Crypto trading, rewired: Inside Flipster’s vision for the next market cycle

Flipster is redefining crypto trading by combining speed, deep liquidity, and AI-driven tools to give traders smarter, faster, and more capital-efficient ways to act.

Flipster is rewriting how crypto trading works, combining speed, deep liquidity, and capital-efficient tools on a single platform. Built for active traders, it aims to remove friction, integrate new products seamlessly, and bring AI-driven insights to the trading experience.

To understand how the company is shaping the next phase of crypto trading, we spoke with Youngsun Shin, Head of Product and Partnerships at Flipster. Here are his insights on how new financial products, AI, and evolving trader behavior are redefining the crypto exchange landscape.

1. For those who may be less familiar, can you start by telling us what Flipster is, what sets it apart in the crypto exchange space, and the core problem you’re solving for today’s traders?

Flipster is a high performance crypto trading platform built for speed, precision, and seamless capital efficiency. Our core focus is to reduce friction; in execution, and in access to opportunities across global markets. Traders today face fragmented liquidity, slow-moving interfaces, and product ecosystems that don’t evolve fast enough. Flipster exists to solve that. We’ve built a unified environment where traders can act instantly, with deep liquidity, low latency, and the ability to put their capital to work in more ways than one.

What sets us apart is how we think about product velocity. Every product we build is shaped by active traders, our own team included. That’s why we can innovate and ship at the pace markets demand, with products designed to help traders move faster, smarter, and with greater capital efficiency.

2. We’ve seen spot and futures dominate crypto trading to date. What do you see as the next wave of products that will define the market, and how is Flipster positioning itself for that shift?

The next wave of trading will be defined by a diversification of financial products. Options, structured notes, synthetic assets, and tokenized instruments will create new ways to express market views and hedge exposure. These products bring maturity to crypto markets, not just through speculation, but through strategy and risk management. The future won’t be about a single product leading the market; it will be about product ecosystems working together to create continuous, capital-efficient opportunities.

Flipster is positioning itself to be the launchpad for that evolution. We’re building infrastructure flexible enough to support a new class of derivatives, and a system that allows traders to move between them seamlessly. As markets mature, the exchanges that win will be those that can integrate new products without adding friction. 

3. Institutional adoption is accelerating with tokenized assets, on-chain treasuries, and new derivatives. How do you see these financial innovations reshaping the trading landscape in the next few years?

Tokenization will change how liquidity is created, priced, and transferred. Institutions are increasingly exploring tokenized treasuries and real-world assets not just for efficiency, but for transparency and programmability. That shift breaks down silos between traditional and digital finance, making capital markets more interoperable, liquid, and continuous. The next few years will see on-chain assets priced, traded, and risk-managed in real time, across both centralized and decentralized venues.

As this transition unfolds, exchanges like Flipster have a pivotal role to play. We bridge institutional-grade structure with retail-scale access. By connecting liquidity across different market layers (on-chain and off-chain), we’re helping create a financial environment that’s more open, fluid, and adaptive to global capital flows.

4. Perpetuals have become one of the most important products in crypto. How do you think they’ll evolve, whether in terms of design, liquidity, or integration with other financial instruments?

Perpetuals will remain at the center of crypto trading, but their design will evolve to integrate yield, risk, and capital efficiency in new ways. We’re likely to see multi-collateral and composable perps that interact directly with tokenized yield instruments, treasuries, or synthetic assets. Liquidity will increasingly come from both centralized and on-chain sources, blurring the line between traditional market-making and protocol-level liquidity.

We see perpetuals as a foundation, not an endpoint. Their next evolution lies in flexibility. Traders should be able to customize exposure, layer strategies, and capture funding yield, all without leaving the exchange. That’s the kind of product sophistication we think exchanges will eventually move toward.

5. Beyond the core trading infrastructure, the crypto landscape is constantly evolving. What broader market dynamics are you keeping an eye on that could impact traders in the near term?

Two forces stand out: macro liquidity cycles and regulatory clarity. As global interest rate environments shift, risk assets including crypto will continue to see sharp liquidity rotations. Traders need products that can adapt quickly to these shifts. At the same time, as regulation crystallizes across major markets, the contours of what “regulated crypto trading” looks like will become clearer, attracting larger institutional flows and reshaping liquidity distribution.

We’re also watching the evolution of on-chain data infrastructure. Better oracles, composable data, and open risk metrics will unlock new classes of instruments and analytics. For traders, this means richer signals and faster feedback loops. For crypto exchanges, it means a chance to build deeper alignment between transparency and execution.

6. AI is everywhere now. What role do you believe AI will play in the operations of crypto exchanges in the near future? And how is Flipster making use of AI in its functioning?

AI will fundamentally redefine how exchanges operate, from liquidity management to fraud detection to user experience. On the operational side, AI-driven systems can optimize order routing, detect anomalies, and preemptively flag risk exposures with a level of precision that human monitoring can’t match. On the user-facing side, AI can personalize experiences, predict user intent, and help traders make more informed decisions.

