Trading is the name of the game.
If you spend enough time in crypto, you realize there are only two businesses: trading and (a little bit of) payments. (Infra companies will kill me - CEO’s look at your bottom line, it’s all trading supported stuff)
One of the main reasons I started higherrrrrrr is I wanted to build a trading business.
Historically, the way the trading businesses have won is by having the best assets. Coinbase OBSESSIVELY lists assets because net new assets are proportional to volume, volume means fees, fees drive the bottom line.
As I’ve been building this product, what I realized is that we aren’t competing with pump.fun, we’re competing with binance, coinbase, kracken, etc etc. Our business is the same as theirs, our core ICP is the same trader who used to be trading shitters through CEX UIs and pay 2% fees.
I would bet, go into debt actually to bet more, that at all of these major exchanges there’s some ex mckinsey or bain consultant, staring at a looker dashboard and frantically making slide decks for the CEO that show how onchain trading is stealing market share. The core retail volume, that has kingmade the biggest companies in crypto, is finally moving onchain.
Solana is Winning
The thing that people don’t see, is that Solana has the best product. It’s fast, cheap, and the community is killer. That killer community produces the best assets, full stop.
There’s a lot of inflated data around, but would bet if you filtered for the real retail activity, it would be overwhelmingly moving to solana. You can see it and feel it on twitter too.
Yes, Ethereum is more decentralized, but Solana is decentralized enough. Compared to L2s, when you net for community etc, Solana is WAY more decentralized and community driven. The tradeoff it makes really helps user experience, and it’s well worth it. Users love it because the community itself is decentralized too. Yes, Mert is kind of a leader, but really there are a ton of leaders and voices in the ecosystem all working together
Prediction
Here’s my wild 2025 prediction: by the end of 2025, real user activity on Solana will have passed the CEX Binance x Coinbase activity - looking primarily at the retail trading activity. Some of the high volume stuff will stay on CEX’s, but long term, that will have to move to where the liquidity is too.
I’m all here for it, pilled, locked in and ready.
Keep building.