Valuation of $550 million, weekly fee income of $2 million: FOMO founder Seyoung deeply analyzes cross-chain seamless transactions, public chain psychology, and community leverage

This interview is truly worth watching, not just for the surface numbers like "FOMO's valuation of $550 million" and "weekly fee income of $2 million," but for the product logic behind it that is very typical and likely represents the next generation of financial internet forms. Let me clarify one point: the user numbers, fees, valuations, and other figures you provided will be treated as disclosed data from the interview for analysis, rather than as independently audited financial data. 1. What FOMO is truly doing is not "just another crypto trading platform." If FOMO is only understood as a trading terminal, it is underestimated. What it really aims to do is: Trading account + social identity + P&L credibility system + community organization + financial content distribution + multi-asset trading entry. Once these elements are combined, it essentially ceases to be just an exchange. It is attempting to create a: Finance-native Social Network. Today, financial discussions happen on Twitter/X, trading on Robinhood, groups on Discord, charts on TradingView, alpha groups on Telegram, and asset data on CoinMarketCap. But these elements are fragmented. What FOMO aims to do is: Consolidate "who you are, how much you have earned, what you have bet on, who you trade with, which clan you belong to, and whether your research is worth reading" into a single financial identity system. This is what is referred to as: Social Graph of Finance. These four words are very important. Facebook's core asset is not posts, but the Social Graph. LinkedIn's core asset is not resumes, but the professional relationship graph. TikTok's core asset is not videos, but the interest graph. The truly valuable financial platform in the future may not have its core asset as trading fees, but rather: Financial Graph. Who holds what? Who trades with whom? Who consistently makes money on certain assets? Whose opinions can influence others' asset allocations? Who is the true authority in a specific market segment? Once this graph is established, its value far exceeds a single transaction. ──────────────── 2. The "USD-based" approach is actually one of FOMO's most valuable product judgments. I believe this is a very important statement from the entire interview. Many crypto entrepreneurs make a mistake: They think ordinary users need to learn blockchain. In fact, ordinary users do not want to learn blockchain at all. Ordinary users just want: "I have $100, can I buy something?" This is a rule that has been repeatedly proven in FinTech history: The best financial products do not require users to understand the underlying financial infrastructure, but rather hide it. When you swipe a Visa card, you do not need to know: • acquiring bank • issuing bank • card network • interchange • clearing • settlement When you use Venmo, you also do not need to understand ACH clearing. When you buy stocks on Robinhood, you do not need to understand DTCC. But for a long time, crypto has been the opposite. Users need to understand: • ETH • SOL • Gas • Wallet • Seed Phrase • RPC • Bridge • L1 • L2 • Chain ID • Slippage This is completely counterintuitive for a true mass-market financial product. So one of FOMO's core ideas can actually be condensed into one sentence: Blockchain should become infrastructure, not user experience. ──────────────── 3. This is why the example of "$100 turning into $98.5" is so important. This actually involves a very deep psychological issue in financial products: Mental Accounting. Assume an ordinary person says: "I deposited $100." The account in their mind is: $100. And not: 0.75 SOL. If the next day SOL drops by 3%, and the user finds their platform balance has turned into $97, they may not first think: "The SOL/USD Beta caused my base asset to mark-to-market." What the ordinary person thinks is: "Why has my money decreased?" This is a very fatal onboarding issue. Professional crypto users can accept asset-based accounting. Mass-market users are more accustomed to fiat-based accounting. This is the same psychological mechanism as casino chips. When entering a casino, you can use chips. But the entry and exit must still be clear: $1,000 in. $1,000 out. Otherwise, ordinary users cannot establish a value anchor. ──────────────── 4. Therefore, FOMO truly addresses one of crypto's biggest problems: abstraction. One of the biggest competitions in the next phase of crypto may not be: Which chain has higher TPS. But rather: Who can make users forget the existence of chains the most. This logic has actually occurred many times in internet history. Early internet users needed to understand: IP addresses. FTP. SMTP. DNS. Ports. Later, users only knew: Open Instagram. Open Amazon. Open YouTube. Internet protocols did not disappear. They were just hidden at the product layer. The same will happen with