QFEX

Executive Summary

QFEX is a YC-backed (X25) seed-stage startup building a 24/7 brokerless perpetual futures exchange for US equities, commodities, and FX — a genuinely compelling concept that applies crypto's most successful trading instrument to traditional assets. The market timing thesis is well-supported: perpetual futures already move $1.2 trillion monthly in crypto, NYSE and 24X received SEC approval for near-24-hour equity trading in 2024-2025, and no regulated US venue currently offers this product. The founding team — a Tower Research quant paired with a Citadel engineer, both Cambridge mathematicians — is about as credible a founding pair as you could construct for this problem. The single biggest risk, however, is not competitive but existential: in November 2025, the Bermuda Monetary Authority issued a formal Public Warning against QFEX Bermuda Limited for falsely claiming to hold a BMA licence in its Terms and Conditions — a documented case of regulatory misrepresentation that, combined with the complete absence of any SEC, CFTC, or FINRA registration for a product that sits squarely in their jurisdiction, makes this effectively uninvestable until the regulatory situation is transparently resolved.