AD Derivs: Insights from Crypto Option Traders

Simran is the co-founder and CEO of Monaco. Simran has a background trading volatility products at Goldman Sachs and GSR.About Monaco Building The Global Trading NetworkMonaco is a global trading network with programmatic revenue sharing at its core. Apps build on Monaco to access deep liquidity, a global network of traders, and a share of network revenue collected. The programmatic revenue share redistributes infrastructure trading fees back to front ends, traders, and market makers. This produces a unified layer of trust which aligns incentives across parties.https://www.0xmonaco.com/

Originally from New Zealand, Euan Sinclair is an option trader with twenty five years of professional trading experience and holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Bristol.He is the author of "Positional Trading", "Options Trading" and "Volatility Trading". This interview discusses his latest work "The Thetapig Letters"

In this episode, we sit down with Greg Guttas, Head of OTC, and Simon Nursey, Head of Derivatives at Flowdesk, to explore the evolution from traditional finance to crypto trading at one of the most sophisticated OTC desks in the space.Greg and Simon bring deep experience from major French banks—Greg specializing in ETF creation/redemption flow, and Simon having spent 17 years as Global Head of FX Options at BNP Paribas. They share war stories from the trading floor, explain complex mechanisms like in-kind vs cash redemptions, and unpack how FX vol surfaces were traded during pivotal global moments.For more information about Flowdesk visit: https://www.flowdesk.co/otc-trading/

Titan provides users with the best swap price by searching through Solana’s on-chain liquidity through trusted sources. It then deploys revolutionary routing algorithms based on cutting-edge mathematics to determine the best price a user can get when trading any token. Contact: [email protected]: https://titandex.io/App: https://app.titandex.io/welcome

Panoptic integrates with Uniswap v3 and v4, offering perpetual options on all assets available on one of the world's largest decentralized exchanges.Panoptic's Ethereum launch opens the platform to the public, unlocking new opportunities for LPs and traders to create calls, puts, perps, and advanced risk hedging positions on any digital asset on Uniswap.Panoptic is backed by Uniswap Labs Ventures and other industry leaders, including Greenfield Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Jane Street, and gumi Cryptos Capital (gCC).Links: https://linktr.ee/panopticxyz

Bulat Kaliev is the Chief Product Officer at BABB and ReDeFi. Bulat has an extensive background in crypto and follows the crypto AI space very closely. We chat about his views on the AI space as well as his roles as Chief Product Officer at both BABB and ReDeFi. BABB aims to deliver accessible, secure, convenient and cost-effective peer-to-peer mobile banking services.Regulated Decentralised Finance is an FCA-registered startup based in the UK, ReDeFi aims to disrupt the existing operational framework of moving assets by enhancing velocity, veracity of transactions, and security within a thoughtfully designed regulatory structure.ReDeFi is designed to be more accessible and affordable than traditional financial systems. Designed to be more transparent and accountable.

A pioneering cryptocurrency exchange known for its advanced trading features, BitMEX specializes in derivatives trading with up to 100x leverage through the creation of Perpetual contracts. Catering to professional traders, the platform offers perpetual swaps, futures contracts, and a robust API for high-frequency trading. Renowned for its liquidity and deep order books, BitMEX has become a key player in the crypto derivatives space.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 its successful origins, with an emphasis placed upon providing professional and institutional traders with a derivatives trading platform that caters to their key needs of liquidity, performance and reliability.Before BitMEX, he was a Senior Partner at PwC for close to a decade, where he advised many of the world's largest financial institutions. Prior to PwC, he held senior positions with Deutsche Börse. His career began in corporate finance and equities trading at Dresdner Bank AG (now Commerzbank AG). Stephan is married with twin boys and enjoys competing in dance in his leisure time.

