Japan's Crypto Times Interview: Why Blackboard Won't Build an Exchange

Crypto Times, Japan's leading crypto media outlet, interviewed Blackboard. The original article is available at the link below.

Read the interview on Crypto Times

"The UI and the design at most exchanges today are copy and paste. There are hundreds of exchanges, and many of those hundreds are not surviving. They are losing money." Blackboard, whose team came out of the exchange business, said that to Crypto Times in an exclusive interview published on October 5, 2026. Shingo Arai, founder of Crypto Times and CEO of its publisher Rokubunnoni Inc., asked the questions. The full article is in Japanese at crypto-times.jp. Quotes below are translated from the original.

Blackboard does not claim the incumbents are broken. Most exchanges, it said, already ship tools that traders can use, and someone somewhere is trying to remove the pain from trading. The problem is that they all ship the same ones, and most of them cannot pay for it.

So Blackboard does not invent. It ports what already works at the good exchanges and fixes what does not. Canvas Mode, planned for version 2, lets a trader lay out several charts on one screen, Figma-style, and trade without opening a separate window. Blackboard declined to dress it up. "We do not want to make it sound like we have something amazing. We do not want to talk about protocols either. In the end it is UI and UX."

Please Copy Us

Arai put the obvious objection to Blackboard: anyone can connect the same protocols, so what happens when someone does it better. The answer was that it hopes they try.

"If people see Blackboard working, some will build something better and some will build the same thing. That means the on-chain terminal market itself is growing, which works in our favor. Even if we lose some users, more new users come in. Competition develops the market."

Not a Crypto Exchange

Blackboard uses stablecoins, smart contracts, and blockchains, and it expects people to file it under crypto exchange. It refuses the label.

"We do not want to position the brand as a crypto exchange. So we do not focus on the crypto market itself. Not altcoins, not memecoins," Blackboard said. "Tokenized assets, prediction markets, trading cards, options. There are many kinds of financial markets, and we look at them from a macro view, not only at crypto."

Blackboard tied the timing to where capital has gone. "Capital and investor attention have left altcoins and moved to asset tokenization and stablecoins. Almost nobody is trading altcoins right now." Trends cycle, it added, so the point is to have stock markets, prediction markets, and the rest already on the shelf before the next one arrives, rather than scrambling to list them after.

The Venue Is Replaceable

Blackboard holds no order book. It routes each market to the protocol with the deepest liquidity: Aster for crypto perpetuals, Hyperliquid for TradFi perpetuals on stocks, indices, commodities, and FX, Polymarket for prediction markets, and Collector Crypt for trading cards. Blackboard was blunt about what happens when that changes.

"Every one of them is trying to become a super app. Polymarket wants perpetuals, Hyperliquid wants prediction markets. But no exchange has good liquidity in every market," Blackboard said. "If Lighter's liquidity overtakes Hyperliquid, we connect to Lighter. That is how Blackboard works. The answer to 'why Blackboard instead of Hyperliquid' is that you get the best exchange at that moment."

Asked how users can trust a product that depends on other people's smart contracts, Blackboard pointed to that same structure. It never asks users to touch untested contracts of its own. Orders go to Tier-1 protocols with strict audits, deep liquidity, and a long track record, and Blackboard never has access to a user's private keys. On regulation, it said it intends to comply fully with local rules in every region where it operates.

Three Seconds

"A trader who logs into a platform decides in three seconds whether to use it. They decide on sight," Blackboard said. "Crypto natives will push through a hard interface. Ordinary users will not."

That is why Blackboard uses Privy for onboarding. A user signs in with Google or X and gets a wallet without ever seeing a seed phrase.

No Paid Users

Arai raised the growth question: good products die unknown, and the points-and-airdrop playbook that used to solve that is fading. Blackboard said it never planned to use it.

"We do not want to go to users and ask them to use the product. Build the brand, build a good team, and attract good crypto users first. They become the first people who spread it," Blackboard said. "We do not believe in bringing people in with incentives. Real organic users come first, and we see whether the product is good. Concentrated marketing comes after that stage, not before. Marketing is one form of communication, nothing more."

The interview closes with a line for readers: "Blackboard is not the first. But we will make it the best."

Blackboard × Aster Trading Competition

Alongside the interview, Crypto Times covered the first Blackboard × Aster Trading Competition. Trading runs from October 10, 00:00 UTC to November 10, 23:59 UTC on Aster perpetuals traded through Blackboard. Two rankings, Volume and PnL, share a prize pool that grows with participation up to $100,000. Rules, eligibility, and the live pool are posted on the event page.