According to Fortune, a new decentralized exchange called Ostium has raised a $20 million Series A round, valuing the startup at about $250 million. The round was led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute, and GSR. Founded in 2022 by Harvard grads Kaledora Kiernan-Linn and Marco Antonio Ribeiro, Ostium focuses on perpetual futures contracts for real-world assets like stocks, metals, and oil, not just cryptocurrencies. The platform currently has 15 employees and had previously raised about $8 million. The CEO, Kiernan-Linn, stated they aim to compete with online brokerages like Robinhood, not other crypto-native perps exchanges.
The Real-World Asset Gambit
Here’s the thing: the perpetual futures, or “perps,” game in crypto is getting incredibly crowded. Protocols like Hyperliquid, Lighter, and Aster are all duking it out for dominance in crypto-to-crypto leveraged trading. So Ostium’s angle is pretty clever. By focusing first on tangible stuff like oil and metals, they’re sidestepping that bloodbath and tapping into a different, arguably larger, pool of demand. It’s crypto infrastructure for traditional market speculation. Marc Bhargava from General Catalyst asked, “How do we fuse the two?” Well, this seems to be their answer: use blockchain to offer a better, faster derivative on real-world assets to a global audience. It’s a textbook use case, as Kiernan-Linn says, but one that’s been oddly overlooked in the rush to build the next big crypto casino.
Targeting the Offshore Grey Market
Their planned use of this new $20 million war chest is the most telling part. They’re not going after degens on Crypto Twitter. They’re targeting the “offshore broker market”—non-U.S. investors who want U.S. market exposure but get bogged down in slow, opaque brokerage tech. That’s a massive and often frustrating market. If they can genuinely streamline that experience with a decentralized protocol, the value proposition is huge. But it’s also a massive challenge. You’re asking non-crypto users to navigate crypto wallets, manage margin on-chain, and understand perpetual funding rates. That’s a steep learning curve. Can a sleek interface and faster execution overcome that friction? It’s a bet, but with backers like General Catalyst and Jump, it’s a well-funded one.
Founder Story vs. Substance
Look, the founder background is a great hook—a former Royal Danish Ballet dancer and a triple-threat science Olympiad medalist. It makes for a fantastic pitch deck narrative about discipline and precision. And maybe that’s a real edge in the grind of a startup. But in the end, this space is won on liquidity, security, and user experience. The competition isn’t sleeping. The real question is whether their specific focus on real-world asset perps gives them a moat deep enough to survive. They’ve got the capital and the pedigree now. The next step is proving that their niche isn’t just novel, but necessary. Basically, they need to show that blockchain isn’t just a buzzword here, but the best tool for the job.
