How Ostium Aims To Make Every Global Market Tradable Onchain

Dec 29, 2025

Kaledora Fontana Kiernan-Linn, Co-founder and CEO of Ostium, shares her unique journey from professional ballerina to leader in the DeFi space. She discusses how Ostium aims to bring traditional markets like commodities and equities onchain, addressing the accessibility gap in crypto. Kaledora highlights the need for transparency with CFD-style trading and explains Ostium's innovative platform design, including leverage options and a model for deep liquidity. With plans to enhance their service and scale operations, she invites listeners to engage with Ostium.

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ANECDOTE

From Ballet To Building Startups

Kaledora trained as a professional ballerina from age three and danced at Boston Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet.
She says ballet taught discipline, thick skin, and long-term thinking that translated to startup life.

INSIGHT

Biggest Opportunity: Trad Assets Onchain

Kaledora and her cofounder saw that on-chain users are constrained to crypto-only exposure and will want access to traditional assets.
They believe enabling on-chain access to trillions in off-chain assets is the largest market opportunity for crypto.

INSIGHT

CFDs: A Legacy Market Ripe For DeFi

CFDs (contracts for difference) dominate retail derivatives globally and are often delivered through opaque offshore brokers.
Kaledora sees a huge chance for DeFi to replace that broker layer with transparent, on-chain perpetual-style instruments.

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Kaledora Fontana Kiernan-Linn is the CoFounder and CEO of Ostium.

In this episode, we learn how Ostium is building a next-gen trading platform on Arbitrum, bringing deep liquidity to asset classes like commodities, equities, indices, and RWAs onchain, while pursuing a unique long-term vision to reinvent CFD-style market access through DeFi.

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Timestamps

0:00 - Intro and background
10:47 - Why work in markets
15:06 - Ostium genesis and vision
23:31 - Overview of the Ostium platform
26:10 - Leverage for different asset classes onchain
30:19 - Liquidity challenges
39:49 - The 100x opportunity and competitive advantages
45:05 - How will Ostium use their $20M Series A
50:05 - Closing

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🔗 Guest Links 🔗

► Ostium website: https://www.ostium.com/
► Ostium on X: https://x.com/ostiumlabs
► Kaledora on X: https://x.com/kaledora

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All opinions expressed by hosts and podcast guests are solely their own opinions. Podcast guests and hosts may have positions in the assets or other matters discussed in this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Do your own research. This is not a recommendation or endorsement to buy any token(s) related to any platform(s) discussed.