Key Takeaways
- • Liquid closed an $18 million Series A funding round co-led by Neo and Left Lane Capital, less than six months after raising $7.6 million in seed funding from Paradigm, bringing total raised to $25.6 million.
- • The platform, founded by 25-year-old Harvard graduate and former Two Sigma quantitative researcher Franklyn Wang, launched in 2025 as a crypto derivatives aggregator and has expanded into equities, commodities, prediction markets, and private assets to serve as a 24/7 leveraged trading hub.
- • Liquid joins a broader trend of crypto-native platforms (including Polymarket and Hyperliquid) expanding beyond digital assets into traditional markets, driven by convergence in trading patterns between risk assets and retail trader demand for multi-asset exposure in a single interface.
- • Series A investors include Haun Ventures, K5 Global, SV Angel, AntiFund, and Sunflower Capital alongside lead investors Neo and Left Lane Capital, signaling institutional confidence in the multi-asset leveraged trading thesis.
- • General Catalyst managing director Marc Bhargava framed the opportunity around unified retail trader demand: "crypto degen or the day trader or the commodities junkie, all these people are chasing the same dopamine hit of doing well and having an edge on the market."
Summary
Liquid, a cryptocurrency exchange startup founded in 2025, has raised $18 million in Series A funding to expand its leveraged trading platform beyond crypto derivatives into traditional asset classes including equities, commodities, and prediction markets. The round was co-led by venture capital firms Neo and Left Lane Capital, with participation from Haun Ventures, K5 Global, SV Angel, AntiFund, and Sunflower Capital. This Series A follows a $7.6 million seed round led by Paradigm completed less than six months earlier, bringing the startup's total capital raised to $25.6 million.
Franklyn Wang, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate who previously worked as a quantitative researcher at Two Sigma, founded Liquid as a hub for perpetual futures—a derivatives product popular among crypto traders. The platform initially functioned as an aggregator for these instruments but has since diversified its offering across multiple asset classes to position itself as a comprehensive 24/7 leveraged trading interface for retail traders.
The funding reflects a broader shift within the crypto trading ecosystem away from pure cryptocurrency focus. Competitors including Polymarket and Hyperliquid have similarly expanded into non-crypto sectors, with prediction markets on Polymarket primarily covering geopolitics and sports, while Hyperliquid users trade weekend commodities contracts. According to Marc Bhargava, managing director at Liquid investor General Catalyst, this convergence stems from changing market dynamics: "trading patterns in traditional assets like large cap stocks and oil are beginning to resemble those of risk assets," driving retail traders to consolidate their market exposure across a single platform rather than managing multiple accounts.
Bhargava characterized the target user base as unified by behavioral motivations across asset classes, describing them as "crypto degen or the day trader or the commodities junkie, all these people are chasing the same dopamine hit of doing well and having an edge on the market." This investor perspective underscores the thesis that retail leverage-seeking traders, regardless of their preferred asset class, represent a cohesive market segment with similar infrastructure requirements and risk appetites.
Franklyn Wang, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate who previously worked as a quantitative researcher at Two Sigma, founded Liquid as a hub for perpetual futures—a derivatives product popular among crypto traders. The platform initially functioned as an aggregator for these instruments but has since diversified its offering across multiple asset classes to position itself as a comprehensive 24/7 leveraged trading interface for retail traders.
The funding reflects a broader shift within the crypto trading ecosystem away from pure cryptocurrency focus. Competitors including Polymarket and Hyperliquid have similarly expanded into non-crypto sectors, with prediction markets on Polymarket primarily covering geopolitics and sports, while Hyperliquid users trade weekend commodities contracts. According to Marc Bhargava, managing director at Liquid investor General Catalyst, this convergence stems from changing market dynamics: "trading patterns in traditional assets like large cap stocks and oil are beginning to resemble those of risk assets," driving retail traders to consolidate their market exposure across a single platform rather than managing multiple accounts.
Bhargava characterized the target user base as unified by behavioral motivations across asset classes, describing them as "crypto degen or the day trader or the commodities junkie, all these people are chasing the same dopamine hit of doing well and having an edge on the market." This investor perspective underscores the thesis that retail leverage-seeking traders, regardless of their preferred asset class, represent a cohesive market segment with similar infrastructure requirements and risk appetites.
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