From Idea to Execution: Building a Trading Platform on Solana

Recorded remotely.

Hodl Up: Man, trading anything these days has been a pain. I'm telling you right here and right now, I've been thinking about quitting crypto every single day for the five years since I joined. But now it's even worse, because you don't even have good memecoins. You don't even have conviction buys. I say this every episode, but not even the older coins backed by real projects. You have the utility, excuse me, but you don't have the price performance. You have utility projects that were performing amazingly in 2021 without a product, and now that they've launched the product and have real-world revenue, the token is nowhere to be seen.

Hodl Up: And that's crazy to me. Now I keep hearing that you can buy stocks within crypto, on decentralized exchanges. You can use Fartcoin to buy Nvidia stock. What universe is this, man? What crossover episode is this? Am I living in a Simpsons episode, or a Family Guy episode? One thing I can tell you is that even influencers, people who are on their phones all day, even the likes of Bangerz, shout out to Bangerz by the way, are getting kind of fatigued by what's been going on. I saw a tweet of hers saying she's now anti-token-launchpad, because there are so many new launchpads, and you can see where that frustration comes from. Not just in her case, but in crypto in general, because it doesn't feel like many companies are innovating. Yes, we have one or two outliers who are really building behind the scenes, but you still get tired, right? And I hope some of these bad actors get filtered out.

Hodl Up: They're being filtered out a lot as we speak. We're seeing companies... they got their bags, of course, they're millionaires, but the companies themselves failed. Sorry for interrupting you.

Hodl Up: No, no. We still have some good players. And I want to touch on what you said about innovation. I don't think we need innovation every day. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. We need to make things more user-friendly and easier for people who aren't into crypto to get in.

Hodl Up: Exactly. We just need to show them the doors.

Hodl Up: Yes, and they can choose whether they want to get in, get out, stay or leave. One project that's already doing this, and we have a guest from it today, is fully focused on building, on being decentralized, and on keeping the community happy with real rewards, because in a decentralized world, community is everything. You don't do everything to keep the CEO happy; you do everything to keep the community happy, because that's the real driving force behind a DeFi project, a decentralized project. So our guest today is Anas from Flash Trade, and we're also really excited to announce our partnership with them. We'll probably use this exact animation right here, or this one; one of them will do. All you need to know is that Flash Trade is amazing. I've been using it for a month or two now, and this is the first time in my life I'm actually making money trading, because I used to buy and hold on spot exchanges. This is a different experience altogether. So we won't waste any more time. Let's hop on the call with them.

Hodl Up: I'm excited as well, not just because of the partnership, but because I've been following these guys for quite some time. To have the chance to work with them and have a conversation with one of the co-founders is a blessing and a full-circle moment.

Hodl Up: All right, let's not waste any more time and get right into it. Hello, Anas! How's it going? How's your day been?

Anas: Pretty good. I pushed some updates at Flash, and I was also stuck in traffic today while traveling.

Hodl Up: That happens, I get it. In my city, traffic jams are a daily thing.

Anas: It just drains your energy.

Hodl Up: Exactly, man. You don't even have the energy to talk; you just want to sleep. Before we get into the technical side and everything about Flash Trade, I'd like to give you the space to tell your origin story: how you got into crypto, and what you did before. The floor is yours.

