Interview with Ran Hammer, CEO of Orbs

'Korea wants perps too — balanced regulation with safeguards needed'

Ran Hammer, CEO of Orbs, speaks in an interview at Korea Blockchain Week held at Walkerhill Hotel in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday. [KBW]
Ran Hammer, CEO of Orbs, speaks in an interview at Korea Blockchain Week held at Walkerhill Hotel in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday. [KBW]

"There is no need to pull investors away from centralized exchanges and push them into DeFi. Instead, exchanges should integrate on-chain finance on the back end."

Ran Hammer, CEO of Orbs, made the remarks in an interview at Korea Blockchain Week, held Wednesday at Walkerhill Hotel in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul. Orbs is a project that provides order-execution and liquidity-connection infrastructure for on-chain trading — including spot and perpetual futures — built on its own blockchain network.

Hammer said Korean investors still trade and hold assets primarily through centralized exchanges such as Upbit and Bithumb, and there is no need to change that. Rather than moving users directly into decentralized finance, he said, the more practical path to mainstream adoption is making on-chain finance accessible from within existing exchanges.

"The best approach is for exchanges like Upbit, Bithumb, DigiFinex and Coinone to have Web3 wallets and be able to interact with on-chain liquidity," he said. "Spot and perpetual futures trading do not need to compete — they should be available in the same place." He added that in the future, users will be able to keep funds at an exchange or bank while simultaneously accessing on-chain finance.

Orbs' own experience in the domestic staking market reinforced that view. Hammer said the biggest growth in Orbs token staking this year came through Bithumb. While staking directly on-chain can yield higher returns, users chose the exchange for its convenient interface.

"Users prefer staking through Bithumb because the interface is easy and familiar," he said. "I think interaction with DeFi will happen the same way."

Hammer also said the DeFi market itself has entered a different phase from its earlier days. Whereas the 2020–2021 DeFi boom was characterized by retail investors chasing high yields through wallets like MetaMask, the market is now shifting toward trading and payment infrastructure used by professional investors and institutions.

Orbs is adjusting its business strategy accordingly, moving from a retail focus to an institutional one. The company has worked with roughly 35 decentralized exchanges — including PancakeSwap and SushiSwap — providing on-chain order-execution technology. Hammer said the company plans to focus on expanding application programming interface and software development kit integrations targeting professional investors and institutions.

Since unveiling a trading system aimed at corporations and institutional investors in June, Orbs has been in talks with institutions, custodians and infrastructure providers. "Market reception has been very positive and we are in discussions with multiple institutions and service providers," Hammer said, while noting that institutional sales cycles operate on a completely different timeline. "In DeFi, three months is a long time. In banking, it is very short."

He expects institutional entry into on-chain finance to unfold in stages — a kind of pyramid structure starting with Bitcoin holdings, then stablecoin use, cross-border remittances, stablecoin-to-stablecoin swaps, and eventually full on-chain trading.

"Many institutions already hold Bitcoin, and the next step is using stablecoins," Hammer said. "Once exchanges between USDC and USDT begin — or eventually trades between a Korean won stablecoin and USDC — the space where Orbs can play a role grows larger."

He sees the perpetual futures market in particular as a key driver of broader on-chain adoption. However, given the significant risks involved — including leverage and liquidation — he said the right approach is not to block access across the board, but to strengthen investor education and disclosure.

On the domestic regulatory environment, he said neither treating everything as illegal nor permitting everything without restriction is desirable. "What is needed is balanced regulation that protects user assets with proper safeguards while still allowing market participants to grow," he said.


kyoung@heraldcorp.com