As interest in tokenised real-world assets and on-chain derivatives has grown, Ostium has emerged as a significant participant in the segment.
The platform is built around the idea that trading is becoming more cross-asset and increasingly influenced by macroeconomic developments.
In 2025, the company reported strong growth in volumes, user numbers, and open interest, alongside rising activity in RWA-linked products.
In this interview, CEO Kaledora Fontana Kiernan-Linn discusses Ostium’s origins, its early market thesis, the factors behind its recent expansion, and the company’s strategy for reaching users beyond the crypto-native ecosystem.
Invezz: To start us off, could you give a basic overview of what Ostium is doing and the opportunity you see in the current RWA surge?
Kiernan-Linn says the company’s origins lie in a broader conviction about blockchain’s real opportunity beyond crypto-native assets.
“We were sort of falling down the DeFi and the crypto rabbit hole. And we developed a strong conviction that the biggest opportunity… was building out a place to trade traditional assets because everything we’d seen today was kind of circular.”
In her view, early blockchain infrastructure largely revolved around trading crypto tokens against other crypto tokens.
That, she argues, is structurally limiting. Financial infrastructure built on blockchain, if it is to justify itself at scale, must connect to far larger, multi-trillion-dollar traditional markets.
The RWA surge, in her framing, is not just a product cycle but a structural shift toward integrating traditional financial instruments on-chain.
Invezz: What broader market thesis shaped Ostium’s model?
Beyond tokenisation, the company was built around a behavioural thesis about how traders would evolve.
“We thought there was going to be a rotation in the way that consumers or traders… approached the market from one that was focused on a single asset class… to what we thought would be a world where people would be cross-asset by default.”
Historically, traders tended to stay within one lane — equities, crypto, or options layered onto equities.
Even crypto-native traders typically rotated between altcoins within the same ecosystem.
But Kiernan-Linn argues that the macro backdrop changed that behaviour.
“It was inspired by the belief that COVID had ushered in a fundamentally new market paradigm and that the next wave of retail trading apps weren’t going to look anything like the last wave of retail trading apps.”
She points to the post-2008 period of zero-bound interest rates, subdued inflation and relatively stable geopolitics as an anomaly.
That environment supported single-asset focus, particularly large-cap tech and crypto cycles.
“We have left the near-zero interest rate world that dominated the last 15 years, and now we have a world with higher inflation and more consistent political and geopolitical shocks.”
In that world, she argues, macro volatility becomes central.
“The macro was going to become the driver of why people traded and how they traded.”
That would lead traders to chase volatility wherever it appears — across metals, energy, equities or crypto — rather than staying confined to one asset class.
Invezz: Why did you choose to build this infrastructure on-chain rather than within traditional financial rails?
The closest analogue to Ostium’s model, she says, was the CFD broker market, which allows cross-asset derivative trading outside the US and India. But she describes structural flaws in that ecosystem.
“You have zero transparency as a user. You have no idea what their exposures are… and they have full discretion to arbitrarily close your account or freeze your funds.”
That adversarial dynamic, she argues, creates both trust and economic inefficiencies.
“There needed to be a place where you could do all these things that I described, but that had the transparency and credible neutrality of blockchain.”
Blockchain infrastructure, in her framing, allows cross-asset trading under a unified instrument while reducing discretionary counterparty risk.
The initial target users were those already operating on-chain. “We built a product for crypto natives.”
On and off-ramps were still immature, making crypto-native capital the most logical starting point.
Invezz: 2025 was a breakout year for Ostium. What drove that growth?
Kiernan-Linn describes the early years as a prolonged test of conviction.
“2022 through the beginning of 2025 was like conviction hell. We had a very clear vision of what the future was going to look like, but the market was really not ready.”
During that period, the company focused on survival, refining the product and preparing for eventual alignment between thesis and market conditions.
When macro volatility intensified in 2025, the model resonated.
“We had a completely insane breakout year in 2025.”
