On October 13, 2025, TradeXYZ went live. In less than five months, the platform's total trading volume surpassed $1 trillion.

During the CME weekend break, global oil traders gathered here to speculate on the Middle East situation. Prior to the Cerebras IPO, Morgan Stanley traders referenced the price predictions here for the opening price.

For a project of this scale, it would typically have already seen over a dozen founder interviews, several rounds of endorsements from marquee VCs, and a flurry of valuation rumors. However, from the founding team to the core members, TradeXYZ has remained anonymous and declined all interviews.

The only thing we know is that the platform's founder's ID on Twitter is sershokunin, known as Shoku in the industry.

Bitcoin OG, NFT Whale

In 2013, Shoku made his first Bitcoin purchase. Over the following decade, his compounded trajectory was truly a personal dream for many: early involvement, long-term holding, and staying ahead of every narrative.

In September 2021, Shoku used 2,000 ETH (approximately $6.63 million) to acquire CryptoPunk #8857. This is one of only 88 Zombies in CryptoPunks, and the transaction price ranks fourth in the entire series history. On the day he bought the Punk, he posted a twelve-tweet thread on Twitter explaining why he was willing to pay millions of dollars for a pixelated avatar.

Shoku stated that the creativity of an era does not belong to a single genius but to the entire "scene." For example, the Paris of the 1920s, the Soho of the 1960s, and the early days of Y Combinator.

Shoku's judgment is that NFTs are evolving into such a scene: artists recommending each other instead of competing, tools and tech spreading on Discord and YouTube on a daily basis, and the secondary market allowing collectors to see in real-time for the first time what others are buying.

These features have never before converged in art history, and when they do, what follows is an entire generational art movement defined in retrospect.

Shoku was wrong; NFTs did not bring forth an era's iconography.

Three months after the bear market began, the vast majority of Punk buyers found themselves trapped at the peak, and Shoku was no exception. In May 2024, he listed this NFT for sale at a price of 2200 ETH. As of now, the highest bid from a buyer is only 500 ETH.

Shoku may not care too much about this money.

Investment Genius

Buying Bitcoin 13 years ago barely shines in Shoku's investment history. Two brilliant trades he made outside the crypto market have always impressed his peers.

In 2014, when Uber was still in its early stages, Shoku coveted it but could never get an allocation.

One day, on his way back to the office, he had a moment of inspiration as he looked at the main road, and came up with a niche investment idea: if Uber succeeded, the value of New York City taxi medallions would plummet.

After some research, Shoku found a publicly traded company named TAXI, whose main asset was taxi medallions.

When TAXI was around $20, Shoku bought a large number of put options with a strike price of $3–$5, expiring in 6 to 9 months. A few months later, with the price drop of UberX, TAXI stock fell to $2.5, and Shoku made a 50x return.

Shoku's other stroke of genius happened in Japan.

Between 2014 and 2015, the Bank of Japan pursued an aggressive quantitative easing policy, and most smart money was buying into the Nikkei Index.

After flying to Tokyo and conducting research, Shoku believed the real asymmetrical opportunity wasn't in stocks.

He discovered that the standard for buying apartments in Japan was a 5% down payment for a two-year term, with AAA-rated Mitsubishi credit endorsement—essentially an unsecured two-year call option, a de facto 20x leveraged play that allows walking away if it goes south.

He scooped up 25 pre-sale apartments in prime areas like Nishi-Azabu and made a 20x return in two years.

Excluding Hyperliquid, Shoku's most successful investment in the crypto space came from Ethena, where he identified a product that could "one-clickify" scalable basis trading, democratizing strategies previously run only by professional trading teams to retail users.

Shoku believes that Ethena, Hyperliquid, and the fundraising platform Echo, which was later acquired by Coinbase, are the three standout projects of this bull market cycle because they have democratized some of the most unfair high-yield opportunities in crypto history for the average person.

Early Bet on Hyperliquid

In 2023, when Hyperliquid was just starting out, the liquidity pool in the HLP had only about $2 million, the order book was almost empty, and there was hardly any discussion on Twitter.

Shoku sent private messages to a few friends he thought might be willing to try the product, including Cobie, Jez, and CL.

CL later admitted that ignoring Shoku's message about Hyperliquid in this bull market cycle was his biggest regret.

Shoku: I spent a few hours in Hong Kong with Jeff, he's a smart guy, a great entrepreneur.

Jez later said that Shoku's 2023 message about Hyperliquid had a huge impact on his career.

Shoku replied that he messaged Jez because he believed Jez was one of the few who would actually use the product and understand why it was special. "The lesson is to always try things out, keep using products, and when something truly special comes along, you can recognize it."

In March 2024, Shoku tweeted that he was not sure how big Hyperliquid would ultimately be on traditional metrics like TVL and trading volume as an L1, but he was fully confident that there would be no rival to Hyperliquid's on-chain products and dApp in terms of quality and rigor throughout the entire crypto space.

That same month, in another tweet, he said that if he had to pick a token to lock up for ten years outside of BTC, ETH, and SOL, he would choose HLP. The reason being that the market would continue to underestimate the team's abilities and ambitions.

In May, Shoku tweeted, "The true test of faith in Hyperliquid is the shift from tweeting and trading to contributing and building. I hope to see more talent taking action. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."

This message was for others to hear, but also for himself.

Diving In

On Christmas Day 2024, Shoku tweeted a screenshot of an unreleased product on the Hyperliquid testnet.

Two months later, Unit was officially launched as Hyperliquid's "cross-chain bridge." Unit's debut supported native BTC deposits and withdrawals on Hyperliquid, bringing spot trading of mainstream crypto assets to Hyperliquid.

On the day of Unit's launch, Shoku's friend mod posted a lengthy tweet mentioning his first time hearing Shoku describe the Unit scenario. The two were huddled under a food cart on a rainy roadside. Shoku said, "Hyperliquid is one of the few exciting things in the crypto world."

Shoku gave up his investor identity to become a founder. Mod's initial reaction was that he was crazy because only a 100x opportunity would make someone do this, and there are fewer than ten people globally who truly have the ability to drive Unit's vision.

Evidently, Shoku was one of them.

In May 25, Shoku revealed the incubating TradeXYZ: "After all this time, people still see Hyperliquid just as an on-chain DEX, but if you take the time to delve deeper, you'll discover HL team's true ambition. The next upcoming product to be launched after Unit will show everyone the scale of this opportunity."

Shoku delivered. Since its launch in October last year, TradeXYZ has been hugely successful, with stocks, indices, futures, forex, and pre-IPO contracts all being introduced, covering almost all asset classes in finance.

Early this morning, TradeXYZ listed SpaceX's pre-IPO perpetual contract SPCX, three weeks ahead of Nasdaq.

Whoever sets the price first defines the anchor of value. By preemptively seizing the pricing power, Shoku and his team are prying open the doors of Wall Street.

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