Jeff Yan: If starting a business anew now, might choose to research options.

October 8: Hyperliquid founder Jeff Yan, in an exclusive interview with the Empire podcast at DAS 2026 Asia, was asked, "If you were a builder and were no longer allowed to do infrastructure, what would you build?" He said:

"I would look around and see what hasn't been built yet and what truly has potential. It depends on what other builders are doing. At least at this specific moment, I would probably look into options, because I hear a lot of people want to trade them. I think perpetuals broadly satisfy many users, but there are indeed some users who, when trading perpetuals, say that this does not satisfy all the market views they want to express.

I think HIP-4 is a very obvious way to build an options protocol. You can inherit spot, the order book, and portfolio margin; if you're on the market-making side, you also have perpetuals, which can be used to hedge the delta of options. I think the key is how you turn that one element into something broadly appealing. I don't think any options-like, convexity payoff-style product in crypto has truly reached escape velocity, but it clearly has in traditional finance."