD).
23:55 - Also Leveraged tokens.
yeah, ETF-like spot products to get leveraged exposure.
24:20 - that’s why I knew FTX - how spot token can have such fluctuations? Oh is like a wrapped future!
yeah, these techie, innovative products were very popular. Furthermore, very customized customer service via TG chat where all answers were solved in under 2 mins really helped - Sam himself still there solving questions. One gets a very good sense of what users want and keeps evolving to satisfy them. As time goes by, one makes sufficient people happy and they become one’s best fans - [user be like: Ok, the big exchange has taken my word into account to build something that makes my life easier] - difficult to lose these users. FTX made enough steps like those to make a strong community that allows for network effects.
26:27 - some people infinite-looping with cefi supporting defi - how do you see it?
for those who do not know - defi is decentralized finance that brings institutions and functionalities that normally are only available for very wealthy people to code, and this code propagates through different blockchains (e.g. the wealthy can go offer prime brokerage services like lend their money for institutions/individuals to place trades getting a yield out of it. In defi, there’s a protocol where one can go, deposit collateral and get yield). Generally, defi has been ETH only, but as gas fees are high, a tradfi-kind reality where only the wealthy can afford to use. That’s why FTX started to look for solutions - there must be a way to make defi scale to mass adoption. Introduce Solana - a very scalable L1 solution (65K tps, negligible fees, scales with Moore’s law and is compostable). No much happening around Solana on defi summer but FTX decided to be a supporter of its ecosystem introducing Project Serum.
Project Serum introduced CLOBs (central limit order books) on-chain demonstrating that Solana allows people to transact the same way they are used to in a centralized exchange, on-chain. Idea is that Serum is gonna become Solana’s new financial infra pipe - the transaction engine for all Solana’s different products. e.g. if someone has a game, NFTs…. to build and wants to create markets to allow people trade digital assets for money or other NFT, s/he can use Serum program to make these markets. In borrow/lending platforms, LPs get liquidity tokens that represent how much one is lending and there are second markets around these - Serum allows this b/l protocol to create on-app markets to trade the LP tokens.
What FTX is doing now, is encouraging teams to use Serum to build better products.
32:33 - Thanks for this explanation, very useful. You’ve been in many conversations with high-profile people lately, how are you coping?
In the past listened to many podcast very similar to what he does - digging more into what the founders are like rather than how’s business. Thanks to his background, very adaptable not scared. Judges by interaction rather than status, so never feel inferior or scared - they are just people making their own story.
What’s more exciting about this experience is meeting people that genuinely want to change the world with their thing. e.g. Arweave, creating a decentralized cloud that’s immutable. Founder Sam Williams is doing so cuz he read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and realized how easy is for certain powers to change what truth is - he wanted to create a system to keep the actual story true forever. Very exciting to connect at this level with world-changer people like Sam.
36:30 - Yeah, amazing to see projects land to these philosophical levels. In the end, we all want to make an impact. How do you see the Spanish landscape?
Lots to be done. Exchanges with very basic functionality, and expensive. Curriculums are outdated - hopefully, “FTX Intercambio” can change that in the future.
37: 37 - How do you see FTX in the future?
#1 exchange in the world - no doubt FTX will get there.
Thank you @FTX_ES for hosting this interview. Full interview → Intercambio #1 - Tristan Yver (FTX & Serum) [Spanish]
→ More reads on Tristan and FTX:
“FTX Trilogy, Part 1: The Prince of Risk” by Mario Gabriele, Founder and Editor of The Generalist
“FTX Trilogy, Part 2: Speedrun” by Mario Gabriele, Founder and Editor of The Generalist.