The growth metrics were dramatic — triple-digit multiples in volume, user count and open interest.
But she attributes much of that early momentum to basic execution.
“In a space like crypto where everybody does marketing before they do sales… we kind of went back to first principles and just employed basic startup techniques of doing things that don’t scale.”
That included manual outreach, direct messaging, calls with users and iterative feedback loops.
“They’re actually so excited to talk to you because no protocols ever do it.”
Once early adopters converted, referrals compounded growth organically.
Invezz: Where did product-market fit emerge?
The strongest initial traction came from crypto-native whales who had already broadened their focus beyond token rotations.
“These are crypto native whales… they went from guys who were just tracking altcoin rotations into guys who are tracking interest rates… tracking inflation expectations… following geopolitics very closely.”
For these traders, Ostium offered the ability to trade macro volatility across asset classes in size, without leaving the on-chain environment.
Early scepticism from investors, however, was strong.
“A VC asking, why would any crypto native trader want to trade gold?”
Critics argued that crypto-native traders had no interest in so-called “boomer” assets. Kiernan-Linn says the opposite has proven true.
“I think crypto natives are exhausted by like the manipulation of a lot of small cap tokens.”
Larger, deeper markets offered both volatility and credibility.
Invezz: With many copycats emerging, how do you view the competitive landscape?
Since 2025, multiple RWA protocols have launched. Kiernan-Linn views that as validation.
“We feel very validated to have sort of created a market and been sort of the category creator.”
She believes the category is large enough to support multiple dominant players.
“There’s not just like one $10 billion company, there’s like multiple $10 billion companies that will come out of it.”
She draws parallels to prediction markets, where more than one major platform emerged.
“I am a hundred percent convinced… I think it’s a larger market than prediction markets.”
The rationale is structural: perps allow granular positioning and larger notional exposure compared to binary outcome markets.
“The lifetime value of a customer is just so much higher in trading perps because they can trade much more size in this much more kind of granular way.”
Invezz: You’ve said 2026 is about scaling beyond crypto-native users. What does that entail?
Having proven product-market fit within crypto, the next phase is expansion.
“2026 is sort of our year of scale. We did sort of the zero to one and now we’re doing the one to 50.”
The target segment includes traders currently using CFD brokers globally.
These users already trade cross-asset derivatives, but face structural limitations.
“They don’t have access in a way that they can trust the technology that it’s built on top of and trust that when things start to go their way, they’re not going to have the platform act against them.”
For traditional users, the differentiator is credible neutrality, not just product access.
On growth strategy, she remains pragmatic.
“I can’t say that we’ve figured all of it out, but all I can promise is I know we will figure it out.”
Invezz: Regulation remains a grey area for many users. How do you see it evolving?
Kiernan-Linn argues that most governments are still early in understanding DeFi.
“Most governments around the world just don’t know how to treat DeFi yet.”
Even token classification remains unresolved in many jurisdictions.
“A lot of tokens… are kind of neither security nor commodity. There’s maybe something like a new third thing that regulators don’t quite know how to define.”
She expects regulation to evolve gradually rather than abruptly.
“I think it’s going to take time.”
At the same time, she sees a more constructive environment than in earlier years.
“There’s been a breathing room… where people are able to continue building.”
Clearer frameworks may take several years. “It’s just not going to happen overnight.”
Invezz: How do you navigate competition in an emotionally charged crypto market?
Unlike traditional industries, crypto competition often involves token-based loyalties.
“In crypto, it’s a very emotional thing.”
Users who hold a protocol’s token may react defensively to new entrants.
“They get very viscerally offended.” That creates both volatility and loyalty.
“You have both the most strident evangelists and the most strident haters in crypto.”
Navigating that landscape requires more than product superiority.
“It’s more of an art than a science… it’s not just purely about product. It’s also about winning hearts and minds.”
For Kiernan-Linn, the focus remains on execution and long-term positioning.
“We created the category. We’re the best positioned to win… we only really just started.”
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