Flipster’s bold move in the crypto derivatives space: Q&A with head of product Youngsun Shin

Fresh from the bustling floors of Paris Blockchain Week 2025—held beneath the historic glass pyramid of the Carrousel du Louvre—we caught up with Youngsun Shin, Head of Product at Flipster. Flipster is a fast-growing derivatives exchange gaining popularity for its user-centric approach, zero trading fees, and innovative tools tailored for the modern trader. In an interview with Cryptopolitan, Shin shares his journey into Web3, the inner workings of the Flipster derivatives exchange , and the future of trading in an increasingly volatile market. Getting into Web3 and the inspiration behind Flipster Q: What markets are you in at the moment? A: We’re in many markets outside of restricted regions. Since we don’t have much presence in certain regions, we want to increase our footprint and awareness globally. Q: If we could go back a little bit, talk to us about your background, when you started in the crypto industry, and what led you to Flipster. A: I joined two years ago when Flipster rebranded and had zero users. We set up a product team to innovate the space, and we wanted to approach trading differently. So that was the motivation. Before Flipster, I was originally a tech guy, working as an operations manager at Uber and later as a product manager at Uber Eats. I worked in multiple offices, including the Seoul office, and then moved to the San Francisco office. After that, I moved to Coupang, which is basically a South Korean Amazon. I worked there as a senior product owner, overseeing the paid membership team. I’m a very community-oriented, so I like to meet people and socialize. I also created some communities and hosted events even before crypto. That led me to be a super active voice in the clubhouse. During the clubhouse days, NFT and crypto was a thing in those rooms. So I kind of got exposed to a lot of the NFT rooms and fell in love with the NFT and the community park. So I started to buy NFTs, and that led me to become interested in building products in the crypto space. So, I joined Origin Protocol as an NFT product manager. I also hosted one of the largest NFT events in South Korea. Q: What was the idea behind Flipster? A: The Flipster founders have a background in quant trading, system trading. As traders, they wanted to create something superior to what’s in the market. They tried different approaches to the market, and Flipster is the latest version of that. Flipster’s unique selling points Q: What sets you apart? How is your product better than Binance, etc.? A: We are focused on PERP offerings. We’re much easier and more convenient to trade with. Our app offers fewer steps for you to get exposed to a position, and it’s the fastest platform you’ll have access to. We also provide traders with a good amount of contextual information. We embed different types of news and economic numbers into our app for people to see and act upon. One key feature we recently launched is a time-trigger order. The time trigger order allows you to trigger an order not based on price. We allow users to trigger an order at a specific moment or a few moments before, so that they are safely in that position. We’re doing this to think from a very user-centric mindset. A lot of the trading apps that exist now look the same from a product perspective. And they offer pretty much similar offerings to everyone. They only compete through listings and probably sales. But we approach it from a product perspective. There’s much more room in the space for retail crypto traders to utilize the market. We want to be a trading app where you get the right information and can trade easily and conveniently. We provide them with competitive pricing, which means that we have zero fees. Q: You mentioned that you have unique tools available to traders and give traders information flow, which you don’t get with other trading platforms. What sort of traders are your sweet spot? Are they entry-level retail traders, institutional-level traders, or very advanced traders? A: We don’t serve institutions because we don’t provide APIs. Our app is more of a retail app. We don’t offer any on-off ramp services. Interested traders need to be already knowledgeable about crypto to some extent. If they are, then they are in a very good spot to come and trade on our platform. We have a much better reward scheme and incentive earn campaign that allows them to earn a yield off their USDT balance while trading. Tips for navigating the volatile crypto market Q: What’s your advice to traders under the current market conditions? And what do you think is the future of the crypto market from a trading perspective? A: Number one, we’re all humans, so it will be very hard to keep your principles very tight, but what’s very important is to keep that. And number two, markets change drastically over cycles. Hold your crypto, and it will give you another chance to exit. I’m not sure if that’s the case for this cycle. This market has so much volatility that you either buy Bitcoin or other major tokens and forget about them for three years—the market comes back, and you’ll earn off. Or know your risk appetite because there’s too much volatility if you put it on a longer horizon, and you’re exposed to a higher liquidation risk. Navigating Flipster and plans for market expansion Q: You mentioned that you don’t charge fees. How do you generate revenue? How are you able to offer zero-fee trading? A: Much of our revenue comes from the spread between the best bid and offer. Traditional exchanges earn from spread and transaction fees; we do not charge transaction fees. Q: Exchanges are all about trust. How solidly can you provide these services and guarantee users’ assets to some degree? There have been many problems with this over the years, and we recently saw the Bybit hack. What do you guys do in terms of security to make sure user funds are safe? A: We are very serious about user safety and security and take all the measures possible to ensure that all the funds are kept safe. We use proof of reserves and refresh it very frequently to showcase how our funds are managed. We have also gone through ISO certification to ensure that our security measures comply with top industry standards. We also do security checks very frequently. We increase our security features constantly to ensure you can trust and use our platform. We’re just doing our best, and it’s shown on our website that we have certifications on security measures, proof of reserves, history, and trajectory to getting there. Q: What leverage can users access on positions? And how does that compare to the other exchanges out there? It depends on Symbol. For Bitcoin, we provide up to 100X. What’s different from most exchanges is that, up to a maximum position for certain positions, we ensure those orders are filled as soon as you put the order in. That’s different from having to fill the book, as you will have a slippage if the book is empty or sparse. We will ensure that the best offer or best bid price meets your maximum position size. Q: And how many users do you have? A: We have 1,000,000 registered users, and we’re rapidly growing. Q: What are the key markets you wanna get into? A: I wouldn’t say we have a key designated regional market. We have a key designated segment. People with ample funds to invest or trade with leverage and are knowledgeable about the crypto space are the segment we’re looking for because they have to deposit through on-chain transactions. These segments where they are frequently trading and have a pretty good risk appetite are the segments that we want to target, not only in certain regions but globally. Q: Anything else you wanna you want to add? Flipster will constantly provide users with benefits, convenience, and a better user experience. So, look out for our new features. I’m pretty sure that two years from now, we will be up there with the major players in the exchange space.

Source: Cryptopolitan