blockchain in the future. In the future, an ordinary investor may buy: Meme Coins on SOL. Assets on Base. Perpetuals on Hyperliquid. Prediction contracts on Polymarket. US stocks. Even tokenized equity. But they may have no idea which chain these assets are based on. If FOMO can truly achieve: Chain Abstraction + Asset Abstraction + Account Abstraction, Then its potential value is indeed much greater than that of traditional crypto terminals. ──────────────── 5. Clans are a smarter layer of design than "social trading." Many people may first react to the term Clan as: "Trading group." But it is not that simple. Clans transform previously unquantifiable trading community relationships into quantifiable financial organizations. In the past, a lot of alpha in crypto existed in: Private Telegram groups. Discord. WeChat groups. Small fund groups. KOL friend circles. What are the problems with these communities? No structured identities. No transparent performance. No organized assets. No sustainable incentives. No accumulation. If a Telegram group disbands today, the entire network value may disappear. But if a Clan is established: • Clan identity • Trading records • P&L • Leaderboard • Treasury • Research • Airdrop • Reputation Then it is actually creating a new: digital financial guild. ──────────────── 6. This is very similar to the Guild in the gaming world. Why are Guilds in MMORPGs so powerful? Because people do not stay purely for the game mechanics. People stay for: Belonging. Ranking. Honor. Competition. Friends. Identity. The same principle applies. One of the biggest challenges for trading platforms is: Trading itself is a low-loyalty behavior. Wherever the fees are low, people go there. Wherever there are more coins, people go there. Wherever liquidity is good, people go there. But community relationships are different. If you belong to a Clan, and your: • reputation • history • followers • P&L • rank • network are all there, Your switching cost will be very high. This is the most formidable moat for social products. ──────────────── 7. This is also the biggest difference between FOMO and Coinbase, Robinhood. Coinbase's core moat has long been: Regulation. Brand. Liquidity. Asset custody. Fiat entry. Robinhood's core advantage is: Extremely low friction trading experience. Mass-market brand. Securities infrastructure. Product distribution capability. But if FOMO takes the social route, it seeks a different kind of moat: Identity + Reputation + Community + Network Effect. Once this is formed, it is stronger than the fee moat. Why? Because fees can always be undercut by competitors. But what you have built over five years: • 100,000 followers • Real P&L • Alpha reputation • Clan • Trading history is hard to migrate. This is why LinkedIn is so valuable. A person's professional relationships and reputation cannot be easily transferred to another platform. ──────────────── 8. Transparency in P&L may create a new type of internet celebrity. I think Seyoung's judgment here is very insightful. The internet has produced several types of stars over the past twenty years. First generation: Bloggers. Second generation: YouTubers. Third generation: Influencers. Fourth generation: Streamers. Crypto has the potential to produce: Trader-Creators. Traders + content creators. Their biggest difference is that: The core metrics for past Influencers were: Followers. Views. Likes. The core metrics for future financial Influencers may become: Verified P&L. This will greatly change the financial content industry. ──────────────── 9. Why is Verified P&L so important? Because the most scarce thing in finance is not opinions. But rather: Verifiable ability. Every day on Twitter, countless people say: "I was bullish on BTC long ago." "I bought HYPE long ago." "I knew about SOL three years ago." But the question is: Did they really buy? How much? When did they buy? How long did they hold? When did they sell? What was their position size? Did they have other losses? If all of this is verified by real trading accounts, then: The credibility structure of financial content will completely change. Today, the Attention Economy on YouTube is: Who can talk the best, wins. In the future, financial social may become: Who has really made money, gains Attention. This is a very important shift in internet power. ──────────────── 10. But there is a huge trap here: P&L does not equal ability. This is something that must be understood in the investment field. An account that earns $10 million in a year does not necessarily mean that this person is an excellent investor. Why? Because you must consider: Risk. Leverage. Maximum drawdown. Survivorship bias. Time horizon. Capital size. Sharpe Ratio. Sortino Ratio. Risk-adjusted return. For example: A: +300% in a year. Maximum drawdown of 90%. B: +40% in a year. Maximum drawdown of 8%. Who is better? The long-term capital management industry really looks at: Return / Risk. So if FOMO really becomes a financial social network in