Kaledora Fontana Kiernan-Lin is putting a timeline on her bold prediction: the global contract-for-difference (CFD) broker market faces major disruption from decentralized finance within five years. The co-founder and CEO of Ostium, a blockchain-based perpetual swaps platform, recently secured $20 million in Series A funding from General Catalyst and Jump Crypto to back that thesis. “The ‘perpification’ of markets – where every asset becomes a liquid, tradeable perpetual swap – is the inevitable end state,” Kiernan-Lin said. Ostium isn’t alone in targeting traditional assets.
Major crypto exchanges have been racing to capture TradFi trading volume, particularly during the recent metals rally. Binance launched round-the-clock perpetual contracts on silver in early January as silver prices surged 150% year-over-year, with rival Bitget rolling out similar offerings focused on gold, forex, and global macro assets. Coinbase and Crypto.com have acquired CFD licenses, signaling that well-funded fintech players with large user bases are eyeing the retail derivatives market. These moves suggest Kiernan-Lin’s thesis about TradFi asset demand isn’t purely aspirational.
But they also highlight the competitive dynamics at play, with established crypto exchanges leveraging existing liquidity and brand recognition to capture the same offshore trading cohort Ostium is targeting. Ostium’s recent performance appears to validate at least part of that vision, hitting a record $711 million in single-day trading volume on January 30 as metals prices surged, with silver and gold trading accounting for roughly half that total. Over 95% of Ostium’s open interest now sits in traditional markets rather than crypto assets, an unusual profile for a blockchain-based exchange. Traders on the platform netted $5.8 million in profits on January 30, the highest single-day gain in Ostium’s history, reversing earlier cumulative losses.
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