The round, announced April 28, also drew participation from Haun Ventures, K5 Global, SV Angel, AntiFund, and Sunflower Capital. The raise follows a $7.6 million seed round led by Paradigm that closed in five days, a timeline that Liquid has cited as evidence of investor conviction in the platform's direction.

Liquid lets users trade stocks, crypto, commodities, Polymarket prediction market positions, and pre-IPO company shares from a single interface, with leverage reaching up to 200x in certain jurisdictions. The platform holds no user assets; positions are settled on-chain through integrated decentralised exchange venues.

Liquid was founded by Franklyn Wang, 25, a Harvard graduate who previously served as Chief AI Scientist of Futures at quantitative trading firm Two Sigma. Wang has been explicit about his goal: give retail traders the same data access, risk controls, and automation tools that institutional desks use as a matter of course. "Retail traders should have the same access to data, risk control, and automation that large firms do," Wang told VentureBurn.

He has also drawn a firm line on custody: "Our users hold their own keys. That will never change." The company currently employs around 10 people in New York, with the new capital earmarked for engineering, marketing, and design hires.

Liquid originally launched as a perpetual decentralised exchange (perp DEX) aggregator, pulling together liquidity from Hyperliquid, Lighter, and Ostium into one mobile interface with trading fee reductions of up to 90% and early yield vault integrations averaging around 7% APY. The platform offered leverage up to 40x at launch; that ceiling has since expanded fivefold to 200x as the product evolved into a broader multi-asset trading suite.

Total trading volume since launch has passed $500 million, against an industry backdrop where monthly volume across all perpetual DEXs runs at roughly $1.2 trillion. Marc Bhargava, Managing Director at General Catalyst and a seed investor, described the user demand bluntly: "Crypto degens and day traders are chasing dopamine hits across different asset classes," and unified interfaces are meeting that appetite.

The investor lineup carries its own signal. Neo, one of the Series A co-leads, was an early backer of Kalshi, the prediction market platform that raised $1 billion at a $22 billion valuation in early 2026. Kalshi's weekly volume recently hit an all-time high of $3.4 billion. Both Kalshi and Polymarket are now reported to be exploring crypto perpetual futures products, moving directly into territory Liquid already occupies. The competitive pressure flows in both directions: according to Morgan Stanley Digital Assets research, non-crypto assets accounted for 20 to 40 percent of Bitget's total trading volume by the end of March 2026, up from near zero in January. Paradigm, which led Liquid's seed round, has its own visible stake in this convergence. The firm is reportedly building a prediction markets trading terminal led by partner Arjun Balaji and co-developed the Tempo stablecoin blockchain alongside Stripe, context that helps explain both the firm's early backing of Liquid and the broader strategic weight of the investor coalition forming around this space.

Wang argues that Liquid's non-custodial structure gives the platform a differentiated position as centralised and decentralised trading continue to merge.

For traders outside the United States, the platform's architecture carries particular relevance. India and Pakistan ranked first and third globally in the TRM Labs Global Crypto Adoption Index, published in Q1 2026. South Asian crypto transaction volumes reached approximately $300 billion in the first seven months of 2025, an 80 percent year-on-year increase, with most activity concentrated in retail-scale transfers under $10,000.

Liquid's non-custodial, mobile-first model addresses a specific gap: retail traders in these markets have demonstrated strong volume but have limited access to unified multi-asset trading or instruments like pre-IPO secondaries through traditional finance. Wang's appearance at TOKEN2049 Singapore in 2025, where he spoke on liquidity and scale, indicates he has engaged directly with Asian crypto communities, though the company has no stated APAC office or permanent regional presence.

One significant friction point remains India's 30 percent flat tax on crypto income with no loss-offset provisions, which makes high-frequency leveraged trading expensive regardless of platform quality. Derivatives platforms operating in India must also satisfy FIU-IND compliance requirements, a distinct regulatory obligation with direct implications for any Liquid expansion there. Pakistan's regulatory environment is newer still: the Pakistan Crypto Council was established in March 2025 and PVARA in July 2025, and while these bodies may offer a more accommodating framework for platforms like Liquid, both institutions are still in the early stages of shaping their remits.

In sub-Saharan Africa, where on-chain value surpassed $205 billion in the 12 months to June 2025, a 52 percent increase, adoption has been driven by grassroots demand for remittance alternatives and dollar-denominated hedges against local currency volatility in markets like Nigeria and Kenya. Liquid's self-custody commitment aligns with documented wariness of centralised custodians, a sentiment that intensified after the collapse of FTX hit Nigerian traders with disproportionate force. The platform currently has no stated presence in the region and would need to navigate fragmented country-by-country licensing to operate there compliantly.

The global crypto derivatives market is valued at $13.7 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $53.9 billion by 2034 at an 18.6 percent compound annual growth rate, according to Stratistics MRC research.

For Liquid, the Series A provides runway to compete across that expanding landscape, with a bet that non-custodial, multi-asset infrastructure built for retail traders is the infrastructure the next phase of that market requires.