the future, I believe the most valuable leaderboard should not just be: "How much money was made." But should also include: • Risk-adjusted P&L • Max Drawdown • Consistency • Win Rate • Position Sizing • Time Weighted Return • Capital Efficiency A true financial reputation system will be much more complex than a gaming leaderboard. ──────────────── 11. If FOMO really succeeds, the business model will be very scary. Because the ARPU of financial users is inherently higher than that of ordinary social users. TikTok users spend two hours a day scrolling. But the platform mainly makes money from advertising. Financial platforms are different. An active trading user can generate: Trading fees. Spread. Payment for Order Flow income. Subscription. Premium Data. Margin. Lending. Staking. Asset Management. Tokenized Assets. Prediction Market fees. If social networking is added: Creator subscription. Clan membership. Research subscription. Copy trading. Revenue sharing. Affiliate. Sponsored financial products. The entire business model will become a very large financial business closed loop. ──────────────── 12. An extreme example Assume that in the future FOMO has: 10 million monthly active users. Of which: 1 million are trading users. Each user contributes an average of $30 in revenue per month. In a year, that would be: About $360 million in revenue. If there are also: Premium subscriptions. Data subscriptions. Asset custody. Securities trading. Prediction markets. Trader economy. ARPU may even continue to rise. This is also why once a financial social network is established, its valuation can easily be higher than that of ordinary social software. Because: Social Network × Financial Monetization is theoretically a very strong combination in internet business models. ──────────────── 13. But FOMO's biggest opportunity is also its biggest risk: Social + Finance. Both of these industries are already difficult. Combining them is even harder. The challenges of Social are: Network Effect. Content. Retention. Community Moderation. The challenges of Finance are: Regulation. Risk. Custody. Liquidity. Market Manipulation. Fraud. Compliance. Combining the two will also create new problems: Pump & Dump. Insider trading. KOL manipulation. Copy Trading risks. Wash Trading. P&L fraud. Sybil. Conflicts of interest. This means that if FOMO grows into a truly large platform, its future competitiveness will ultimately not just be UI. But rather: Trust Infrastructure. ──────────────── 14. FOMO may ultimately discover that "trust" is its most important product. Many Web3 entrepreneurs like to say: "Trustless." But the real mass-market financial world does not lack Trust. But rather needs: Higher quality, more transparent, verifiable Trust. For example: Is this trader's P&L real? Did this Clan receive money from project parties? Did this KOL hold a position when recommending a certain Token? Is this person dumping to followers? Is this account a real person or a bot? Was this leaderboard created through wash trading? In the future, a truly powerful FOMO will need to do more than just create a Social Graph. It will also need to create: Reputation Graph. This may be the true long-term asset. ──────────────── 15. Seyoung repeatedly mentions "the first 500-5,000 users," which is one of the most valuable lessons for entrepreneurs. Many startups easily make the mistake of: Pursuing: 100,000 downloads. 1 million registrations. Advertising. Influencers. PR. What is truly important is: Do you have a small group of users who cannot live without your product? A very important idea in Silicon Valley product theory is: Product-Market Fit before Growth. Airbnb did not advertise nationwide in the early days. Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia personally went to New York. Took photos of hosts. Talked to users. Stripe even had the famous: "Collison installation." Patrick Collison would directly help entrepreneurs integrate Stripe into their websites. What these companies did in the early days was not scalable. But they gained something very valuable: Real user feedback. FOMO's focus on the initial 500-5,000 users is essentially this logic. ──────────────── 16. One of the biggest misconceptions in entrepreneurship: treating Growth as Product-Market Fit. Assume an App: Burns $5 million in marketing. Gains 1 million users. Three months later, 90% are gone. This is not PMF. Another App: Only 3,000 users. But 60% open daily. Trade weekly. Invite friends actively. Even complain about the product being bad but still use it every day. The latter is actually more valuable. Why? Because: Retention is evidence of demand. Growth can be bought. Retention is hard to buy. ──────────────── 17. FOMO's growth from 13,000 to 1.3 million, if successful, what to observe is not the user count. I will look at five things. First: Retention. How many are still using it after 30 days? Second: Proportion of trading users. How many of the 1.3 million users are real traders? Third: Revenue