Quant Trader and Kinetic Founder: Trading the Market is Like Playing Poker

Video Description

Financial markets are a game, says Grant Stenger. So how do you win in the financial markets? Grant, a former Jane Street intern and current crypto founder, believes markets are the most competitive game on earth—and he's been training to beat them since high school. From card counting in middle school to landing a hedge fund internship at QuantRes before university, Grant shares how a lifelong obsession with games, poker, and mathematical edge led him to build Kinetic—a decentralized crypto exchange and DEX aggregator on Solana trading millions of tokens. We talk about his quant trading internship experiences at QuantRes, Numerai (a crypto hedge fund), and Jane Street, and why he left it all to start his own crypto founder story building next-gen trading infrastructure. He breaks down: - His Jane Street internship experience and why they make you play Figgy - Why gambling and trading the market are similar - Poker and trading—and how poker is better prep than chess for decision making under uncertainty - Numerai’s bet-staking model and encrypted data thesis - How decentralized crypto exchanges actually make money - Trading on Solana vs Ethereum and why Solana is built for high-frequency crypto trading - Building a platform that can support 10 million tokens - Why being early in a new asset class gives you an edge—and how that edge resembles the one in gambling vs trading - And how he figured out how to get a hedge fund internship in high school We discuss the collapse of FTX, the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried, the risks of centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, and why trading isn’t just gambling—but a game of edge in both gambling and trading. #defi #cryptocurrency #trading #financialmarkets 00:00 Intro 01:05 – How to land a quant internship in high school 04:04 – Why Grant chose quant finance 06:05 – Meeting Numerai’s founder at a poker game 07:51 – How Numerai uses unlabeled data 10:34 – What it’s like to intern at Jane Street 12:26 – Why Jane Street traders play Figgy 13:56 – Poker vs chess 16:20 – Why he left quant jobs for crypto 19:49 – What is a DEX aggregator? explained 22:47 – Why Kinetic targets mid-level traders 25:28 – Where Kinetic’s volume comes from 27:12 – Does Kinetic trade its own data? 31:08 – How DEXs make money vs CEXs 33:51 – FTX collapse 37:10 – Be obsessed 38:29 – The book that changed his thinking 40:32 – How he recruits top engineering talent 43:02 – Will AI kill average white-collar jobs? 46:43 – Best career advice for students today