AD Derivs: Insights from Crypto Option Traders

Wintermute is a leading proprietary trading crypto market maker. They provide liquidity solutions across the digital asset eco-system. They create liquidity on the world's best crypto exchanges and trading platforms. They  use algorithmic and high-frequency trading methods to create markets; centralized crypto exchanges, DeFi, spot, derivatives, ETPs They offer some of the most competitive pr...

The Crypto Volatility Index (CVI) is a decentralized VIX for crypto that allows users to efficiently trade market volatility without the directional risk of spot trading. Today we talk about the background of CVI and the recent V3 launch. Moshe and Yoni also chat about the technical protocol details behind CVI. CVI Documentation: https://docs.cvi.finance/ Twitter:  https://twitter.com/official_cvi...

Nick Forster is the co-founder of DeFi options protocol Lyra.  Before founding Lyra, Nick was an equity options trader at SIG.  Today we discuss Lyra's latest protocol launch, Lyra V2. V2 is a central limit order book style protocol. Lyra has it's own app-chain built on L2 stack Optimism.  Part of our discussion involves exploring Lyra's portfolio margin, liquidation engine and mech...

Artur Sepp is the head quant at family office, Clearstar Labs.  Here Artur has a focus on delta neutral strategies in DeFi markets and CeFi crypto volatility venues, such as Deribit. Artur has an extensive background in volatility trading and modeling for various firms including Bank of America and Julius Baer.  We talk about Artur's experience. His views on volatility trading and modeling. H...

SwapGlobal provides derivatives – swaps and options – to US digital asset investors and hedgers, such as hedge funds, family offices, private equity funds, and bitcoin miners. SwapGlobal plans to register as a standalone swap-dealer with the CFTC and SEC. Website: https://swapglobal.com/ Blog: https://swapglobal.com/insights Books:  "Zurich Axioms" by Max Gunther "Reminiscences of a...

Today we talk with DK and Tolga from DeFi Options protocol Premia.  Premia is now on their version 3 protocol release.  Their platform provides a broad tradable offering including orderbook, RFQ, AMM/Pool and vaults. Users also have the rare flexibility to "spin-up" new option pools.  We also explore DK and Tolga's backgrounds before jumping into crypto and building Premia.  Lastly,...

Born in Queens, New York, Terence An graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and spent the next six years as a trader at Hudson River Trading. After working on their more traditional US Equities HFT desk, he spent two years developing ultra-low latency strategies, situating him closer to the infrastructure, and ultimately sparking his interest in designing financial markets. Th...

Stephan Lutz is the CEO and CFO of BitMEX. He initially joined the company in 2021 as the CFO and was appointed as the group's CEO during late 2022 - one of crypto's most colourful periods. Stephan has been instrumental in driving the exchange's position as one of the crypto derivatives market leaders. It is under his direction that the decision was made for BitMEX to pivot back to...

Gordon is the managing director of sales and trading over at Genesis Trading. Genesis launched the first OTC bitcoin trading desk in 2013. Since then, has grown to facilitate hundreds of billions in annual transactions. Before joining Genesis Trading, Gordon was the director of derivatives at NWI, spending  a little over 8-years there. Gordon has vast experience trading volatility in various asset...

SOMA.Finance is a fully compliant DEX with AML/KYC infrastructure to allow users to both trade digital assets but also invest and launch new protocols/tokens.  Today we talk with Will Corkin, the co-founder of SOMA.Finance to discuss all the functionality of SOMA, the scheduled token launch and future roadmap.  Will also discusses his background and his career prior to SOMA.  For more information...

Simon Ho is the founder and CEO of T3 Index. T3 has created a competitor to the CBEO VIX index, known as the "Spike" index which is a volatility index derived from SPY options and currently traded on MIAX (Miami Stock Exchange) Simon has an extensive background in options trading. Before founding T3 Simon worked at JPM, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and  Deustsche Bank. Today we talk abou...

Thalex is a new derivatives exchange offering perpetuals, futures and future options on both BTC and ETH. Visit: https://www.thalex.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThalexGlobal Today we speak with Hendrik Ghys, one of the co-founders of Thalex Exchange.  We journey into Hendrik's career in Crypto, including his experience valuing Bitstamp for acquisition.  We talk about the economics of a c...