concentration. Of the $2 million weekly fee income, how much comes from the top 1% of users? Fourth: CAC. Is the daily addition of 30,000 users natural growth or incentivized growth? Fifth: Cohort quality. How many new users remain after three months? Many crypto platforms have seen massive user growth. But after incentives end: Users disappear instantly. This is the difference between Token incentives and Product Demand. ──────────────── 18. How to understand the $550 million valuation? Startup valuations cannot just look at revenue multiples. Especially for such high-growth financial platforms. If the interview states: Weekly fee income of $2 million. Simple annualized: About $104 million in gross fees. But the key issue is: Gross fees ≠ Revenue ≠ Gross Profit ≠ EBITDA. These four concepts must be separated. For example, in trading fees, there may be: Liquidity provider rebates. Referral. Creator revenue share. Chain fees. Market maker incentives. Cashback. So what should really be looked at is: Net Revenue. If net revenue is only 30% of gross fees, then annualized it may only be around $30 million. A $550 million valuation would then be about: 18 times revenue. If the net income rate is 70%, the valuation multiple would be completely different. So it cannot simply be said: "Weekly fee income of $2 million, therefore $550 million is cheap." Financial entrepreneurship must look at unit economics. ──────────────── 19. FOMO's real dangerous competitor may not be Coinbase. This is very important. In the future, its true competitor may be: X. Why? Where is the largest Social Graph in crypto today? It is not the exchanges. It is on Crypto Twitter. Where do traders build their reputation? On X. Where are project announcements made? On X. Where does alpha spread? On X. Where do memes explode? On X. If X deeply integrates: Wallet. Trading. Prediction Market. Stock Trading. Crypto execution. Then X itself may become: Social Graph + Financial Execution. This poses a strategic threat to all crypto social trading platforms. ──────────────── 20. The second real dangerous competitor is Robinhood. Robinhood's long-term direction is increasingly approaching: Financial Super App. Robinhood's advantages are: Mainstream US users. Securities infrastructure. Compliance system. Brand. Large amounts of capital. If Robinhood adds: Creator. Trader profile. Public P&L. Groups. Prediction market. Crypto. Then it may also move closer to Social Finance. FOMO's advantage is: Crypto-native culture. These two companies are taking different paths: Robinhood: Finance → Social. FOMO: Social Crypto → Finance. They may ultimately meet in the middle. ──────────────── 21. The value of people like GCR, Cobie, Ansem essentially illustrates one issue: Crypto is one of the few markets where: Personal brands can be directly tied to financial capital. Traditional Wall Street is not entirely like this. A JPMorgan trader, even if very skilled, may not be known by ordinary people. But in crypto: Traders themselves are Brands. For example: GCR. Cobie. Ansem. They not only have opinions. But also have: Distribution. Attention. Trust. Community. Capital signaling power. This has actually created a very new profession: Financial Influencer + Investor + Media Company. A person can simultaneously possess: Investment ability. Media capability. Capital influence. Community influence. This is a very unique aspect of crypto. ──────────────── 22. Why are people like Ansem particularly valuable? Because he is not just a Trader. He is: A Narrative Distribution Node. A very important fact in financial markets is: Prices are not solely determined by "fundamentals." Prices are also influenced by: Attention. Narrative. Capital Flow. Influence. This is especially evident in crypto. So the value of a top trading KOL is not just: "He can predict the market." But rather: He is part of the market narrative. This is different from the era of George Soros. The internet has merged investors and media. ──────────────── 23. The most valuable financial companies in the future may simultaneously control three graphs: First: Asset Graph Where the money is. Second: Social Graph Who knows whom. Third: Reputation Graph Who is trustworthy. If any company controls these three graphs, it may become the next generation of financial infrastructure. This is also why I believe: "Social Graph of Finance" is not just an ordinary marketing slogan. If truly realized, this strategic direction is very significant. ──────────────── 24. But FOMO's ultimate goal is not trading fees. The real big money may come from: Financial Distribution. One of the most valuable abilities in the financial industry is: Distribution. Why is BlackRock strong? Asset management capability is certainly important. But more importantly: It can reach global capital. Why is Visa valuable? It has a payment network. Why is Bloomberg valuable? It controls the information entry for financial professionals. Why is Robinhood valuable? It controls the entry for retail investors. If FOMO controls the young generation of crypto-native investors: What to watch. Who to follow. What to buy. What communities to join. Then it controls: Financial attention distribution. Financial attention is extremely valuable. ──────────────── 25. The most terrifying step for FOMO in the future is evolving from a "trading platform" to a "capital distribution network." Assume one day: An excellent trader establishes a Clan. With: 200,000 Followers. 