Anas: For sure. I started in high school. I loved reading blogs, and I found out there were websites where you could watch ads and get a small amount of Bitcoin, which was a big deal because I was in high school and it was my pocket money. I used to watch those ads, get my pocket money daily, and sell the Bitcoin as soon as it came to me, to be honest. It went on like that, and then I saw Bitcoin shoot up to $1,000, and from there to $5,000. I thought, what is happening here? I had a background in computer science, which I studied later on, and I thought, I need to know what this is all about. I got into understanding how fiat currency works, what our money is actually backed by and how the gold standard fell away. That got me excited, and I went deeper into the Bitcoin phenomenon. Having a background in development, I understood things much more clearly, and as I got into it, I learned how trading happens. I'm sure a lot of people are introduced to crypto markets through trading, where we all think we might flip some stuff and become millionaires. So I started trading, and eventually I ran my own hedge fund, which was a profitable business for me. That's where I was introduced to BitMEX, which launched the world's first perpetual contracts, and right now, as I'm sure everyone knows, there's a buzz around perpetual markets for every token. So I started market making on BitMEX, then gradually learned more about on-chain stuff. DeFi summer happened, and I started to understand what DeFi actually meant: that you can build applications on-chain that are truly permissionless, open source and verifiable by anyone. The problem with BitMEX and other centralized exchanges back then was that you couldn't verify whether your bitcoins were really on the exchange. The best thing about DeFi was that you could verify things and see the full cash flow and how things actually work. Since I had a programming background, I learned how smart contracts and DeFi worked and eventually started building on Ethereum. Then I ran into the roadblocks of high fees and slow transactions, and getting wrecked in the mempool, because each transaction took four or five minutes, and during congestion 10 minutes or more. I've spent quite a lot of money on gas on Ethereum, probably low five figures. So that was a very interesting lesson. I used to read the threads by Sam from Alameda, before FTX, and as a market maker I followed very closely how their operations worked. They talked very loudly about Solana, and that's how I was introduced to Solana. I've been building on Solana since 2022. That's the short version.

Hodl Up: I'm 100% sure you could go on for hours about everything that's happened since you joined this market. Dren, my co-host, and I both joined about five years ago, and personally, if you let me talk about these things, I have so many stories, because it's a crazy market. Every day there's a story. I want to touch on Ethereum gas fees. Back in 2021, when NFTs were big, I probably lost more money in gas wars trying to mint NFTs than anything, and never got anything out of it. Just burning money rather than even buying something.

Anas: Eventually I found myself in this full circle: I started as a market maker on an exchange, and now I'm running an exchange. Before I was the trader; now I'm behind the scenes watching people trade.

Hodl Up: And it's true: everyone starts with the idea that they can become a successful trader, and 99% of people don't know what they're doing. I'm part of that 99%. When I first joined this industry and turned $10 into $15, I was walking around the house like I was Andrew Tate or something. But I got the short end of the stick plenty of times and learned a lot of lessons the hard way, which I think is the learning curve everyone has to go through. You can read a lot, but without experiencing things yourself, you won't learn properly.

Anas: It's like tuition fees. When you study, you have to pay something, and when you want to become profitable, you have to lose something in the markets.

Hodl Up: Exactly. It's the harsh truth. You're all-in on Bitcoin, right?

Anas: Yep.

Hodl Up: It feels like in recent years... I remember when the ETFs were approved, there was a lot of buzz in the industry. Everyone was very excited that crypto was becoming more institutional. But if you've been in this industry a bit longer, you feel like it's losing its decentralized ethos in a way. What do you think? Do you think the industry, and especially Bitcoin, since I think we have to separate Bitcoin from the rest, is drifting away from decentralization?

Anas: To be honest, it kind of drifted away during the whole rollup meta that Ethereum played out. But if we look at what's happening on Solana and on Bitcoin, they're still headed in the direction of decentralization. I also emphasize to a lot of people that decentralization doesn't happen in a day, or at the beginning. It's a process, and it happens eventually. Historically, when Bitcoin launched, it was just Satoshi himself mining it for the first few months, then another miner joined him. Would you call that a decentralized network at the time? You wouldn't. It took many years to form a system with a team of developers pushing core updates, the people using it and the people running the network. Even Solana: when it launched, everyone called it a VC chain, if you remember.

Hodl Up: Yeah, with 69 developers.

Anas: So you can't be decentralized from day one. It's a big process, and you learn as you go. If the community is heading toward being more decentralized and open, there's hope for the applications and the community leaning that way. But compared to other chains, like what's happening on Ethereum with the rollup meta, I think they're losing the charm of decentralization and moving toward centralization. I'm happy Solana hasn't gone in that direction for now.

