Exclusive Interview: Behind BlackRock's "Wall Street on the Blockchain"

By 2025, the biggest trend in crypto will shift from the technology itself to its integration with traditional finance.

On one side, crypto investors no longer believe in empty narratives and technology, nor do they invest in meme coins. Instead, they are turning their attention to US stocks with clear business models and actual revenue.

On the other side, many regions around the world still face challenges in easily investing in US stocks. Investors can only participate through certain brokers, facing difficulties with KYC, usability issues, high fees, and more.

A new race track has emerged.

SEC Chairman Paul Atkins predicts that all US stocks will be put on the blockchain in the next two years. Robinhood is building its own chain for tokenizing US stocks, crypto giants like Binance Wallet and Coinbase are entering the space, HyperLiquid has launched US stock perpetual contracts, with a trading volume exceeding $2 billion in 10 days.

Kevin Tang and Wyatt Raich, two veterans from the world's largest asset management company BlackRock, have also joined this "Wall Street on-chain" competition.

Kevin and Wyatt

Kevin is the Senior Director of BlackRock's Digital Assets team, having personally created IBIT, ETHA, and BUIDL and led their commercialization. Wyatt is the tech lead of the crypto division, having written every line of code that powers IBIT, ETHA, and BUIDL. The IBIT they built became the largest Bitcoin ETF and set a record as the fastest ETF to break through $1 trillion in assets under management.

In May of this year, at the peak of IBIT's success, the two chose to leave and establish HelloTrade, an on-chain trading platform for US stock perpetual contracts and RWAs.

While this may seem like a bold move, Kevin has his own insights. To address the after-hours and weekend gaps in the traditional market and enable 24/7 US stock on-chain trading, one must be well-versed in both traditional finance and crypto technology, which is exactly where he and Wyatt shine. Leveraging the compliance intuition and risk control experience accumulated at BlackRock gives HelloTrade the confidence to enter this race track.

"The true competitors of decentralized exchanges are not each other, but rather the traditional Web2 brokers," Kevin bluntly stated in an interview with BlockBeats. "What we aim to do is not just another crypto product but to replicate the Web2 user experience on the Web3 infrastructure."

Kevin's ambition extends far beyond just US stock perpetual contracts. The HelloTrade he envisions is a blockchain-based trading platform that rivals the experience of traditional brokerages and centralized exchanges, attracting millions of users who have never traded on-chain before.

In this exclusive BlockBeats interview, Kevin shared why IBIT became the most successful ETF in history and why he firmly believes that on-chain US stocks and RWAs are the battleground for the next large-scale blockchain adoption.

Here is the interview content.

Leaving BlackRock

BlockBeats: What was your and Wyatt's career path before joining BlackRock?

Kevin: I worked at BlackRock for over ten years. After graduating from college, I spent a year at State Street before joining BlackRock. I started in the research group and later moved to the innovation products group, where I was involved in launching numerous hedge funds, private equity strategies, and mutual funds.

In 2017, a colleague introduced me to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and I was immediately drawn to them. Many of our clients were already concerned about inflation at that time, and Bitcoin, as a potential store of value, caught my special attention. The emergence of Ethereum brought a whole new possibility as it could build decentralized infrastructure and the next generation of financial applications.

At BlackRock, I saw the longstanding pain points in traditional finance and realized that blockchain technology could address these issues. So before joining the digital assets division, I kept a close eye on the crypto market in my spare time.

Eventually, as the third employee in the business group, I joined the BlackRock Digital Assets department. Over the following four and a half years, I focused on building and commercializing IBIT and ETHA, working with clients, partners, and the internal team to bring these products to market.

Wyatt's career path was a bit different from mine. He initially worked on AI and robotics at Lockheed Martin and was later introduced to digital assets by a friend. He quickly delved into it, started writing smart contracts, testing various protocols, and building applications on his own. He then joined BlackRock as one of the first smart contract engineers in the digital assets team, subsequently leading the technical development behind IBIT, ETHA, and BUIDL, helping to build a smart contract system supporting billions of dollars in funds.

We come from different backgrounds, but eventually ended up in the same team as directors, all believing in one thing, that the next generation of the capital market will be built on-chain.