The Pyth Network is an oracle solution built on Solana designed to provide real-time, high-quality financial market data to blockchain applications. Pyth aims to bring accurate pricing information, especially for fast-moving markets like crypto, equities, forex, and commodities, to decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on Solana and other blockchains via cross-chain protocols.Website: https://www.pyth.network/

Abra is a financial services and technology company that operates a cryptocurrency wallet service including a trading service for buying and selling cryptocurrencies, a service for earning interest on cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, and a lending services for borrowing against cryptocurrency collateral.Before heading the OTC options trading desk at Abra, Bohan spent years trading FX options at Goldman Sachs. We discuss Bohan's background as well as the various volatility trading insights he learned throughout the years. Today Bohan trades crypto options on a principle basis for Abra. Facilitating customer flow and warehousing risk on a proprietary basis. For more information about Abra visit: https://www.abra.com/

Brent Kochuba is the Founder of SpotGamma, a financial insights company, which applies its proprietary methodology toward modeling index and equity options.Prior to SpotGamma, Brent was most recently a portfolio manager with Seven North Capital Management where he focused on creating options-based investment strategies. Prior to that, he spent time as a derivatives broker at Wolverine Execution, Credit Suisse and Bank of America.Learn more about SpotGamma: https://spotgamma.com/Register for Trace Webinar: https://spotgamma.com/trace-the-market-amberdata-io/?aff=Amberdata

Jake Ostrovskis is a principal on Wintermute’s over-the-counter (OTC) Desk.Jake executes trades for a range of counterparties in digital assets and advising on products like spot, options, tailored products, CFDs, and NDFs. Before joining Wintermute, Jake worked at a hedge fund within a global macro pod, concentrating on chasing volatility in equity, rates, FX, and commodity derivatives. His position there eventually led him to crypto. He then transitioned from directional trading to OTC, executing with third parties at Wintermute.For more about Wintermute visit: https://www.wintermute.com/

ex-GSR OTC trader and exotic derivatives specialist, Neoman007 explores discussions about his career, crypto volatility and pricing insights for trading exotic derivs. To get more market insights, follow Neoman's Telegram channel: https://t.me/itscorrekt

Bitnomial was founded in 2014 to create a marketplace connecting native digital asset hedgers with institutional traders. Bitnomial offers improved derivatives exchange technology coupled with new digital asset settlement systems.NFA Approval: Bitnomial Clearing, LLC was approved as a futures commission merchant (FCM) by the National Futures Association (NFA) to operate a clearing firm for margined and deliverable digital asset futures and options.CFTC Approval: Bitnomial Clearinghouse, LLC was registered as a derivatives clearing organization (DCO) by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to operate a clearinghouse for margined and deliverable digital asset futures and options, becoming the first crypto-native exchange to be granted the full set of CFTC derivatives licenses.We discuss Michael's background as a bond market-maker at Allston Trading in Chicago. We also discuss the unique value Bitnomial presents to crypto miners and speculators. Including physically settled futures contracts.

SynFutures is a decentralized derivatives exchange platform that allows users to trade futures contracts based on various assets, including cryptocurrencies, altcoins, indices, NFTs, and real-world assets. The platform offers features such as 30-second asset listings, single-token liquidity provision and trading, and rigid risk management. SynFutures has strategic investors and aims to provide accessible DeFi services to retail investors.

Cannon Trading Company has been based in the Beverly Hills financial district since 1988. They are a member of the National Futures Association, the Better Business Bureau, the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce and are registered with the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). Cannon Trading has been mentioned in several publications, including the Online Broker's Review in Futures magazine and the Reader's Choice Award in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities magazine.

Bernd Sischka is the chief commercial officer at PowerTrade. Today we discuss the novel offering of altcoin options trading at PowerTrade and the various tools that PowerTrade offers to their traders. PowerTrade is transforming professional trading with innovative, accessible, and secure solutions for institutions and expert traders. Their dedication to excellence and continuous improvement fuels our pursuit of outstanding customer experiences and lasting partnerships. Website: https://power.trade/

About RhoRho provides efficient markets for crypto-native rates such as funding rates, lending-borrowing rates, and staking rewards. The platform enables users to hedge and profit from shifts in these crypto-native rates, offering tools to develop sophisticated trading strategies. With the traditional finance (TradFi) interest rate derivatives market totaling over $500 trillion in outstanding interest, Rho Protocol is poised to unlock new and exciting trading opportunities. Docs: https://docs.rho.trading/Platform: https://www.rho.trading/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rho_xyz