100,000 members. The platform can see their risk preferences. Positions. Historical returns. Capital size. Then when a new asset appears, FOMO actually knows: Who this asset should be distributed to. At this point, FOMO is no longer just an exchange. It begins to approach: Capital Distribution Network. Even further: Asset Origination. Tokenized securities. Prediction markets. Private markets. This is where the commercial imagination truly begins to expand. ──────────────── 26. Seyoung wearing a Casio is not the most valuable lesson to learn. Many entrepreneurial interviews particularly like to emphasize: Founders do not buy luxury goods. Work 17 hours a day. Wake up at 5 AM. These stories have motivational value, but do not mistake them for the reasons for entrepreneurial success. What is truly worth learning is: Resource allocation. The most important thing for successful entrepreneurs is not: How many hours they sleep. What watch they wear. But rather: Where they focus their limited attention. A founder's scarce asset is not money. It is: Attention. Truly excellent founders will focus their attention on: Product. Talent. Users. Distribution. Capital allocation. And not on a lot of irrelevant matters. This is what true extreme focus should be learned from. ──────────────── 27. The term "Legacy" can also be reinterpreted from a capitalist perspective. Truly top entrepreneurs often evolve from: Money To: Power Then to: Legacy. First stage: Making money. Second stage: Changing the industry. Third stage: Changing systems or history. Rockefeller later directed a lot of wealth into charity. Carnegie built libraries. Bill Gates focuses on global health. Elon Musk talks about civilization and Mars. Whether you agree with these individuals or not, this psychological path is very common. Because once wealth reaches a certain amount: Adding another zero does not proportionally increase life's meaning. What brings true satisfaction becomes: Impact. So Seyoung emphasizing Legacy actually aligns with many entrepreneurs' ultimate psychological evolution. ──────────────── 28. I believe the most valuable lessons for entrepreneurs from this interview are the following six thoughts: First: Do not make users understand the technology. The more complex the technology, the simpler the product should be. ──────────────── Second: First capture a very small number of hardcore users. True PMF often starts from 500 people, not from 5 million. ──────────────── Third: One of the biggest moats in finance is Reputation. It is not just liquidity. It is not just fees. ──────────────── Fourth: Communities can become assets. But the premise is that the community has: Identity. History. Economic relationships. Reputation. ──────────────── Fifth: Financial products will increasingly become social. Because investing itself has always been a social behavior. Research. Narrative. FOMO. Herding. Status. All have social attributes. ──────────────── Sixth: Ultimately, the biggest business model may not be trading, but Distribution. Whoever controls user attention controls the entry to asset distribution. ──────────────── 29. If I were to define FOMO's true ambition in one sentence: It is not: "To create a better crypto trading app." But rather: To compress LinkedIn's identity graph, Twitter's influence graph, Robinhood's financial accounts, Discord's community relationships, and TradingView's trading data into the same financial social network. If successful, FOMO will not be a crypto tool. It may become: Financial Identity Layer. ──────────────── 30. The most noteworthy endgame I believe that in the next decade, the internet may see a very large new category: Financial Social Network. The past internet recorded: Who you know. What you like. What you watch. The future financial internet will record: What you own. What you have earned. Whom you trust. Who influences your capital decisions. Which capital community you belong to. This is why I view FOMO in a larger historical context. What it is truly betting on is not: Crypto Trading. But rather: Financial behavior itself will become a social identity. Once this judgment is established, then in the future, an "investment account" may become a part of a person's digital identity, just like today's Instagram Profile. And whoever controls this layer of identity may control one of the most valuable networks in the next generation of the internet: A network composed of capital, reputation, and attention. This is the true understanding behind this FOMO founder interview.