BlockBeats: You built IBIT at BlackRock, which became the world's largest Bitcoin ETF, very successfully. Could you share the story behind this?

Kevin: The success of IBIT and ETHA demonstrates that investors can quickly embrace using an ETF, a convenient and secure way, to invest in spot Bitcoin and Ethereum. For a long time, individuals and institutions faced significant barriers when wanting to directly invest in crypto assets. ETFs utilized a familiar and trustworthy investment tool, solving many issues.

IBIT Growth Rate｜Source: Trackinsight

But even though IBIT grew rapidly, it was not easy for BlackRock to venture into crypto products. Before the launch of IBIT, BlackRock had a private Bitcoin trust fund that grew much slower than IBIT.

Many clients required a lot of education: what is the digital asset ecosystem, why Bitcoin and Ethereum deserve a place in the investment portfolio. The entire BlackRock team played a crucial role in educating on these matters.

One more point I would like to make is that from a broader perspective, Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs are still in the early stages. Most wealth management firms and institutional investors are just beginning to pay attention to crypto assets. In the traditional asset management industry, significant mainstream adoption has yet to begin.

BlockBeats: Since the exploration at BlackRock was so successful, what ultimately led you to leave and believe that products like HelloTrade must be completed on-chain rather than internally at BlackRock?

Kevin: I have always believed that the next major wave of blockchain adoption is moving traditional markets such as stocks, commodities, and fixed income to the blockchain. This is also the reason I ultimately decided to leave BlackRock. Although the number of Americans holding crypto assets has increased, globally, less than 1% of people are actually trading on-chain, and I believe we are still in the very early stages.

HelloTrade has ambitions far beyond perpetual stock contracts. In order to quickly realize all of our ideas, we must rebuild an infrastructure that is not constrained by the frameworks of traditional finance or big tech companies. When settlement, custody, transparency, and access barriers are all redesigned around blockchain, we must rethink from scratch how such an on-chain global market would operate.

The second reason is speed. To achieve our vision, we need to push forward with the fast pace and focus of a small startup, iterate quickly, release new products every few weeks, continuously test with real users in different markets. This agility is hard to achieve in a company of tens of thousands of people.

That being said, we are still very grateful for the experience at BlackRock. It provided us with training, discipline, and a customer-centric mindset, which are the cornerstones of building HelloTrade today.

Global "Wall Street on Chain"

BlockBeats: Let's talk about the product itself. What is the target user of HelloTrade, and what are the main target markets?

Kevin: Let's talk about user personas first. Our long-term goal is to attract two types of people to the chain: one is less experienced crypto users, and the other is traditional financial investors.

When I say "less experienced crypto users," I mean those who basically only trade on centralized exchanges and rarely interact directly with decentralized products on the chain. Currently, the number of CEX traders far exceeds that of DEX.

These people are not professional traders. To attract these users, there must be a familiar interface, similar to traditional internet apps, along with clear risk warnings and reliable security measures, so they can confidently trade on the chain, and this is what we have to provide.

Looking further ahead, we also want to attract a larger group, those who currently only use traditional brokerage platforms.

Therefore, in terms of target markets, we focus on regions where access to the global capital market is restricted or costly. In emerging markets such as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Central Asia, people who want to invest often face many obstacles, such as high fees, fragmented channels, and many financial products that they simply cannot access. An open, global, blockchain-based trading platform can bring the most value to these users.

Rapid Growth of Active On-Chain Users in Emerging Markets｜Source: a16zcrypto

BlockBeats: It is very interesting that when I recommend on-chain DEX to friends who are used to Binance and Coinbase, they often ask, "Since I can trade on my phone anytime, why bother opening a website?" How does HelloTrade plan to respond to this question?

Kevin: This question hits the nail on the head, and that's why we are focusing on developing HelloTrade's mobile app. Nowadays, most people are used to trading on their phones rather than websites. The reality is that the interface design, user experience, and reliability of many crypto applications still lag behind those of Web2 apps that everyone is accustomed to.