Today we interview Bret Kenwell, U.S. Investment & Options Analyst at eToro.We discuss Bret's background, the increased adoption of options trading by retail investors since the COVID-19 pandemic and the overlap between crypto investors and options traders.Finally we conclude the episode with insights around the future of crypto and options trading. For more information about eToro visit: https://www.etoro.com/en-us/

BitMEX has officially launched options. We discuss the recent launch and the collaboration with Power Trade.We explore the AltCoin offering from BitMEX and other unique option trading insights. To learn more about BitMEX options visit here: https://www.bitmex.com/options

Vertex is a cross-margined decentralized exchange (DEX) protocol offering spot, perpetuals, and an integrated money market bundled into one vertically integrated application on Arbitrum.Vertex is powered by a hybrid unified central limit order book (CLOB) and integrated automated market maker (AMM), whose liquidity is augmented as positions from pairwise LP markets populate the orderbook. Gas fees and MEV are minimized on Vertex due to the batched transaction and optimistic rollup model of the underlying Arbitrum layer two (L2), where Vertex’s smart contracts control the risk engine and core products.

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, ETPsThey offer some of the most competitive prices via OTC (automated RFQ and with direct trader support) to funds, institutional OTC desks, trading platforms, miners and other institutionsThey support listings and ongoing liquidity for high-potential crypto projects

dYdX is a leading decentralized exchange that currently supports perpetual trading. dYdX runs on smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, and allows users to trade with no intermediaries.Today we chat with Juliano, the founder and CEO of dYdX.We explore Juliano's background, the evolution of dYdX and the vision for dYdX V4. Website: https://dydx.exchange/

Hashflow is a DEX Aggregator that offers deep liquidity across the leading blockchains. Leveraging an intent-based Smart Order Routing (SOR) architecture, Hashflow offers traders the best prices, access to over $8B in liquidity, and the ability to trade every token both interchain and cross-chain. Since launching in April 2021, Hashflow has cleared over $18B in total trade volume. Today we meet with Varun Kumar, the Founder and CEO at Hashflow. We talk about Varun's background and how he developed Hashflow and came up with the idea for the concept. For more information about Hashflow: Website: https://www.hashflow.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/hashflowBlog: https://blog.hashflow.com/Docs: https://docs.hashflow.com/hashflow

Since 2014, CoinShares has been building the future of investing - creating Europe’s leading European digital assets investment firm and innovating the technology and infrastructure to enable access and power investment in the new digital economy.Today we interview Lewis Fellas, head of Hedge Fund Solutions at CoinShares. We explore Lewis's background, thoughts on the market and insights he's learned along the way. Website: https://coinshares.com/

Cboe is the world's go-to derivatives and exchange network, delivering cutting-edge trading, clearing and investment solutions to people around the world.Cboe Digital is a US regulated exchange and clearinghouse for crypto spot and crypto derivatives.John Palmer is the President of Cboe Digital. Today we chat about Cboe Digital's product offering, future roadmap and John's career and background. Twitter: https://twitter.com/cboedigital?lang=enWebsite: https://www.cboedigital.com/

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, ETPsThey offer some of the most competitive prices via OTC (automated RFQ and with direct trader support) to funds, institutional OTC desks, trading platforms, miners and other institutionsThey support listings and ongoing liquidity for high-potential crypto projects

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_cviApp: https://cvi.finance/

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 mechanics around the Lyra app-chain. To learn more about Lyra you can visit: https://www.lyra.finance/Twitter: https://twitter.com/lyrafinanceBlog: https://mirror.xyz/lyra.eth

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. How he found his way into crypto trading and some of his strategies. Recently written paper from Artur: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4606748Book RecommendationsEuan Sinclair Books:https://www.amazon.com/s?k=euan+sinclair&crid=32WQ8TRFF9P45&sprefix=euan+sin%2Caps%2C184&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_8Expected Returns: https://www.amazon.com/Expected-Returns-Investors-Harvesting-Rewards/dp/1119990726/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1B484LK3JJN5C&keywords=expected+returns&qid=1701806342&sprefix=expected+%2Caps%2C168&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.17d9e15d-4e43-4581-b373-0e5c1a776d5d

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/insightsBooks: "Zurich Axioms" by Max Gunther"Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefèvre and Edwin KLefevre

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, we close out with their favorite books.

