Interview: Yellow’s Alexis Sirkia warns crypto’s biggest risk lies beyond regulation

As regulators move to bring crypto derivatives onshore and institutional participation accelerates, one of the industry’s biggest unresolved risks remains largely hidden in plain sight: market structure.

While much of the conversation has focused on product innovation and regulation, the infrastructure underpinning digital asset trading, particularly clearing and settlement, has yet to mature at the same pace.

In this exclusive interview with Invezz, Alexis Sirkia, Chairman and Co-Founder of Yellow, argues that crypto’s next major challenge is not demand, liquidity, or even regulation; it is building the market plumbing required to support institutional-scale growth safely.

Drawing on his experience leading institutional flow at one of crypto’s largest market makers, Sirkia explains why the industry’s reliance on vertically integrated exchanges creates systemic risks, and why independent clearing could become crypto’s next major infrastructure battleground.

He also outlines what decentralized settlement must look like before major institutions like Goldman Sachs or Citadel Securities are willing to participate.

From offshore perpetuals to cross-chain settlement, he lays out what crypto must fix before it can truly scale.

Excerpts:

Invezz: You ran institutional flow at one of crypto's largest market makers. What did you see from that seat that convinced you the clearing layer was the most dangerous gap in this market?

Alexis Sirkia: At GSR, I could see how quickly crypto was growing without the supporting layers that more mature markets rely on.

There was no shortage of activity, no shortage of liquidity, and certainly no shortage of demand.

But the further institutional flow moved through the market, the more obvious it became that too many core functions were still sitting too close together.

When execution, custody, collateral management, and clearing are concentrated in the same venues, the market may look efficient on the way up, but it leaves a great deal unresolved when volatility rises and counterparties need confidence in the structure underneath them.

Invezz: $14 trillion in offshore perps is about to be pushed onshore by regulation. Is the industry actually ready, or are we launching regulated products on completely unregulated plumbing?

Alexis Sirkia: Bringing offshore perpetuals onshore may solve part of the regulatory problem, but it does not automatically solve the clearing problem.

Regulated products are arriving faster than bank-grade clearing, netting, and settlement safeguards are being built around them.

Ideally, offshore investments would arrive with a stable vetting process in place.

The fix is independent clearing, segregated collateral, and settlement discipline that does not rely on a single venue's solvency.

Until that work is done, regulated perpetuals are going to look very safe right up until the first stress event, and very different the day after.

Invezz: $285 million gone in 12 minutes after a six-month insider infiltration. What does the Drift attack specifically reveal about platforms that act as their own clearing house?

Alexis Sirkia: The Drift attack perfectly highlights the flaws in much of the existing legacy regulation.

When the same system is expected to manage execution, collateral, risk controls, and emergency intervention, and no third party is present, money will start disappearing.

In any case, this reveals that there is a lack of regulation that is hurting the credibility of the crypto industry.

The same attack on a market with proper separation between trading and clearing would have looked very different.

The execution venue might have been compromised, but the clearing layer would have caught the abnormal flow.

That’s because it sits at a different operational layer, run by a different entity, with a different risk posture and different authorization surface.

That is the entire point of separating the two functions in regulated markets, and it is the layer that crypto has historically refused to build.

Invezz: TradFi deliberately separates trading from clearing to contain contagion — crypto collapsed those two functions into one. How many platforms today are sitting on risk that their own users don't understand?

Alexis Sirkia: A lot of companies are operating at risk because that’s how they were originally introduced to the industry.

They voluntarily adhere to a “high-risk / high-reward” philosophy because it's  how so many people in the industry operate, and it all looks “normal”.

In traditional finance, the separation exists because it slows contagion, forces risk into view, and prevents one venue from becoming judge, custodian, and counterparty all at once.

For example, one spotlight overseeing the custodianship of an entire prison courtyard is not able to regulate over 400 individuals.

The same case is valid under crypto: legislators cannot rely on smart contracts when government officials in the United States themselves are unable to keep up with the advancements in hack technology across the globe.

Invezz: You're building cross-chain settlement without bridges. That sounds elegant, but what new attack surface does your architecture introduce in place of the one you're removing?

Alexis Sirkia: In Yellow’s case, the architecture is built around state channels, where funds are locked in smart contracts on-chain, signed state updates are exchanged off-chain, and settlement or disputes return on-chain only when needed.

That means the main design considerations shift toward channel operation itself: locked liquidity, challenge-response requirements, and the need for participants to remain responsive during the challenge period.

Invezz: Banks and trading desks won't touch infrastructure they can't audit or insure. What does decentralized clearing need to look like before a Goldman or Citadel actually uses it?

Alexis Sirkia: For major institutions like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, decentralized clearing has to look less like a crypto experiment and more like market infrastructure.

That starts with transparency they can actually audit, control frameworks they can map to existing risk processes, and legal certainty around what happens when a trade fails, a counterparty defaults, or a dispute needs to be resolved.

Firms at that level are not going to rely on architecture they cannot examine, monitor, or operationally challenge in real time.

Citadel Securities publicly supports central clearing and trading requirements in OTC derivatives because they reduce interconnectedness and systemic risk, while the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation frames its own digital-asset work around security, soundness, and investor protections.

Invezz: CME, Binance, and OKX all monetise the clearing function you're trying to commoditise. How do you build critical market infrastructure when the most powerful players have a direct incentive to block it?

Alexis Sirkia: CME, Binance, and OKX all have clear commercial reasons to preserve the clearing function within their own venues, whether through formal clearing services or through the collateral, liquidation, and fee structures that underpin their derivatives businesses.

If independent clearing can offer a cleaner separation between execution and exposure, stronger settlement discipline, and less reliance on concentrated venues, then it becomes commercially relevant in a way participants cannot easily ignore.

As more volume moves onshore and exchanges prepare for US perpetual futures, the conversation is likely to shift away from product access and toward the quality of the structure underneath it, which is precisely where new infrastructure becomes hardest to dismiss.