Delphi Research Report: Investors Seeking High Returns Becomes a Hallmark of the Era, Holding Key Trading Platform Targets as the Core Strategy

October 21 - Crypto research firm Delphi Digital argued in its report "The House Always Wins: Why Speculation Is the Theme of the Decade" that technological change and household financial pressure are jointly driving speculative demand. The report states that new technologies such as artificial intelligence have widened market divergence over future industries, while factors like housing affordability and employment prospects may also prompt some investors to seek high-return trades.

Based on this judgment, the report proposes the idea of "owning the trading venue platforms," focusing on platforms that capture trading activity and profit through fees or user distribution. The report mentions traditional platforms such as Robinhood, Cboe, CME, Coinbase, Interactive Brokers, and DraftKings, as well as on-chain trading or options platforms including Hyperliquid (HYPE), Lighter (LIT), Derive, and Paradex; prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket that have not yet gone public are listed as observation targets.

Delphi Digital stated that Robinhood, by integrating options, crypto assets, and event contracts onto a single platform, has the opportunity to benefit from different trading hotspots. Other platforms each have their own entry points: Cboe has S&P 500 same-day options business, CME provides contracts for FanDuel Predicts, DraftKings has migrated its prediction products to its own exchange; Coinbase accesses prediction markets through Kalshi and owns crypto options exchange Deribit; Interactive Brokers operates ForecastEx.

Among on-chain platforms, the report views Hyperliquid as a relatively mature case. The platform's 2025 trading fees were approximately $972 million, with trading volume of about $3 trillion, and protocol revenue is primarily used to buy back HYPE. Its HIP-3 feature also allows deployers to list perpetual contracts on crude oil, precious metals, and equities, expanding trading instruments and hours.

The report considers Lighter to be the second on-chain platform worth watching, whose order book matching uses zero-knowledge proofs, currently charges no fees for retail user trading, and supports instruments such as equities, commodities, and foreign exchange; Robinhood Wallet has also integrated its perpetual contract services. However, under the free trading model, Lighter's future revenue sources and LIT token value capture remain to be verified. Derive and Paradex are categorized as early-stage projects in the on-chain options space.