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, ETP…

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://dy…

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…

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 backgr…

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…

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, ETP…

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.f…

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 mar…

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 …

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" …

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 cryp…

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 sparki…

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 wa…

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 va…

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 …

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…

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 acqu…

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 …

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 …

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 alo…

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 cryp…

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 buil…

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…

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 …

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 …

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 …

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: htt…

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 referenc…

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 experience…

Live on the Ethereum, Polygon, and Arbitrum, Volmex provides traders with the opportunity to directly trade an implied volatility index for BTC and ETH. Today we chat with Cole Konnelly, the founder of Volmex, about his background and journey into building the first on-chain tradable volatility index. For more information Visit: Website: https://vo…

Power Trade is a crypto options exchange. They provide a mobile experience for traders. Up and coming in the crypto vol. scene they just had a record month for volumes in Oct. 2022 Mario walks us through his background before starting Power Trade. We then talk about Power Trade's exchange mechanics and how the crypto options market is evolving, inc…

Rysk Finance is a new type of DOV "DeFi option Vault" that goes beyond simple strategies to enable delta hedged volatility exposure. We talk with Dan and Degeneral DeFi about their protocol as well as the careers before building Rysk. From more information visit: https://www.rysk.finance/ Twitter: @ ryskfinance If you're interested in joining the R…

GSR has nine years of deep crypto market expertise as a market maker, ecosystem partner, asset manager, and active, multi-stage investor. GSR sources and provides spot and non-linear liquidity in digital assets for token issuers, institutional investors, miners, and leading cryptocurrency exchanges. Chris walks us through his journey as a young tra…

Hook is a new NFT-native options protocol. In their most basic form, call options represent the right (but not the obligation) to purchase a specific underlying asset at some time in the future. The Hook protocol implements a version of these call options concept applicable to NFTs, ultimately allowing option sellers to earn premiums by selling som…

Opyn is a defi options protocol that went live on mainnet in Q1 2020. After building initial DeFi option primitives on Ethereum, Opyn later created the first DeFi power-perpetual known as "Squeeth". Joe Clark, a major contributor to "Squeeth", enlightens listeners on the mechanical details of "Squeeth" as well as underlying theoretical pricing. We …

Pattern Research is a market-making firm across both CeFi and DeFi in the crypto option space. We talk about Akshai's and Reid's backgrounds, how they made the switch into crypto vol. and where they see the market now. Both Akshai and Reid have backgrounds trading for DRW in Chicago.By Greg Magadini

Deribit is the world’s biggest crypto options exchange by volume, accounting for around 90% of the open interest for Bitcoin and Ethereum options With its proprietary matching engine, Deribit is one of the most technically advanced crypto derivatives exchanges with co-location services in Equinix LD4 and sub-millisecond order RTTs. Shaun Fernando h…

Krupa Sagar and Bhargav Kacharla are two of the co-founders of DeFi Options Protocol Oddz. We talk about the mechanics behind Oddz protocol, their individual backgrounds before co-founding Oddz and the future developments of Oddz protocol. We also touch on unique insights into the Indian derivatives markets.…

Hao Yang heads the options product division at CeFi exchange Bybit. We chat about Hao's background in trading and crypto before joining Bybit, some of the innovation behind Bybit's options offering and finally future roadmaps for Bybit. For more information about Bybit and Bybit Options visit: https://www.bybit.com/…

Julien is co-founder of Orca Traders. Orca originated as an options market maker on Deribit in 2017 and evolved into a fully-fledged prop shop. We chat about the evolution of the crypto vol. surface, Julien's days as an electricity trader and the future of his trading operations.By Greg Magadini

Sean McNulty helps run the OTC crypto options desk at Coinhako. We talk about his role at Coinhako, his previous background trading options at JP Morgan and how Sean sees crypto volatility versus other asset classes. Founded in 2014 by Singapore entrepreneurs, Coinhako was created with a simple value proposition – to create a simple and hassle-free…

Josh Lim, who recently left GT to focus on building something new in the crypto space, spent years as the head of derivatives trading. Genesis Trading is known for a massive OTC trading desk and lending window. Josh explains his views on the crypto vol. space, crowded trades in 2022 and touches on the May 2022 market implosion.…

Ribbon Finance is a DeFi Options Vault built on Ethereum, Avax and Solana. Ribbon is the pioneer of DeFi Option Vaults. Julian talks about his background before starting Ribbon Finance, his journey through the various auction process iterations and the future of Ribbon Finance. For more information visit: https://www.ribbon.finance/ Twitter: https:…

Toby has an extensive background in tier 1 investment banking and hedge funds. He has held senior trading positions at Managing Director level across proprietary trading and asset management including running the proprietary trading desk at Deutsche Bank that focused on fixed income, currency and commodity markets, senior portfolio manager roles at…

Lyra is a decentralized options protocol native to L2 Ethereum. Lyra is an AMM model, DeFi Options Protocol. Today we talk about Nick's background at SIG, co-founding Lyra and the mechanics of the Lyra AMM.By Greg Magadini

Today we explore Tristan's journey into crypto, options and building Zeta Markets. Tristan also explains the rational behind building on Solana as opposed to Ethereum and delves into deep insights regarding the different blockchain mechanics. For more information on Zeta Markets visit: https://zetamarkets.gitbook.io/zeta/…

Tom Sosnoff is a trailblazer in the online brokerage industry, driving innovation and financial education for investors of all levels. He offers up his expertise in the options markets as co-host of tastytrade LIVE!, airing daily on the tastytrade network. A former floor trader, Tom became one of Chicago's most well-known serial entrepreneurs in fi…

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 background, trading philosophy and what Eua…

Two Prime is a crypto vol. focused hedge fund with $200m AUM. Nathan Cox is the Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of Two Prime. Today we learn about Nathan's career journey, his experience trading various volatility strategies and his journey into crypto volatility. Two Prime website - https://twoprime.io/ Nathan's Twitter Account - https://t…