Panoptic is a new approach to DeFi options. We explore Guillaume's journey from Physics into DeFi Options, as well as his academic background.   We talk about protocol specifics, such as the embedded optionality of Uniswap V3 positions and how those can be translated into a DeFi option protocol. More about Panoptic: The Panoptic protocol enables the minting, trading, and market-making of perp...

Numoen is a new approach to DeFi options.  We talk about protocol specifics with co-founder, Kyle Scott. Numoen, an application for interacting with the Power Market Maker Protocol (PMMP), allows any user to hedge their Uniswap V3 LP position in three simple clicks.  PMMP is a suite of non-upgradable smart contracts that function without any trusted intermediaries. The protocol is designed for tak...

David Brickell is the Director of Institutional Sales at Paradigm, the RFQ block trading platform for crypto options.  We explore David's background as an economist and roles on the FX desks of various banks. We touch on his position at Lehman Brothers during the 2008 financial crisis.  David shares his current insights into the macro environment along with his ideas around BTC, ETH and crypt...

Joe Kruy is the head of institutional coverage at Paradigm.  Paradigm is a block-trading platform for crypto options, futures and perpetuals.  Paradigm executes nearly all of block-trades that are settled on Deribit.  Today we explore Joe's background at Deutsche Bank and J.P. Morgan in equity derivatives.  We also explore drivers of volume in the crypto options space along with a comparison...

Tommy Chen is the founder of Typus Finance. Typus is a DeFi Options protocol built on top of a new L1 blockchain called SUI. SUI and Typus will be going live to mainnet in May 2023. Tommy started his career working at a family office as an asset manager. Later, under the same family office, he began building OptiFi Labs a DeFi options protocol built on top of Solana. After the FTX crash, Tommy beg...

Laura has an extensive background in the crypto vol. space. She worked at LedgerX , then Paradigm and now LedgerPrime. Today we explore insights about crypto vol. and the different types of customers within each market segment. We also explore some of Laura's career insights. Twitter: https://twitter.com/VidiellaLaura

Pierino Ursone is the Head of Options over at Deribit, the worlds #1 crypto options exchange. Pierino started his career in the 90's as a market-maker at Optiver. After being a market-marker in the pits, Pierino managed a proprietary options book in the energy space. Pierino Ursone is also the author of the #4 best selling option book globally "How to Calculate Options Prices and Their G...

Delta Exchange is the second biggest Crypto Options exchange by volume and offers innovative derivatives products. It offers daily, weekly and monthly expiry in Bitcoin & Ethereum Options. Pankaj Balani (CEO/Co-founder of Delta Exchange), sits with us to chat about his background, the future of crypto Options markets, how to think through possible growth and retail demand for crypto Options. W...

TheRealMarty is a crypto vol. twitter OG.  Starting with right place at right time in terms of finding BTC (AKA price was low)  TheRealMarty went from nothing to learning about spot, TA, then Options (in that order) Art school drop out turned vol trader.  He worked a small fund 1-2 years before opening up his own. TheRealMarty now runs small boutique fund - specializing in selling options where he...

Arisa is the co-founder and CEO of Cega. Cega is building exotic options structured products for investors that generate superior yield and offer built-in protection against market downturns. Cega is developing new capabilities in tech, token contracts, and data modeling that will enable the next evolution of DeFi derivatives. Arisa was previously a derivatives trader at UBS and a product marketin...

Matt (AKA: Cryptarbitrage) is currently working on the risk and product team at Deribit. Matt also created Deribit's option education series over the past two years.  https://insights.deribit.com/options-course/ Today we chat with Matt about his previous experience in professional poker, sport betting arbitrage and crypto exchange arbs.  Twitter: https://twitter.com/cryptarbitrage

Samneet Chepal, CFA is a quant trader and analyst at Ledger Prime. Today we discuss Sam's journey into the markets and quantitative analysis. How did Sam find his way into a quant role versus a typical trading role and why did he end up being in crypto vol. We also explore some differences between market-making and buy side. For the report referenced in the podcast please click the link below...

Today we speak with Johannes, a professional proprietary trader in Europe.  We explore Johannes experience learning how to trade early in his career. We visit the crazy experiences he had in now defunct FX bucket-shops.  Johannes then explains his views and thoughts trading crypto futures spreads as well as his unique trading insights from experiences in traditional business.