We aim for HelloTrade to be as user-friendly as any top-notch mobile trading app, while also allowing users to benefit from the advantages of blockchain technology. We will also have a web version, but the mobile app will be our flagship product and the primary way for users to trade on HelloTrade.

In addition to the product experience, we also want to provide real-time customer support. If you encounter an issue, don't know how to use a certain feature on the platform, or feel anxious about on-chain transactions, you should be able to reach a live customer service representative via email, text, or phone. Of course, this is a big plan that may not be fully realized at the initial launch, but it is the direction we are striving towards.

BlockBeats: One of your core products is perpetual contracts, which is a native invention of crypto. As a finance professional from a traditional background, how do you view it?

Kevin: In my opinion, perpetual contracts are the preferred tool for short-term directional leverage exposure. If you want to speculate on the short-term price movement of an underlying asset, I believe perpetual contracts are one of the most effective tools.

For most non-professional traders, the pricing models of options, time decay, and volatility mechanisms may be too complex. Perpetual contracts are much simpler in comparison; they eliminate this complexity, are more linear, easier to understand, and more convenient to manage.

So, in many cases, for traders who simply want to use leverage efficiently and effectively, perpetual contracts are the better tool.

BlockBeats: So, compared to crypto-native perpetual contract products or fintech apps like Robinhood and Revolut, what is HelloTrade's biggest advantage?

Kevin: In fact, I believe our biggest competitor is not other crypto-native Perp Dex, but rather traditional brokers and neobanks like Robinhood and Revolut that people are already very familiar with and trust.

Currently, some Perp Dex have significant trading volume data, but many analyses show that the actual active traders on these platforms are not that many, probably only tens of thousands of active users.

Our core advantage is built on the underlying architecture of Web3, providing a product experience truly comparable to Web2 applications. This means that users here can enjoy a design, customer service, and technical support on par with Robinhood and Revolut, all driven by decentralized blockchain technology. If our product experience can reach this level, HelloTrade can attract millions of first-time on-chain users.

The second advantage is our team. Stock capital markets and the crypto market are very different. The stock market has corporate actions (such as dividends, stock splits, mergers, etc.) and market closures, situations that are complex and nonexistent in the crypto field. To navigate these differences effectively, strong technical capabilities are needed. The three early engineers we have hired are all former founders of crypto DEXs.

Usually, a team either understands crypto or understands traditional finance, rarely both. However, our team has years of hands-on experience in both fields, and we believe this is also our unique advantage.

BlockBeats: You had a very successful career at BlackRock. For HelloTrade, what scale do you hope to achieve? What do you think is the key KPI for HelloTrade's success?

Kevin: That's a great question. I think our KPI will evolve over time.

Currently, we are more focused on Daily Active Users (DAU). Traditional KPIs such as trading volume and open interest are also essential, and we will set specific goals and monitor them closely as we progress.

But as I mentioned earlier, we want to be more than just a perpetual contract exchange. We aim to be the app that users habitually open every morning. They can not only trade on our app but also read news, receive price alerts, track important events like the FOMC meeting, inflation data, PCE, interest rate changes, and more here.

For me, the truly key metrics are daily active users, user engagement within the app, and which features users are utilizing. These metrics may not all directly translate to revenue, but they reflect user engagement. The more time users spend on the app, the more interaction there is, the stronger our relationship with the customer becomes. In the long run, this relationship is our most valuable asset.

Web3's Technological Foundation, Web2's Product Experience

BlockBeats: After discussing the product, let's talk about the technical implementation. Why did you choose MegaETH as the underlying infrastructure? Instead of selecting Solana, Base, Arbitrum, which had a more mature ecosystem at the time?

Kevin: There are three core reasons.

The first is performance. We wanted to build a trading system that can rival top traditional brokerages, with speed and user experience being top-notch. This requires a highly performant and reliable chain. Our team thoroughly researched many Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions, conducted extensive testing, and MegaETH emerged as the highest performing choice. We plan to introduce some functionalities that were previously infeasible on the blockchain, all of which rely on MegaETH's throughput.