Hodl Up: When I talked to Mags, he told me the whole team at Flash is all about decentralization. I'd like a short answer on why. Personally, I never had an issue with banks, but since I started reading about crypto and going deeper in 2020, and recently watched some movies about what happened in 2008 and everything that was going down back then, I'm also against banks now, and I'm pivoting to decentralization too. But why, in your eyes?

Anas: The most interesting thing I tell myself, and anyone else, is that you need to build for yourself first. I've experienced this firsthand. I've had bad experiences with banks, and bad experiences with centralized exchanges. And I thought, why would I trust my hard-earned money to a place where I have no control over it? Do I really own it? If I don't own it, it doesn't feel like it's mine, right? You can't leave your stuff with someone and assume that a law written by certain people will hold up, because laws change. Today they say this is the law, and tomorrow a couple of politicians get together and change it. There's a law in Europe, I'm sure you're from there, that you can't withdraw more than €2,000 from your own bank account. Is that your own money, then? That whole phenomenon pushed me toward being more permissionless and building something in open finance, where everything is verifiable by anyone. That's the most interesting thing about Flash Trade: everything is on-chain. Anyone can check today how Flash Trade works, how it makes money and how the yield is generated. Everywhere you see huge APYs without knowing where the yield actually comes from, but at Flash Trade you can find out just by checking the chain. It's all about being curious. If you're curious enough, you can understand everything about Flash Trade. There's an AI help section in the bottom-right corner where you can learn everything there is to know. You know where your money is. Rather than trusting XYZ people, you trust the code, which doesn't change. One plus one equals two; it will always be two, not three. But look at what happens with laws: one plus one can equal three, and there will be discussions and debates saying that theoretically there's one more.

Hodl Up: Going back to banks: the irony is that Jerome Powell from the Federal Reserve just recently said banks are now free to explore and provide crypto services. So you have JPMorgan and other big banks exploring blockchain solutions, but in reality, right now they mostly just offer ETF investment opportunities or something like that, and they market themselves as crypto banks, which isn't really true, at least for now. Sorry, did you want to add something?

Anas: There was something called Operation Choke Point before Trump's presidency. I had a US bank account, and it was closed in less than 48 hours without any notice. They issued me checks, and I had to wait about a quarter for my own money. Those are the sore experiences that push all of us to build something more open, where you actually own your stuff.

Hodl Up: The reason I'm concerned is that the same people who talked badly about crypto years ago are the ones now saying it's completely fine for the industry to be integrated into these traditional systems.

Anas: Because they flipped their bags.

Hodl Up: Exactly. But if, four years from now, the administration changes and the next one isn't as pro-crypto, it would be a shot in the foot for the whole industry, and it would regress again. So I really hope we keep moving forward and follow the likes of El Salvador.

Anas: The most interesting thing is that we were alive while Operation Choke Point was going on, and we survived it. The technology survives all these greedy monsters. You just need to build things the right way, and I think, God willing, it will all happen in a great fashion.

Hodl Up: Speaking of Flash Trade: when people think of perps platforms on Solana, and if I'm not mistaken there are more than 50, though I could be wrong, they tend to think of the likes of Jupiter. I've tried both Jupiter and Flash Trade, and I've read a lot of user reviews on Reddit and other platforms, and none of them feel as user-centric as Flash Trade. What makes you different? In my opinion, what you've been building is absolutely wonderful and very healthy for the industry.

Anas: First of all, thank you for the compliment. Small appreciations like that push us to keep working on building something great. Beyond that, it comes down to this: if you're the power user of your own platform, you understand what's missing, and you build it for the actual users. In terms of numbers, there are only about five perpetual exchanges on Solana, because this stuff is hard to build. On the EVM side, many of them are direct clones of open-source repositories: people clone them and try to get some volume. On Solana it's tougher to build. So there are about five exchanges, and on average we're around third by volume, after Jupiter and then Drift. It's a game of distribution. Jupiter and Drift have been live on Solana for more than four years, and we've been live for just 16 months. So it's about staying alive and shouting more about the great things you're building, and eventually you'll see the hockey-stick growth. You have to keep building; staying alive is part of the journey.