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. The transition to DeFi protocol design was swift and now he runs Itos Finance, the first protocol to empower anyone with access to structured products entirely on chain. Itos is launching their testnet and raising a seed round in September 2023. In his spare time Terence likes to climb, cycle, reattempt his topology textbook, and when possible he spends time living abroad. However, his favorite pastime is of course displacing traditional finance.For more information about Itos visit: https://www.itos.fi/Twitter: https://twitter.com/itos_fi

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 its successful origins, with an emphasis placed upon providing professional and institutional traders with a derivatives trading platform that caters to their key needs of liquidity, performance and reliability.Before BitMEX, he was a Senior Partner at PwC for close to a decade, where he advised many of the world's largest financial institutions. Prior to PwC, he held senior positions with Deutsche Börse. His career began in corporate finance and equities trading at Dresdner Bank AG (now Commerzbank AG). Stephan is married with twin boys and enjoys competing in dance in his leisure time.

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 classes and macro environments. Today we talk about Gordon's background, option pricing nuances and the current crypto volatility landscape. Gordon's Book Picks:1) The Market Wizards2) Investment Biker3) The man who solved the marketLinkedInGordon Grant

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 visit: https://www.soma.finance/about-us

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 about Simon's experience as a trader, founder and developments around T3's Bitcoin volatility index, known as "BitVol". To learn more about T3 visit: https://t3index.com/

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/ThalexGlobalToday 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 crypto exchange as well as the option like pay-off this type business implicitly resembles. We chat about the features that Thalex offers, such as "delta-one rolls" and how this type of innovation can create liquidity. We also discuss the crypto vol. landscape and some of the players in the space.

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 perpetual put and call options. All smart contracts are available 24/7 and users can interact with the Panoptic protocol without the need for intermediaries like banks, brokerage firms, clearinghouses, market makers, or centralized exchanges.Website: https://panoptic.xyz/Twitter: https://twitter.com/panoptic_xyzDocs: https://panoptic.xyz/docs/intro

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 taking two underlying assets and creating a derivative asset with constant leverage, referred to as "Power Tokens". As a fully autonomous protocol, there are no admin functions and zero external dependencies.Twitter: https://twitter.com/numoen Docs: https://docs.numoen.com/Website: https://www.numoen.com/

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 crypto vol.

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 to traditional options trading funds and strategies. Joe's book recommendation is Option Volatility and Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and TechniquesBy Sheldon NatenbergTwitter: https://twitter.com/jkruy26

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 began to built Typus Finance. Twitter: https://twitter.com/TypusFinanceMedium: https://medium.com/@TypusFinance Website: https://typus.finance/

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 Greeks" published by Wiley.Today we talk about Pierino's career background then dig into Deribit's launch of DVOL futures. You can learn more about Pierino Ursone here:Deribit - DVOL Contract SpecificationsDVOL White PaperLinkedInTwitter"How to Calculate Options Prices and Their Greeks"

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.Website: https://www.delta.exchange/Twitter: https://twitter.com/Delta_Exchange

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 hetrades mostly on deribit(options)/bitmex(futures)

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 marketing manager at Google. She is an advisor to the Japan Blockchain Association.JP is CIO of Tras Mobian, a crypto derivatives market making firm. JP was previously a derivatives trader at various large traditional finance institutions, specifically on Equity exotic derivatives and Commodity derivatives. He was heading Commodity Index Trading at Societe Generale.

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 Report: Link Here Twitter: https://twitter.com/samchepal

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.