Antoni Kiszka is building a derivatives exchange for everything — starting with meme coins, targeting hydrogen and beyond

Yeah, it's a tough pitch.

It's a tough pitch to be. Hey,

we want to help our users get more typos.

It might be a good uh April Fool's Day joke that they could bring in and then lead

more cuz Ben did it first.

Ben did it first now. So, good luck to Ben and sincerely, we'll check in with him later. But we have our next guest from Derpetual in the waiting room. Let's bring him in to the TDP Ultra. How are you? Welcome to the show.

Hey guys, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for hopping on. Please introduce yourself and the company. Uh I'm Anthony and I'm building a company called Perpetual and we want to create the derivatives exchange for everything.

Okay.

So basically we created a new kind of derivative and we want to use this type of derivative to bring derivatives to you know assets beyond the top 1,000 that uh that exists now.

Okay. Is there any crypto involved?

Uh currently yes. Uh our um our protocol is working on u on memecoins. So you can trade meme coins with longs and shorts. Okay.

But uh it's honestly a great way for us to to test everything, right? We have the the craziest markets in the world and the craziest people in the world doing uh doing stuff on on our tech. So So we get to improve and uh and check if everything is fine.

Yes. Problem. Memecoins weren't crazy enough. We made them crazier. You're welcome. Yes. Uh what uh is there a plan to bring this to real world assets, prediction markets? Uh you know, we've seen the different financial approaches to so many different categories. Uh how do you think this actually uh crosses the chasm? because we we went through the memecoin boom and it and they did sort of go mainstream but I think a lot of people uh just didn't really find lasting value there necessarily and they sort of moved on and it's become sort of a bifurcated market and I'm wondering if if you have is there a business to be built just in like the memecoin community or do you want this to go broader and wind up on Wall Street or wind up with retail investors? How do you think about the the long-term plan? We definitely want to want to go to traditional pilots and end up on Wall Street. In the end, the problem with meme coins and with most things in crypto is that they are not useful.

So, of course, there is a market for them, but that market is going to be a thousand 10,000 times smaller than something that actually that actually creates value instead of just being a casino.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Um what uh uh how do you think uh about the current strategy that we've seen Kulchi roll through around uh CT CFTC and and futures uh contracts. It feels like there's been a major acceleration in at least the I I I don't even know it's like it's like the the approval process for these new futures contracts. I know that for for every new game if there's a if the Super Bowl is happening, they have to get that contract approved and it feels like with their 24hour cycle.

Yeah, there's like a 24-hour cycle. Uh and so that that restricts some of the things they're doing, but it still feels like the fastest that the financial sector has ever moved. Uh is that an interesting pathway for you or do you think that there's an entirely different way to attack the uh like the problem?

Definitely. I I think Kali has um has been doing it right and I in the end their strategy was pretty unique as you probably know they um they started their company and for a couple years they didn't do anything and just wrote letters to the to the CFTC about uh um how they please want to be regulated uh and uh in the end that worked out and and no one else is uh is even close. So they are definitely something that we want to uh we want to be learning from.

How are you uh is there a northstar asset that needs a derivative that is uh that would resonate with like a broader everyday audience because uh the the the derivatives on memecoins that seems like you know there's a community for that but that's probably not uh something that's uh super aspirational for the everyday American. How are you thinking about you know uh uh the actual application? The one that I always go to with derivatives is like uh you know weather futures for farmers. That's a very practical or hedging the price of fertilizer. These things are financialization but they're clearly beneficial if you're if you're you know running a farm and so that's somewhat relatable to people. Do you have other uh other derivatives that you think need to be unlocked in the near future in the real world?

Definitely. And I I think the the inspiration is something that we probably want to have as one of our first assets in traditional finance is hydrogen because there is no hydrogen derivatives uh anywhere whatsoever. And it's a very popular asset for in for the industry, for energy, for for things like that. But it's just uh too to spread out the production is too decentralized. So you can't just create one hydrogen index and have it be be traded. So I think uh

I think this decentralization makes it impossible for traditional markets to to bring liquidity to to that.

What were you doing before this?

Uh a lot of things. I was doing um train terminal for uh crypto. I was doing uh uh software house and that was my first company and I was also uh making um making money selling Minecraft items.

Oh,

there you go.

Uh

a lot of in-game item sellers. Yes. So far in this fellowship,

any chance that uh we will see onion futures traded in the future? Uh my fellowship money uh might be deployed to lobbying for finally getting onion futures.

Onion futures. This is uh this is a there's many singleisssue voters out there for bringing back onion futures. They were banned famously. Very obscure piece of financial regulation.

Yeah. And I think in general farmers in the US have a lot of political power and especially onion farmers, you know, they really they really want their futures.

They do. They do. Well, hopefully it happens. Uh, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Yeah, great.

Congratulations. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers.

Goodbye.

Cheers.

Uh, while we bring in our next guest, we were in Cultured Magazine, culturedmag.com. Uh, what happens when OpenAI buys your tech podcast? Ask the boys at TBPN. We did an interview with them and we had fun with it on the show.

Yeah, we have. Uh so the first question that they asked us was what's one work of art that got you through an important moment in your life? I said Godfrey Reio's 1982 masterpiece Coonis Katsi. Jordy, what' you say?

Borat.

Borat. I think that's good. I think that's good. Um they asked us what keeps us up at night. We said data centers being even slightly delayed. That would be terrible. Like I I lose sleep thinking about it. A single supercomput delayed by even minutes.

Even minutes.

Missed opportunity. Missed opportunity. Super.

They did ask us. We we we we had some fun with some questions. We told some serious answers. You know, we we mixed it up. Uh they asked us, "What do you think your biggest contribution to culture has been? This is the question of cultured." What do we say?

Making tech people put on a suit.

We've seen a few suits on this Teal Fellowship Giga stream. We've seen some