Hodl Up: You mentioned it's harder to build this kind of thing, and not just on Solana, but in general. How did you manage it, in terms of getting the team together, working with them and executing? Did you just say, "Let's see where this goes," or did you plan it all ahead? In my eyes, every builder in this industry experiments a lot. Of course they experiment with a vision, they want a specific thing, but you have to experiment because it's crypto. I want to know your thought process throughout building Flash.

Anas: Flash Trade was born right after the FTX crash. Before that, we were building a decentralized hedge fund management protocol, an extension of my hobby before coming on-chain, which was running my own fund. I was very happy with it and wanted to build a decentralized version. It was my hobby project, and it grew very well. Then we built it on top of another perpetual exchange, and that exchange blew up, which hurt us. I thought, I can build something much better than that exchange. And after the FTX collapse I thought centralized exchanges don't have a great future and we need decentralized versions of them. I personally believe there will never be just one winner in this industry. There will be multiple players serving different tastes; some people love this kind of thing, others love that. So there will be multiple winners. As for the idea of Flash, it takes a lot of grit, and you need to build it with your friends. I'm very fortunate to have my friends; we've been together since seventh grade. We may fight sometimes, but we manage to stay on the same page and pursue our dream of serving trillions of dollars in volume every day. That's possible because the math checks out. Flash has done more than $16 billion in volume, and in simulations we've seen that we can handle immense volume. There's no cap, because everything runs smoothly: these are all on-chain programs, and you don't need more people to scale from here. It handles itself. You just need more distribution and more money coming in. That makes us more joyful and more ambitious to fulfill the dream of an exchange where anyone can trade anything on-chain with leverage. That's how we got here. To be honest, the journey is very hard. You shout, you cry, you bleed. But I think it's worth it, because we're building something that's open and more useful to users than what exists right now.

Hodl Up: You also introduced yield-generating NFTs, if I'm not mistaken. What sparked the idea of integrating NFTs into a perpetuals protocol, and how do you see this evolving in terms of redefining user engagement in DeFi? Dren and I are both huge proponents of NFTs, and we really hope they make a comeback as a subcategory of crypto.

Anas: When we launched Flash Trade, DeFi wasn't really on the scene for Solana folks, and NFTs were all the rage. We knew deep down that we needed core financial products that make real money to stay alive for the next 10, 20 or 50 years, however long we're able to survive and build. NFTs were our gateway to more users, because everyone was into NFTs, and the tech was good. I won't say it wasn't. It's a good gateway, and if you want to reward users with a dedicated reward system, it's possible because they're non-fungible tokens. An NFT is essentially a marker you give to an address, and as long as that marker is on that address, you can give it immense rewards to bring people onto the platform. That's how we used NFTs: as markers, with a good amount of reward distribution to those specific users. But there was a cap of 5,555 NFTs, so we hit the limit on distribution and needed tokens. We started with NFTs to get a core group of users, go through the beta stage and give them everything possible, because we saw our NFT holders as seed investors. We raised about $1.2 million by selling those NFTs, and we were happy and grateful to return all that money to them, and more: people who held their NFTs received about $1.3 million over the course of holding them. Then we launched the token, and through the token we can reach more users, because you can hold 100 tokens or 1,000 tokens, but you can only have one NFT. So it's a good way to bootstrap. NFTs are like coupons. It was an interesting journey. Since NFTs were all the rage and people were excited, we started there, and what we did with them was a first on Solana: 3D evolutionary NFTs that evolved as you leveled up, and your level depended on the voltage points you earned by using the platform. With each level up you got more rewards: bigger discounts, higher referral rebates and higher yield boosts. So we created an interesting reward model, similar to what you see with credit cards or coupons. That's how we used NFTs, and we loved it. The experience was worthwhile.

Hodl Up: This is interesting, because I've been a big fan of NFTs and I know the potential of the technology. I'm not technical by any means, but logically you can use NFTs as markers, as you said, and for a million other things. The way you used it is the experimenting part I mentioned, but a very well-thought-out experiment. Were you the first to do it on Solana? You said so, right?

Anas: Yes. With the NFTs evolving with points, we were the first.

