From Follower to Price Setter: The Role of Crypto Has Changed
Last night, a university friend who works on Wall Street suddenly sent me two charts: the contract price movements of the AI chip company Cerebras (CBRS) on Bitget and Hyperliquid.
He said these two charts appeared in one of their internal meetings. The topic of discussion was quite interesting:
Crypto is starting to offer a unique value that Wall Street does not have: providing an opening price for IPO assets earlier than Wall Street itself.
Take CBRS as an example. On May 14, U.S. Eastern Time, just before the stock officially began trading, the whole Wall Street was still waiting for its opening price. But on platforms like Bitget and Hyperliquid, the market had already started moving ahead of time.
At around 10 a.m. ET that day, while Nasdaq was still conducting its IPO opening auction, both of our platforms showed similar price action: CBRS contract prices quickly climbed from around $290 to nearly $380.
Later that day, CBRS officially listed on Nasdaq, opening at around $350 and reaching an intraday high of $386.
In other words, in the case of CBRS, the crypto market completed a remarkably accurate round of price discovery ahead of time.
That is something worth getting excited about.
For a long time, crypto was waiting for Wall Street’s recognition, waiting for institutions to enter, and waiting for traditional finance to give us validation.
But now, the situation is starting to reverse. Wall Street is beginning to take crypto market price signals seriously.
This is not a coincidence. It reflects the structural advantages of crypto market mechanisms, 24/7, highly liquid, etc. For price discovery in pre-IPO stocks, several exchanges have adopted similar mechanisms in our perp product, such as:
- Oracle-based pricing and smoothing mechanisms
Before the U.S. stock market opens, when there is no external price reference at all, how should the system price an asset during this “blind box” period?
Our mechanism works like this: when there is no external price reference, the system uses an internal oracle to extract large-trade spreads from the order book and adjust the price once per second. However, the price is calculated using the exponential moving average (EMA) of the past one minute, allowing the current price to gradually move toward the true target price.
Here is a simple analogy: the oracle acts like a radar, capturing real, large-sized trades on the order book to calculate the true target price. But to prevent sudden price spikes or drops from hurting retail users, the system turns on a “slow-motion mode.” It adjusts the price slightly every second, smoothly moving toward the target price and helping avoid malicious liquidations caused by short-term extreme volatility. - Dynamic price-band mechanism balancing risk control and flexibility
Think of this mechanism like walking an energetic dog on a retractable leash. Initially, the system gives the price a safe, controlled radius to roam within—say, ±5%. If market momentum surges and the price sprints toward the very end of its line (hitting 90% of the boundary, aka, ±4.5%), the system doesn’t abruptly yank it back or rigidly halt trading. Instead, it automatically clicks and releases more slack, smoothly shifting the anchor point forward. This extends the leash, expanding the total price discovery range up to ±25%. It gives the market enough room to run and find its true value, all while keeping the market makers' risk perfectly under control.
What really matters behind is that the crypto market is moving from being a “follower” to becoming a leader and an early mover in the global asset pricing system.
A few days ago, in my CNBC interview, I mentioned my “10% vision”: by 2030, around 10% of global financial assets could exist in tokenized form. Now, we are genuinely accelerating toward that vision.
Writing this also reminds me of a time when I took my son to Wall Street and saw the “Fearless Girl” statue standing in front of the New York Stock Exchange, hands on her hips. Her head was slightly raised, staring firmly at the vast, old, and seemingly unshakable empire of traditional finance in front of her.
Early crypto was just like that girl, standing outside the gates of traditional giants, seen as a rebellious outsider and challenger.
In the last cycle, we were eagerly waiting for Wall Street to turn around and embrace crypto. In the current cycle, Wall Street realizes that it has no choice but to embrace crypto and tokenization.
Because the most cutting-edge market experiments, the fastest liquidity coordination, and the most open price discovery are happening here. We are witnessing an irreversible convergence where capital and technology move both ways—a continuous feedback loop between the sheer volume of traditional finance and the hyper-efficient architecture of Web3.
Wall Street still holds the greatest mass of global capital. But Crypto is becoming its center of gravity.
Wall Street brings the scale, but Crypto dictates the future of price discovery.
(Photo taken by me on Wall Street in February 2023)