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 liquidit…

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 block…

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…

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 tim…

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 equi…

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/itscorrektAf Greg Magadini

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 Assoc…

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. SynFutur…

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, includi…

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 dedicati…

About Rho Rho 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 mar…

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 tradi…

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/optionsAf Greg Magadini

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 p…

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 …