Hodl Up: It's amazing, gamifying the whole process, and I think that's literally crypto right now. Everyone is trying to gamify everything, and you were two steps ahead. Do you want to...?

Hodl Up: No, I'll go. Since we're talking about products, let's talk about the most recent integration: xStocks, or Stocks X, I'm not sure where the X goes, but it's somewhere. I'd seen many memes about it, so I thought, let me try something. I went to the swap on your platform, found the Useless memecoin, and tried to swap the Useless memecoin for Tesla stock. That was super funny to me. What universe are we living in? Do you think this crossover episode, being able to trade stocks and crypto with each other so seamlessly, especially on Solana, is a short-term, hype-driven thing, or will it continue for months or even years, with both industries benefiting from the bridge?

Anas: It's all about money flow. If there's more money trading on Solana, more things will be built on Solana that bring in more volume. As long as the hot ball of money is on Solana, we'll see more happening in this direction. And every asset needs money. If more money comes on-chain, you'll see more assets come on-chain, because they need more holders. Even Tesla needs more holders. Even Google needs more holders. If they see more people coming on-chain and trading this stuff, you'll definitely see more stocks and more things coming in. And if things slow down, we as builders need to build something more interesting to keep it moving. I'm glad you brought this up, because I was just talking with the team at Backed Finance, who launched xStocks. We're in the process of getting xStocks on Flash, so you can trade them with leverage instead of just holding them as spot. So if you know something is going to happen with Elon Musk, you can long Tesla on Flash.

Hodl Up: Personally, I know people who made money on memecoins, the most basic crypto story. But whenever they make life-changing money, they immediately think about what to do next. They don't want that money to sit idle; they want to invest in something less volatile. Recently stocks have been quite volatile, but historically they're less volatile, or more predictable, than crypto. So being able to trade a memecoin for a stock is, as I said, the crossover episode this industry really needed. I think I saw that you mentioned the S&P 500 as well. Is that integrated too?

Anas: It's coming to Flash Trade soon, so you'll be able to trade the index of the top 500 US companies.

Hodl Up: Perfect. Speaking of other products: I've followed a lot of projects over the years, and you can have a product or a service, but having a token is a whole different ballgame, in my opinion. You announced a token last year, I think during Breakpoint, and there was a lot of excitement about it, and you recently launched it, in April. How has it been going? What's the community sentiment overall? Has it been difficult, and were there challenges you weren't expecting? Walk us through it.

Anas: The token launch was interesting. People thought life-changing money was coming, as always, because everyone has that expectation with every project. But easy money goes easily. At Flash Trade we're building from scratch. No one is backing us, and we didn't start with a huge market cap; we literally started at a $0 market cap, which is how we began with the NFT launch. Right now the community's perception is very good, because we share up to 50% of our revenue with token stakers, and staking FAF also unlocks big fee discounts. The most interesting part right now is that if you're a power user of Flash, or anyone interested in trading perpetuals, you can buy a small bag of FAF, stake it and trade with it. You get the best fee discounts on Solana, and you also get 50% of the revenue back, so it's like you're paying yourself while using the product. That doesn't happen elsewhere. Imagine eating at a restaurant: does the restaurant share any profits with you? That's what we're doing, and a lot of people are happy that it was built from scratch, that they have full control and that there's no dilution. That's the most interesting thing about our token. There's no external or insider trading at Flash. Everything was open, and we gave about 80% of the token supply at launch to our NFT holders. So there's no huge dilution and no hidden vesting schedules. With most major protocols, you see vesting schedules unlocking to VCs or the team regardless of whether any goals were met. That puts teams under immense pressure to justify those valuations when the unlocks happen. I just read about a founder saying he wants to kill himself. It's very sad. We flipped the script: we don't have any tokens right now, and we'll only get tokens when we launch products the community approves of. We're setting the standard for ourselves and using governance as our model. We put up a proposal when we want to launch a feature, and we receive tokens on delivery of that feature, which grows Flash and its market value. So there's no expectation we have to live up to. We launch a feature that grows the protocol and the revenue, and the tokens come in to align the team. I'm very happy we were able to come up with that and launch FAF this way.

