Web3 with Sam Kamani
353: How to win DeFi on Hyperliquid with guest speaker João Nuno Simões from Hyperwave
30 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello innovators, entrepreneurs and risk takers.
Chapter 2: What inspired João Nuno Simões to enter the crypto space?
Welcome to another episode of Web3 with Sam Kamani podcast. And today on this podcast episode, I am interviewing a good friend of mine. His name is Joao and he is... today representing hyperwave he has been a true builder at heart he has built multiple startups exited multiple times as far as i know and also he is always at every single major crypto event
and he is one of the best bds that you can find currently in web3 he is someone who that every sales person should learn about and this what this is something that we do talk about in this conversation along with we talk about the whole hyper liquid ecosystem about what is hyper way what problem they are solving why they are needed
and what is going on overall in the web3 space in the crypto and the blockchain space and why and how he sees the whole industry and why is he even so so positive or bullish so let's get into this conversation as always nothing that we talk about here should be taken as investment advice and as always please like share subscribe and follow
Chapter 3: Why has Hyperliquid succeeded where others have failed?
With all that out of the way, let's get into it. Welcome to the show. It is an absolute pleasure and an honor to have you back. And I always, even though I've known you for a very long time, I love catching up with you as always.
But for some of our audience who might not know you as well, can you tell us a bit about your history from like your, just your founder history and how did you get involved with Hyperwave?
Chapter 4: What innovative solutions is Hyperwave building in the DeFi space?
Absolutely, absolutely. So I always like to take a step back and like really explain a little bit of the story and why we are here, why this matters, right? So taking a step back, I actually started getting involved in crypto in 2013 by starting to browse in a forum called Bitcoin.com. Talk, which was the first forum for Bitcoin at the time.
Chapter 5: How do Hyperwave vaults deliver stable yields?
And at the time, I was really curious and long, long story short, I opened the first Bitcoin mining company in Portugal at that time. I ran that venture for
Chapter 6: What role does community play in the success of Hyperliquid?
couple of years until 2017 in 2017 was when the first big mining companies in china started appearing and the mining difficulty went up the prices went all up and we pretty much stopped making money in 2017 ish
So I sold the company at that time, moved to London, was doing my bachelor's at the time in management, worked in Web2, then moved to the US, did my master's at UC Berkeley in finance and started working for a venture fund there, discovered back crypto, DeFi. And then I was like, OK, this is so cool. I love being at a VC, working in crypto. Then COVID came.
COVID came, came back to Europe, work a little bit in private equity until a friend of mine. So I started also doing a lot of public talks and podcasts like this.
Chapter 7: What trends are shaping the Web3 event landscape?
And one day a friend of mine came to me, this was early 2023 and said, have you heard about risk-taking? Have you heard about Eigen layer? And I was like, what is that? And he sent me the paper about EigenLay. I read it. I became instantly hooked. Long story short, I was one of the founders of Inception LRP, which was one of the first restaking companies.
This is how I got introduced to staking and restaking back a couple of years. And with Inception, throughout a couple of years, I fundraised with a company from zero to 3.5 million fundraise, build a company from four people to more than 30 employees in about two years.
Chapter 8: What is João's outlook on crypto markets for 2026?
And later last year, we sold to MEV Capital as a very successful exit. And this was early 2025. After that, I worked with a couple companies here and there. They did some advisory, also did some investments here and there as an angel.
And mid of last year, the founder of Swell actually heard about my exit from Inception and called me up and said like, hey, I heard that you did like a very successful exit and like, You are super OG in BTC, you work in VC, you know very well the space for staking, restaking. Like we are starting the first DeFi company on HyperLiquid, which is soon to be HyperWave.
And we really want a strong founder, strong partner to build with us from scratch and really make this as a billion dollar company. And not only that, but of course, to continue to grow Swell, to continue to grow all our initiatives online.
And for me, that perfectly made sense, you know, and when I, and I saw these founders and these people, this amazing team, and I was like, okay, I was on vacation, but apparently I'm not anymore. And I signed with these guys and I've been working with them since June.
last year so about seven ish months months now and it's been super super super good and we've been growing hyperwave then continue to maintain and grow swell we have two new projects actually that i can already chill a little bit here ignition on fogo which actually launched yesterday
24 hours ago, we launched the first DeFi company on FOGO named Ignition, which is something that we are super, super proud of. And we are also building an AI trading tool named Voyager. So there is four products that right now that we are really building Swell, Hyperwave, Ignition and Voyager. But we are here today to talk about Hyperwave. Why Hyperwave? Because at this
moment you see that hyperliquid is something that is growing and growing and growing and there is more and more people interested and more and more people that care about hyperliquid because is really something that moves the community moves the ogs moves the founders moves the type of community that at least from my experience i only saw in like early eth or early btc days you know and
Because of that, we thought that it is really important to have a place where people that are involved on HyperLiquid can use their hype token and other tokens on HyperLiquid that can then use it on DeFi and earn yields. This was the first kind of base that why we started building HyperWave.
Before we get into Hyperwave, I would love to talk a bit about Hyperliquid. In your point of view, why do you think Hyperliquid has been so successful when so many other projects have not been in the last two, three years, you know, since 2010?
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