On October 13, 2025, TradeXYZ officially launched, defying conventional startup trajectories by bypassing public founder interviews and A-list venture capital endorsements. Within less than five months, the platform's total trading volume surpassed $1 trillion. During the CME weekend break, global oil traders migrated to the platform to speculate on Middle East geopolitical tensions, while Morgan Stanley traders utilized its price predictions to set opening prices prior to the Cerebras IPO. Despite this scale, the founding team remains entirely anonymous, with the only known identifier being the Twitter handle sershokunin, referred to internally as Shoku.

Shoku's investment history spans over a decade, beginning with his first Bitcoin purchase in 2013. His trajectory includes early involvement and long-term holding across multiple narrative cycles. In September 2021, he acquired CryptoPunk 8857 for 2000 ETH, approximately $6.63 million at the time. This asset, one of only 88 Zombies in the series, represented the fourth-highest transaction price in the collection's history. Shoku subsequently posted a twelve-tweet thread arguing that NFTs were evolving into a collaborative 'scene' akin to 1920s Paris or 1960s Soho, where creativity belonged to the collective rather than individual geniuses. Data compiled by Woofun AI shows that this thesis faced severe headwinds as the market corrected.

The bear market proved Shoku's assessment of the NFT era premature. Three months after the downturn began, most Punk buyers were trapped at the top, including Shoku. In May 2024, he listed the NFT for sale at 2,200 ETH, yet the highest bid received remained at only 500 ETH. While this loss was significant, it pales in comparison to his non-crypto successes. In 2014, unable to secure an allocation in Uber's funding round, Shoku identified a niche arbitrage opportunity: if Uber succeeded, New York City taxi medallions would plummet in value. He purchased put options on a publicly traded company named TAXI with strike prices of $3–$5 and maturities of 6 to 9 months. When UberX lowered prices and TAXI stock fell to $2.5, Shoku realized a 50x profit.

Another asymmetric trade occurred in Japan between 2014 and 2015. While the Bank of Japan implemented aggressive easing and smart money targeted the Nikkei index, Shoku identified a structural inefficiency in the real estate market. He noted that purchasing apartments required only a 5% down payment with a two-year term and AAA-rated Mitsubishi credit endorsement, effectively creating an unsecured two-year call option with inherent 20x leverage. He acquired 25 presale apartments in core upscale areas like Nishi-Azabu, generating a 20x profit over two years before the market shifted. Woofun AI notes that these trades demonstrate a consistent ability to identify structural mispricings in traditional markets before applying similar logic to crypto.

Shoku identifies Ethena, Hyperliquid, and the fundraising platform Echo, later acquired by Coinbase, as the three most outstanding projects of the current bull market due to their provision of unfair high-yield opportunities. In 2023, when Hyperliquid was nascent with only $2 million in HLP treasury liquidity and an empty order book, Shoku privately messaged friends including Cobie, Jez, and CL to test the product. CL later stated that ignoring Shoku's message regarding Hyperliquid was his biggest regret, while Jez credited the interaction with significantly impacting his career. Shoku emphasized that recognizing special products requires constant usage and experimentation.

In March 2024, Shoku expressed full confidence in Hyperliquid's on-chain products and dApps, asserting they would have no peers in quality and rigor. He further stated that if forced to choose a token to lock away for ten years outside of BTC, ETH, and SOL, he would select HLP, citing the market's continued undervaluation of the team's ambition. By May, he called for a shift from trading to building, describing the opportunity as one a generation might never encounter again. On Christmas Day 2024, he shared a screenshot of an unreleased product on the Hyperliquid testnet, which later materialized as Unit, the platform's cross-chain bridge supporting native BTC interoperability.

Shoku transitioned from investor to founder to drive the vision behind Unit and TradeXYZ. His friend mod recalled a conversation under a roadside food cart canopy where Shoku described Hyperliquid as one of the few exciting things in the crypto world. Mod initially questioned Shoku's decision to leave investor status, noting that only a 100x opportunity justifies such a move and that few globally could execute the vision. On May 25, Shoku revealed TradeXYZ, stating that the true ambition of the Hyperliquid team extended far beyond being an on-chain DEX. Woofun AI analysis suggests that this strategic pivot has successfully redefined the platform's market position.

Since its launch last October, TradeXYZ has gone live with equities, indices, futures, forex, and pre-IPO contracts, covering nearly all financial asset classes. Earlier today, the platform listed SpaceX's pre-IPO perpetual contract SPCX, beating Nasdaq to the punch by three weeks. By setting the price first, Shoku and his team are defining the anchor of value and prying open the doors of Wall Street, effectively capturing pricing power previously reserved for traditional exchanges.