Hodl Up: You mentioned that founder. I don't think it's only on the community to call things out. Some founders, not all, and I saw it last year, in 2023 and even 2021, but it's more common now, promise you so much money, life-changing gains. They run social campaigns where a million people participate, and if a million people participate and you give out only a million tokens and everyone is supposed to become a millionaire, you'd need a trillion-dollar market cap. There's also a disconnect with the VCs, because the VCs want their money back immediately. But that's a whole other topic, and I don't want to go too deep into it, or we'll be here for five hours.

Anas: It's important that we talk about this stuff and put out more content, and you guys are doing great on that. People need to understand that there's no way to make easy money. Even with major stock tickers like Amazon, Google, Facebook, even Berkshire Hathaway or the S&P 500, the bulk of the wealth is made by holding along the way. And I'm sure you know how Bitcoin has done too. I just posted about it yesterday: over the last 12 months, Bitcoin is up about 75%, Solana is up 6%, and Ethereum is down 26%. So you need to hold the right stuff.

Hodl Up: I want to tie that into Bitcoin, Solana and Ethereum. I'm glad you mentioned all of them. With Bitcoin, do you see yourself more as a trader or a holder?

Anas: Both, to be honest. I trade on a short-term basis, and I also have a holding bag I never touch, plus a hot wallet I use all the time.

Hodl Up: Perfect, because I know people who try to do both from one wallet. As for Ethereum and Solana: you mentioned you were building on Ethereum before. Hypothetically, and I hope this doesn't happen, say Solana goes bust tomorrow morning and everything's down, and you're faced with a choice. Where would you build? Could you build Flash Trade on Ethereum?

Anas: We're not aligned with any blockchain. We're aligned with technology. Wherever we find something that works very well, we'll be there, because we're here to serve our users as well as possible. That doesn't mean being aligned with something. If the technology makes sense, we'll try to be there, because that's how you win anywhere: by building things that are valuable enough. So it's not about alignment; it's about what actually works, and we'll build in that direction. I personally believe people shouldn't care which blockchain a product is on. It needs to be abstracted. People shouldn't need to know Flash is on Solana. They should just know, "I'm using Flash and I love the experience." That's it.

Hodl Up: That's pretty refreshing to hear, because you see a lot of projects trying to ride a chain's hype. When the memecoin mania started a few months ago, all the liquidity was going into Solana because of memecoins, and companies that had been building on Ethereum for ages suddenly decided to migrate to Solana because they thought that's where the money was going. But if your project aligns with a specific chain, you don't necessarily have to move to Solana. Personally, I'm a huge proponent of Solana, but as you said, projects shouldn't be associated with a chain. They should be associated with what they represent, with crypto at the end of the day. So I fully agree with you. I also wanted to touch on something I remember from tweets last year: there was a period in 2024 when you faced toxic trade flow. In my opinion, the way you handled it, and how you built community trust in the first place, really showed the power of transparent leadership, if I may say so. Could you walk us through that a bit?

Anas: When you run exchanges, you'll always have some hiccups. Everything we build in crypto runs 24/7. There are no breaks, and we never go into maintenance mode. Compare that to centralized exchanges or traditional finance exchanges: they have daily breaks, they close on weekends, and they have maintenance windows. Even your bank goes offline sometimes while upgrading its software. But in DeFi there are no breaks. Because of that, you sometimes hit speed bumps; I call them speed breakers. What matters is being transparent during those moments. Stuff happens. Every big exchange has had its share of shady situations, and we had one too, and we're happy we came out of it alive. That's what I'm saying: when you build in DeFi, with 24/7 markets, you experience these things and become more hardened by them. You become more trustworthy, because you've been through it and now you know how the failures can happen. That's how humans learn. You can study as much as you want in college, from textbooks or videos, but until you go through the bad situations, you won't know how they happen or how to get through them. So it was a great learning moment for us.

