TradeXYZ Mysterious Founder Shoku, a Man Who Always Seeks Asymmetric Opportunities

On October 13, 2025, TradeXYZ went live. In less than five months, the platform's cumulative trading volume surpassed $100 billion.

Over the weekend while CME was closed, global crude oil traders came here to bet on the situation in the Middle East. Before Cerebras' IPO, Morgan Stanley traders referred to the prices here to predict the opening price.

For a project of this scale, by all rights there should have been dozens of founder interviews, several rounds of endorsements from top VCs, and valuation rumors flying everywhere. Yet TradeXYZ's founding team and core members have remained anonymous from the start, and have not accepted any interviews.

All we know is that the founder of this platform goes by the Twitter ID sershokunin, known in the community as Shoku.

Bitcoin OG, NFT Whale

In 2013, Shoku bought Bitcoin for the first time. In the decade-plus that followed, his compounding trajectory looked like the version of themselves many people dream of: early participation, long-term holding, getting ahead of every narrative.

In September 2021, Shoku used 2000 ETH (approximately $6.63 million) to purchase CryptoPunk #8857. This is one of only 88 Zombie types in the entire CryptoPunks collection, and the transaction price ranks as the fourth highest in the series' history. On the day he bought the Punk, he posted a lengthy twelve-part thread on Twitter explaining why he was willing to pay millions of dollars for a pixelated avatar.

Shoku stated that the creativity of an era does not belong to a single genius, but to the entire "scene." Think Paris in the 1920s, Soho in the 1960s, or the early days of Y Combinator.

Shoku's judgment was that NFTs were growing into just such a scene: artists recommending each other instead of competing, tools and technologies spreading across Discord and YouTube within days, and secondary markets allowing collectors to see what others were buying in real-time for the first time.

These characteristics had never appeared simultaneously in art history, and when they do, what follows is a whole generation of art movements retroactively defined by that moment.

Shoku was wrong. NFTs did not bring about a reflection of the era.

Three months later, the bear market began. Most Punk buyers were caught at the top, and Shoku was no exception. In May 2024, he listed the NFT for sale at 2200 ETH. As of now, the highest bid from a buyer is only 500 ETH.

Shoku probably doesn't care too much about that money.

Investment Genius

Buying Bitcoin 13 years ago is hardly even a standout achievement on Shoku's investment resume. Two brilliant trades he made outside the crypto market have consistently drawn admiration from his peers.

In 2014, when Uber was still in its fundraising phase, Shoku was eager but could never secure an allocation.

One day, while walking back to the office, he looked at the main road and had a flash of insight, coming up with an unconventional investment thesis: If Uber succeeded, New York City taxi medallions would go to zero.

After researching, Shoku found a listed company called TAXI whose primary asset was taxi medallions.

When TAXI's stock was around $20, Shoku bought a large number of put options with strike prices between $3 and $5 and maturities of 6 to 9 months. A few months later, UberX cut its prices, TAXI's stock dropped to $2.5, and Shoku made 50 times his money.

Shoku's other genius trade took place in Japan.

From 2014 to 2015, the Bank of Japan adopted an aggressive easing policy, and most smart money was going long on the Nikkei index.

After flying to Tokyo and conducting research, Shoku believed the real asymmetric opportunity wasn't in stocks.

He discovered that the standard criteria for buying an apartment in Japan were a 5% down payment, a two-year term, and a AAA-rated guarantee from Mitsubishi — meaning if the value dropped, you could just walk away. Essentially, it was a non-recourse two-year call option with 20x leverage.

He scooped up 25 pre-sale apartments in prime high-end areas like Nishi-Azabu, making 20 times his money in two years.

Excluding Hyperliquid, Shoku's most successful crypto investment was in Ethena. He identified it as a product that could turn scalable cash-and-carry arbitrage into a "one-click subscription," bringing a strategy previously exclusive to professional trading teams to ordinary users.

Shoku believes that Ethena, Hyperliquid, and the fundraising platform Echo (later acquired by Coinbase) are the three most outstanding projects of this bull run. His reasoning is that these three projects democratized access to some of the most unfairly profitable opportunities in crypto history for ordinary people.

Early Bet on Hyperliquid

In 2023, Hyperliquid was just getting started. The market-making treasury, HLP, held only about $2 million, the order book was nearly empty, and there was little discussion on Twitter.

Shoku privately messaged a few friends he thought might be willing to try the product, including Cobie, Jez, and CL.

CL later said this was the DM he most regretted ignoring this cycle.

Shoku: I spent a few hours with Jeff in Hong Kong. He's a smart guy, a great entrepreneur.

Jez later said that Shoku's DM about Hyperliquid in 2023 had a huge impact on his career.

Shoku replied that he messaged Jez because he felt Jez was one of the few people who would actually use the product and understand why it was special. "The lesson is to keep trying things, keep using products, so that when something truly special comes along, you can recognize it."

In March 2024, Shoku tweeted that while he wasn't sure how big Hyperliquid could become as an L1 in terms of traditional metrics like TVL or volume, he was entirely convinced that the quality and rigor of Hyperliquid's on-chain products and dApps would be unmatched across the entire crypto space.

In the same month, in another tweet, he said that if he had to choose one token besides BTC, ETH, or SOL to lock up for ten years, it would be HLP. His reasoning was that the market would continue to underestimate the team's capabilities and ambitions.

In May, Shoku tweeted: "The true test of conviction in Hyperliquid is moving from tweeting and trading to contributing and building. Hope to see more talent step up. This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity."

This was a message for others, but also for himself.

Stepping into the Arena

On Christmas Day 2024, Shoku posted a tweet with a screenshot of an unreleased product on the Hyperliquid testnet.

Two months later, Unit was officially released. Serving as a "bridge" for Hyperliquid, Unit initially supported native BTC deposits and withdrawals on Hyperliquid, and brought spot trading capabilities for major crypto assets to the platform.

On the day Unit launched, Shoku's friend mod posted a long thread mentioning the first time he heard Shoku talk about Unit. The two were sheltering from the rain in a vacant lot lined with food trucks when Shoku said Hyperliquid was "one of the few exciting things in the crypto world."

Mod's first reaction when Shoku gave up his investor identity to become a founder was that he was crazy. He reasoned you'd only do that for a 100x opportunity, and that there were fewer than a handful of people in the world truly capable of driving Unit's vision.

Clearly, Shoku is one of them.

In May 2025, Shoku revealed TradeXYZ, then in gestation: "After all this time, people still view Hyperliquid merely as an on-chain derivatives exchange. But if you spend some time digging deeper, you'll see the true ambition of the HL team. Unit's next product, launching soon, will make everyone realize just how big this opportunity is."

Shoku delivered. Since its launch in October last year, TradeXYZ has achieved tremendous success, rolling out stocks, indices, futures, forex, and pre-IPO contracts one by one, covering nearly every asset class in finance.

Early this morning, TradeXYZ launched SpaceX's pre-IPO perpetual contract SPCX, three weeks ahead of Nasdaq.

Whoever sets the price first defines the anchor of value. By seizing pricing power early, Shoku and his team are prying open the doors to Wall Street.