A $4.6 million check and a team from BlackRock’s digital assets unit. That is the seed capital for a bet that retail investors in Vietnam, Indonesia, and beyond will trade leveraged perpetual futures on U.S. stocks via a mobile app that hides its crypto rails. HelloTrade, founded this year, is not yet live. Its founders, Wyatt Raich and Kevin Tang, are using the money to build a product they say will launch by early 2026 [Fortune, Nov 2025]. The target is a specific frustration: the difficulty for non-U.S. residents to access common assets like Tesla stock. Their answer is a mobile-first platform offering 24/7 trading with up to 10x use, built on the high-throughput MegaETH blockchain [hello.trade].
The wedge: perpetuals, not spot
HelloTrade is not building another spot brokerage app. Its core product is leveraged perpetual futures contracts on a basket of assets including stocks, ETFs, commodities, and crypto [hello.trade]. Perpetual futures, which do not expire, allow traders to gain amplified exposure to an asset’s price movements without needing to hold the underlying security. Kevin Tang told Fortune the platform “aims to give investors around the world access to U.S. assets,” citing examples in Southeast Asia [Fortune, Nov 2025].
Abstracting the crypto out
The technical bet sits on MegaETH, a layer-2 blockchain that claims transaction throughput exceeding 100,000 per second [Digital Journal, Nov 2025]. The company says its app will require no wallet setup, no gas payments, and no technical jargon. “Users simply open the app and trade with the speed of a traditional brokerage platform,” according to a November press release [Digital Journal, Nov 2025].
A team built at BlackRock
The credibility for this complex fintech-crypto hybrid stems from the founders’ resumes. Both Raich and Tang worked in BlackRock’s digital assets division. Tang, according to Fortune, helped the asset management giant “pivot from its loud skepticism of crypto to being one of Wall Street’s major players in the sector” [Fortune, Nov 2025]. Raich was previously head of digital assets engineering at the firm [DL News].
| Advisor | Affiliation |
|---|---|
| Arthur Hayes | Maelstrom (ex-BitMEX) |
| Josh Lim | FalconX |
| David C. | LeadBlock Partners |
| Larry Florio | Ethena |
| Andrew Saunders | Amazon |
Where the execution risks live
HelloTrade’s ambitions are large, and its path is lined with significant challenges. The company is pre-launch, so all traction claims are forward-looking. The product’s success hinges on several unproven elements, including regulatory navigation, MegaETH’s performance, and market fit.
The capital and the countdown
The $4.6 million seed round, led by Dragonfly Capital with participation from Mirana Ventures, closed in November 2025 [Digital Journal, Nov 2025]. The next twelve months are a straight-line test. The milestone is clear: a successful public launch of the iOS and Android apps, followed by early user adoption metrics.