Hodl Up: I think one of the best traits a project can have in crypto, and in DeFi specifically, is being time-tested. To wrap it up, I have two questions, and you can take them however you like. First: what's next for Flash Trade? And second: what's something you want the listeners of this episode to know about Flash Trade?

Anas: What's next is the second iteration of our margin engine. The first iteration has been live for the past 16 months; it took us a year to build the margin engine that's live now. The second iteration will help us list 200-plus assets, whether on-chain or off-chain, and we want to be the hub for trading perpetuals without any effort. It comes with a lot of features on the technical side. Basically, you'll have lower fees and a much faster experience, and you'll be able to trade many coins we don't have right now. We're missing a lot of majors, and there are many DeFi altcoins we haven't listed, so we really want to accelerate in that direction, and this is what will help us do it. The way the engine is designed will also unlock higher yields for people depositing into our market-making vaults, the Flash liquidity pools. So it's a win-win: traders get more assets and liquidity providers get more yield. That's what's coming this quarter, and next quarter we'll probably look toward Breakpoint and have something very interesting there. Apart from that, what I want viewers to know about Flash is that we're a fully bootstrapped team building an exchange. We love what we do, and we have high hopes for what's to come. Everything we've done so far is as transparent as it gets, and the people who have joined us have actually made money. That's the best way to hook people: come here and make money. Everyone is here to make money, right? I've been posting about it: our liquidity pools, the market-making vaults, have outperformed Solana and Bitcoin, the golden benchmarks of crypto. Instead of lending for single-digit APY, people could have lent into the FLP pools and beaten the gold standard, Bitcoin. As a market maker, I'm happy I was able to create pools where people can beat the market just by depositing. Building a democratic pool so that people can get the best yield makes me really happy. That's what I'm saying: we're here to make more money for people, and if we're not doing that, we're failing.

Hodl Up: I want to name this episode "Beating the Unbeatable Market."

Anas: Oh wow, lovely. I love it. Thank you.

Hodl Up: This is literally what it's all about: building good products. That's what Dren and I especially love about this industry. We've been traders, we tried to build as well, but we noticed that we need to focus on builders, because they're the real driving force behind the whole industry. So again, Anas, thank you very much for your time today. We'll probably connect again and do many more episodes, but thank you very much, and I wish you an amazing day ahead.

Anas: Thanks for having me, guys.

Hodl Up: Well, that was amazing.

Hodl Up: It really was. I loved it, not just what he shared but how he answered some of the questions. I didn't really want to ask about the toxic trade flow situation from 2024, but the way he answered it, I applaud that, and I'm really happy we got to have him on this episode.

Hodl Up: Same for me. That's what I really value about people who are actually building and trying to stay aligned with this vision of decentralization and transparency, because with most of the issues, let's say FTX: it was a centralized exchange at the end of the day, but if they'd been more transparent, everything would probably have gone at least a little better, in my opinion. You don't agree? Why?

Hodl Up: I don't know. I just don't feel like "transparent" and "centralized exchange" belong in the same sentence, if you know what I mean.

Hodl Up: But now we have proof of reserves. I get your point. I don't think centralized exchanges are the way to go in the long run, by any means. But at least they have proof of reserves. You can't know for sure, but you know they have something behind them. It's not just a facade.

Hodl Up: "Facade" is a very fancy word, and if I use it, you have to stop using it, because it's overused. So I think it was amazing, and I hope you start using Flash Trade daily again and get back to trading, because you quit a while back. You've got to get back to trading. Let's lose money faster and make it back even faster.

Hodl Up: Who knows, I might start a course. Let's start selling courses: how to trade your Bitcoin, because it's digital gold. But you make a good point. I might actually go back to trading. You have stocks and memecoins in one place now. And honestly, I'm excited about this partnership. I really think it couldn't have gone any better: the partnership, the episode and everything in between, because the whole company stands for everything I want to stand for. The same vision, the same way of executing.

Hodl Up: So thank you guys very much. We're really happy to have had you with us today, and let's see what happens in the next episode. Shout out to Flash Trade, to Anas and Mags as well, and big love to the rest of the team.