Aerodrome Finance (AERO) edged higher on Wednesday as Aerodrome and Velodrome are scheduled to merge into “Aero, with the CEO of their developer saying the goal was to “take on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ (NDAQ).”

Alexander Cutler, CEO of Dromos Labs, the team behind both protocols, said Aero wanted to do for spot trading what Hyperliquid (HYPE) did for derivatives. “Every derivative exchange needs a stock exchange. Every CME needs a New York stock exchange,” he said in an interview with Coinage published on Tuesday.

AERO’s price rose over 5% in the past 24 hours, paring back the 10% gains seen earlier on Tuesday. On Stocktwits, retail sentiment around AERO remained in the ‘bearish’ zone, while chatter stayed at…