Flipster already integrates AI across multiple layers of our infrastructure. It supports our market surveillance systems, enhances user engagement, and powers smarter decision support tools internally. We’re also exploring how AI can help distill market mindshare into actionable insight (InfoFi). By mapping sentiment, liquidity, and attention across social and trading data, AI can help identify where conviction is forming before it turns into market momentum. We see AI not as a gimmick, but as an operating principle, a way to make every part of the exchange more responsive, predictive, and aligned with trader behavior. We’re closely tracking the technology’s progress and potential.

7. There’s a lot of excitement around AI tools for traders on exchanges, but one big question keeps coming up: If a trader loses money because of AI-driven advice, who should be accountable? How do you think the industry should approach this?

The question of accountability is central to the responsible use of AI in trading. Exchanges and platforms that deploy AI-driven insights must prioritize transparency; traders need to know what’s model-driven and what’s market fact. AI should assist, not replace, trader judgment. The industry’s role is to make sure these systems are explainable, audited, and presented as tools, not as guarantees of performance.

In the long term, standards will likely emerge around AI model disclosure, data provenance, and usage boundaries. Flipster’s approach is simple: maintain human oversight, ensure data integrity, and keep users in control of their decisions. The technology should empower traders, not abstract away their agency.

8. Retail traders often gather on platforms like Reddit, Twitter, and Telegram to share ideas and spot trends. How do you view the role of these communities in shaping modern trading? And how is Flipster tapping into this behavior when building new trading products?

Retail communities are now one of the most powerful sentiment engines in global markets. They surface narratives before institutions catch on, and they turn attention into momentum. Modern trading is increasingly social, shaped by collective observation and shared conviction. Ignoring that dynamic is like ignoring liquidity itself.

Flipster builds with that in mind. We’re focused on designing features and campaigns that align with how communities naturally trade, share, and react. From event-driven listings to gamified reward systems, we think in terms of network behavior, how traders move together and what tools can amplify their edge when they do.

9. There are several hurdles preventing crypto from going mainstream: limited usability, lack of regulatory clarity, and security threats. Do you think newer financial products could help address these challenges?

Absolutely. The next generation of financial products will abstract away the complexity that holds new users back. Think structured exposures that simplify risk management, or tokenized assets that carry inherent transparency. These instruments can make crypto more usable and trustworthy without diluting its openness. As regulations mature, compliant product frameworks will bridge the trust gap between institutional-grade investors and retail participants.

Security, too, can be enhanced by innovation. New products built with verifiable risk models, audited code, and transparent on-chain data give users confidence. The industry doesn’t need fewer products; it needs smarter, safer ones. That’s where growth will come from.

10. What do you think Flipster can do to make crypto more accessible and appealing to a wider audience?

Access starts with simplicity. The average user doesn’t want to navigate multiple wallets, blockchains, or complex derivatives interfaces. Flipster’s goal is to streamline that journey, from deposit to trade to reward, while maintaining the depth and performance serious traders demand. True accessibility comes from capital efficiency, education, and user confidence all working together.

We also believe in making opportunity visible. When markets move, traders need clear pathways to participate; instantly, safely, and intuitively. By combining speed, liquidity, and product diversity in a single environment, Flipster lowers the entry barrier without lowering the bar for quality or sophistication.

11. As the industry matures, how do you envision the next generation of crypto exchanges? What role do you see Flipster playing in shaping that evolution?

The exchange of the future will look very different from what we see today. It won’t be limited to spot and perpetuals, it will encompass a wider range of financial products, from options to structured products that give traders more precise exposure. At the same time, we’ll see a convergence between on-chain and off-chain markets. A hybrid system that combines the transparency and programmability of blockchain with the liquidity and efficiency of centralized venues is where the industry is heading.

Flipster has a clear role in that transition. Because we’re built by traders, we understand firsthand what active users need. That perspective, combined with our edge in speed and product innovation, gives us the capacity to design and deliver new financial products at the moments they matter most. More than keeping pace with the market, it’s about equipping our community with tools that capture opportunity and shape the next phase of trading.

12. And lastly, what new financial products or innovations is Flipster planning? Could you give us a sneak peek?

Our product roadmap is guided by one principle: give traders access to opportunities that were once too complex or fragmented to reach. We’re building features that bring sophisticated strategies (like copy trading and DeFi yield access) into a unified, exchange-native experience. The goal is to make high-level market participation intuitive, without traders needing to navigate multiple platforms or wallets.

We’re also focused on creating new ways for users to connect with market leaders, insights, and data through the Flipster ecosystem. That could mean following top-performing strategies, accessing institutional-style returns, or exploring new structured exposures as the market matures. These are products designed for retail traders who think like professionals, giving them tools to compete at that level, with the same clarity, speed, and precision.

Closing thoughts

As crypto markets mature, the next cycle won’t just be defined by price. It’ll be defined by product innovation, smarter tools, and community-driven conviction. Flipster’s focus is on building that future, where traders move with greater speed, insight, and confidence.

“Because we’re built by traders, we understand firsthand what active users need,” says Youngsun Shin. “Our goal is to design and deliver financial products at the moments they matter most; tools that help our community capture opportunity and shape the next phase of trading.”

To learn more about Flipster, visit flipster.io or follow them on X.