Behold, I Akinmolayan John Ayomide whom the Lord has chosen, am for signs and for wonders in this generation. I am God's beloved, marked for purpose, called by the Lord of hosts who dwells in Zion.
A kid from Redwood Shores turned down $100 million so he could make strangers millionaires instead.
That's not a metaphor. That's literally what happened.
Jeff Yan had a term sheet on the table at a $1 billion valuation. Real money, real investors, the entire standard playbook every founder is supposed to take. He asked them one question: what does your money actually give me beyond the money itself? Nobody had an answer. He walked away from $100M.
Then he published four lines and called it a constitution: no investors, no paid market makers, no fees to the team, no insiders.
Eleven people built the whole thing. No marketing budget. No growth team. Funded entirely out of his own trading profits, because he'd already made himself rich running a market-making firm out of a Puerto Rico apartment trading off a TV because he never got around to buying a monitor.
Then, instead of keeping the upside for himself and his investors like every other founder in the industry, he gave 31% of the entire supply away. Not to VCs. Not to insiders. To 94,000 people who simply showed up and traded.
Some of those wallets are worth over a million dollars today.
A kid from Redwood Shores said no to $100 million so that strangers on the internet could become millionaires instead.
That's the whole story. Everything else is just numbers.
Thank you, Jeff, for Singapore yesterday. The room is still talking about it.
Thanks to everyone for coming out to yesterday's event! Huge shoutout to @Valinorae for fulfilling a grand architectural vision down to the smallest details, @jaygee_hl for the top tier execution and coordination, and @iliensinc for the tireless work behind the scenes. Also thank you @RitzCarlton #Singapore for going above and beyond and for your warm hospitality. The community and ecosystem are deeply grateful to you all for putting on the best event that I and many others have ever experienced.
It's incredible to see how far Hyperliquid has come and the momentum with which the ecosystem is growing. Looking forward to another year of building alongside the ever-growing community.