Jake Sylvestre Podcast Transcript
Jake Sylvestre joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Jake Sylvester. Jake Sylvester is the founder of Hypercall, an on-chain options exchange built on Hyperliquid. An entrepreneur and engineer, his career spans cybersecurity, cryptocurrency, and financial infrastructure. Before founding Hypercall, Jake Sylvester led engineering at Synapse Protocol, a cross-chain platform that enables users to move assets between blockchains.
Synapse reports more than $55 billion in cumulative transaction volume and 2.5 million users. His experience there involved building the infrastructure connecting separate blockchain networks. Well, good afternoon, Jake. Welcome to the show.
Jake Sylvestre: Hey, it’s good to be here.
Brian Thomas: Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it, my friend, really do, and I know you had to traverse many time zones to get here.
You’re in Singapore, I’m in Kansas City, and I just really appreciate that. So Jake, let’s jump in real quick to your first question. Your path is really unusual. You co-founded a cybersecurity awareness company, PhishTrain, while still in high school, got pulled into Bitcoin through some ransomware incident response work.
You contributed to Bitcoin’s BTCD implementation, led engineering at Synapse Protocol, handling tens of billions in cross-chain volume, and now you’ve built Hypercall. How did that winding road through security and cross-chain infrastructure lead you to options trading specifically?
Jake Sylvestre: Yeah, it’s a really good question.
I think I kind of started with really wanting to build a business when I was pretty young, and cybersecurity was probably one of the biggest problems that we had at that time. And from there, I just kinda kept following whatever worked and whatever had product market fit. It’s funny you lay it out so cleanly as this two, three-step journey, but I think I probably tried a thousand things that didn’t work, and luckily along the way, a few of them did.
So Synapse was definitely one of them with, with cross-chain bridging, and I think Hypercall is, is going to be another. But yeah, I, I love solving problems, and I think options liquidity and, and kind of moving options on-chain is probably one of the hardest problems you could solve in, in crypto, so I’m super passionate about it.
Brian Thomas: That’s awesome. And really like the backstory. You’re obviously a curiosity drives us human beings, and you loved getting into those spaces like cybersecurity as you started out, you talked about, and obviously helped contribute in this space. But you really love to solve problems, and I thought that was interesting.
But again, it’s that passion and curiosity that really drives humans to do what they do. So I appreciate that. Jake, you’re openly dismissive of the assumption that retail can’t handle options, pointing to Robinhood and the chefs and Uber drivers who know how to trade options daily and understand them well.
Why do you think the industry has been so condescending about who options are for, and what does building options for everyone actually require?
Jake Sylvestre: Yeah, I think there’s a long pattern of kind of doing this and painting investor protection as cutting people off from different opportunities. I think by and large it’s been relatively harmful.
If you kinda look back at the, the history and people being kept out of private markets, for example, and then options in, in different countries. I think it comes from the assumption that retail users don’t really understand what’s happening or how markets work. But a lot of the time the academics and the, the volatility pricing models that the mathematicians are putting out are actually wrong.
This is something that some academics have talked about a lot most prominently probably Nassim Taleb who has written Antifragile and, and a bunch of other books. So I, I think we should stop as an industry kind of treating retail as these users that don’t know how to use tools. I think people are smart, and I, I think they tend to figure things out
Brian Thomas: Absolutely. I think there’s just… And, and a lot of industries have this, of course, but you did highlight traditionally the trading industry has cut out those that, I guess, those that they deem not fit for this. And of course, you went into some academics and, and how that worked. But, if we, we need to stop treating retail as the redheaded stepchild, right?
We need to allow this space to be more inclusive of everybody because everybody wants to learn and jump in, and obviously make their lives a little bit better as well. So I appreciate that. Jake, Hypercall offers around-the-clock options trading across both crypto and equities, including nights, weekends, and you’ve integrated institutional-grade Oracle feeds as you expand into real-world assets.
You’ve even cited a single S&P five hundred options trade that become, became fifteen percent of Hyperliquid’s S&P volume. What does it take to run reliable twenty-four by seven options on assets whose underlying markets close, and how far can an options exchange for everything really go?
Jake Sylvestre: Yeah, I think it’s a, a huge challenge.
I think we’ve built a, a really great engineering team but it’s definitely not something we would be able to do without the infrastructure that, that Hyperliquid has put out. We definitely stand on the, the shoulders of giants there. And being able to hedge SP five hundred twenty-four seven is something that options market-making firms have spent decades perfecting, right?
They have delta one desks that move from Europe to Asia to the US trying to approximate what the S&P five hundred is doing over the weekend so they can hedge it out. Then along comes Hyperliquid with a couple hundred million dollars in, in volume and open interest on weekends, and suddenly you can hedge these things without a, a math degree.
So I think a lot of things had to come together. But I think the biggest one is probably Hyperliquid creating a, a incredibly liquid venue for hedging out options on really anything
Brian Thomas: Thank you. And I, I just love the, the fact that you’re– again, this goes back to your passion and, and what you’ve built, but a huge challenge, you talked about that. But with an am-amazing engineering team be-behind you on this you’re able to handle that demand. And it’s interesting that you, you’re really in a way disrupting this, this industry and, and having the availability and that type of volume after hours is absolutely amazing.
So, continued success there. And Jake, the last question of the day, you said the next thing crypto brings to markets is the option, and there’s a lot of room left given Hypercall’s scale relative to traditional option markets. Looking five years out, where do you see on-chain options heading, and what has to be built to get there, and what does it mean for how ordinary people access sophisticated financial tools?
Jake Sylvestre: Yeah. It’s a good question. I think a lot probably needs to be built. For one thing probably a better way to tokenize equities on-chain. The current companies have done an incredible job of taking, say, share of Tesla and making it available on-chain. There’s still a lot of open questions, though, around how dividends work, how stock splits work things that can kinda be papered over or fixed ex post facto in traditional markets.
But in crypto, you can’t ever stop your systems. And I think that’s, that’s probably a big thing that needs to be solved before we move the entire market on-chain. But overall, I think there’s a lot of good progress being made especially on the regulatory front. And it’s, it’s very reasonable to see a, a world in the next five or ten years where majority of options trading happens completely on-chain.
In a lot of ways, it’s, it’s more efficient than what happens in traditional markets, and I really think it’s, it’s the future
Brian Thomas: Thank you. Really appreciate that. Yeah, I, I would agree. You know, we, we talk a lot about blockchain and, and what people are doing now and, and tying real world assets, getting those on chain.
And I know you’re, again, I would say considered kind of a pioneer in this space, but a lot does still need to be researched and built yet, as you mentioned. Still a lot of outstanding questions in this space. But the good news is what I like to hear, of course, ’cause, regulatory bodies, right? Good progress is being made in this space and, and that is so important.
Obviously, a lot of times that has to be done first before anything else. So really appreciate it. I love the future where this is going, and I think this is gonna open up options for everybody that would like to get into this space, so thank you. And Jake, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Jake Sylvestre: Glad to be here. Thanks.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Jake Sylvestre Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