The second reason is my belief in Ethereum and its network effects. I have always believed that Ethereum's security, neutrality, and ecosystem richness are unparalleled to date. The future global financial and DeFi ecosystem will still be built around Ethereum as its core, with MegaETH serving as a "high-speed processing layer" within this core. For us, this combination makes a lot of sense. It inherits Ethereum's security while providing an extremely fast execution environment.

Ethereum TVL Compared to Other Chains｜Image Source: DeFi Llama

Lastly, the MegaETH team is also a crucial factor. Many blockchain projects start with ambitious plans but struggle to materialize them. The MegaETH team are true builders, they have a long-term vision and the execution capability to bring plans to reality.

BlockBeats: To achieve an experience comparable to Web2, your mobile app is described as having no wallet setup, no gas fees, and no technical jargon. How was this achieved technically?

Kevin: For mass adoption of decentralized applications to achieve a Web2-like experience, several hurdles need to be overcome: wallet setup, gas fees, and fiat on/off-ramp. We will gradually address these issues.

Firstly, we will eliminate the need for gas fees, so users do not have to worry about transaction costs. Secondly, for users less familiar with Web3, we will collaborate with embedded wallet service providers to allow users to create wallets directly with their email. For more advanced users, we will also support connecting their own self-custody wallets.

The final challenge is how to onboard funds onto the platform. We are actively integrating fiat on/off-ramp channels to make the entire experience feel like using a traditional brokerage app—familiar and seamless.

BlockBeats: A good trading platform cannot do without liquidity. How do you plan to attract liquidity providers?

Kevin: The first key to attracting liquidity providers is to create a powerful product. If your product truly has many users trading on it, liquidity will naturally follow. Liquidity providers go where the trading action is, so our primary goal is to provide a product that generates real demand.

The second factor is the liquidity during traditional market closures such as weekends and after-hours, an area where blockchain can bring something new. This period experiences lower liquidity, and we are developing a unique incentive system to make providing liquidity during non-trading hours more cost-effective for liquidity providers, ensuring that our market remains deep, stable, and reliable 24/7.

Blockbeats: What do you think is the biggest challenge in building stock or ETF perpetual contract products? Is it compliance issues, the technical details you mentioned earlier, or user growth and education?

Kevin: The biggest challenge is addressing the issue of "24/7 trading," how to make a stock capital market, fundamentally different from crypto, adapt to the 24/7 uninterrupted operation of the crypto system.

Specifically, after-hours and weekend pricing is a technical challenge. We will combine external price feeds, Friday closing prices, and the weekend order book data itself. Additionally, we will collaborate with traditional financial participants over weekends to make the marking price more accurate and predictive.

Frankly, there is no perfect solution before the Nasdaq and NYSE truly achieve 24/7 trading. Yet, I find it very interesting that as these 24/7 stock perpetual contract platforms mature, they will become the main venues for weekend price discovery, and liquidity will deepen. By then, many traditional financial institutions will need to trade on these platforms over the weekend due to fiduciary duties.

The second challenge is user experience. Although we cannot reveal too much at this time, we will not only be doing perpetual contracts. Perpetual contracts may not be suitable for everyone. We plan to gradually introduce some lower-risk products that may still offer leverage, but the user's punishment when the price trend is unfavorable will be much smaller.

BlockBeats: Finally, let's talk about risk. At BlackRock, there is a saying: "It takes decades to build trust, but only a few minutes to lose it." At HelloTrade, what is your most concerning "few minutes scenario"?

Kevin: Our top priority is the safety of clients' assets and unexpected market conditions.

First is the security of client assets. We have all seen what has happened on FTX and some other platforms. Protecting users through proper asset segregation, robust risk controls, and secure DeFi infrastructure is our top priority. This is the cornerstone of trust and the most serious matter we take.

Secondly, we must be prepared for extreme scenarios. We are very confident in HelloTrade's core trading model under normal circumstances, but what truly makes us vigilant is a 1% probability "black swan" event like October 10. We are simulating and backtesting these extreme market conditions and embedding contingency plans and protective measures to ensure that our system remains stable and reliable even under extreme pressure.

In traditional finance, price range limits and circuit breaker mechanisms have existed for many years for a reason. They can prevent a complete market collapse in extreme situations, and we are also making efforts to prepare for these extreme scenarios.