A Tale of Two Halves: From Music and Medicine to Market Making Laurent Benayoun, CEO

The violin: the emblem of my adolescence

I was born in France to immigrant parents—who fled their country of origin in what was a matter of life or death. Their experience shaped my childhood decisions. I played the violin because it’s an instrument you can carry. If my parents were living proof of anything, it’s that you never know when you’ll need to run, and the only thing you can carry with you when leaving everything behind is your knowledge and degrees.

The violin ended up saving me. It got me out of dodgy neighborhoods and helped me escape what could have been a grimmer future. I instead dedicated myself to the violin, participating in a dual curriculum at Conservatory in France in conjunction with a scientific path in school. It was with the violin that I experienced a defining moment. 

I had a professor who, just minutes before my final exam—a 45-minute recital in front of a public and external jury—told me that I wasn’t ready and that I didn’t belong in the world of music. I had two choices: either I went on stage, taking the risk of being humiliated in front of everyone I knew but potentially finishing the degree, or I refused to go on to avoid risking humiliation and give up finishing a 12 year long program.

It was the first time in my life where I clearly saw two paths in front of me.

I chose to go on stage. I played. I felt my professor’s gaze on my elbows and wrists. But I kept playing through to the end. That day I got the first prize. This experience taught me not to listen to critics, a characteristic that served me ever since.

During my undergrad in the US, I completed two degrees and the pre-med track in three years instead of four. My pre-med advisor told me that my decision to double up on summer classes would ruin my GPA. I recall until this day the surprise he wore on his face when I told him that I finished the courses with four A grades.

My entry to crypto: pure serendipity

One of these courses was an applied math course. The professor opened the class by saying some financial market behaviors could be modeled using the movement of a grain of pollen in a glass of water, also known as the theory of Brownian motion. This fascinated me and I started looking into finance.

Further research on financial markets revealed participation friction points, such as the need for a brokerage account and a social security number, not to mention added costs for data. It was then that I remembered reading about Bitcoin in a free  journal when taking the subway in Paris the year prior. I saw that there was a market for it that did not exhibit the same friction points as markets for other asset classes. The discovery of crypto markets was serendipity in its purest sense.

After completing my undergrad, I found a job at a crypto company, where I was essentially trading manually and where I had the fortune of meeting Shi (Tom) Qiu, with whom I co-founded HedgeTech.

In the early days of HedgeTech, I saw crypto as a stepping stone to TradFi. At that time, we were market making in crypto as a way to generate some income while trying to find alpha in order to set up a fund in TradFi. In truth, I was constantly telling Tom “We have to exit the crypto markets. The perception is so bad.” 

That was until I read the Ethereum whitepaper. It made me realize that I had been in the right place all along. The work I had been doing was, in a sense, participating in the adoption of an asset class that aimed at solving my own problems—the ones that had blighted my family throughout my childhood, and that I was facing as a foreigner. That felt very meaningful to me.

HedgeTech becomes part of Acheron Trading in perfect symbiosis

What brought me to Acheron Trading, in the most literal sense, was the acquisition of HedgeTech in 2022. The acquisition itself was the result of a combination of factors, notably the many synergies between the two companies and my deep alignment with founder Wesley Pryor’s vision. It was very natural for us to team up to face a forthcoming bear market together. 

At Acheron Trading, my job is mostly thinking and strategizing, anticipating problems, and bringing forward solutions. For example, back when Wes was still CEO, I helped him prepare for a very important negotiation he had coming up. By strengthening our position and anticipating the rebuttals, we were able to achieve a deal that was 80% in favor of Acheron, when the expectation was originally 20%. Always being one step ahead is core to everything I do in both my professional and personal life.

When Wes later appointed me as CEO of Acheron Trading, he told me it was because: “When people tell you that you can’t do it, you need to see by yourself” and “you can motivate people by sharing your life experiences”. My decision to get on the recital stage those many years ago truly forged who I am today.

My meaning and purpose within crypto 

Acheron Trading is bringing transparency to the digital asset market making landscape, fostering a healthier crypto market, and in turn, participating in the advancement of an industry that I see as solving the problems my family and I have faced throughout life.

We learned the hard way that, in the traditional world, you’re at the mercy of centralized entities. The beauty of crypto is that it is trustless and decentralized in nature, meaning it enables people rather than locking them and taking agency from them.

Working in crypto every day gives me a strong sense of purpose and I feel that I truly am in the right place.

As much as I possibly can, I want to help others find their sense of purpose. That’s why I’ve been committed to educating and empowering students through initiatives such as speaking at universities like Princeton or participating as a mentor in Harvard’s Blockchain Accelerator Program.

I make an effort to share knowledge because the information might be valuable to someone else. In those talks, I also touch on my testing background, because it may give people the hope they need to persevere when the chips are down.