Insights
Funding capture as cash-and-carry: legs, margin, and where the spread leaks
Long the asset, short the perpetual, paid the funding. The structure is a century-old carry trade in new clothes, and it fails in the same places the old one did: at the margin desk and in the costs.
19 Sept 2026|Strategy
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All insights on digital asset market structure.
Strategy•
Funding capture as cash-and-carry: legs, margin, and where the spread leaks
Long the asset, short the perpetual, paid the funding. The structure is a century-old carry trade in new clothes, and it fails in the same places the old one did: at the margin desk and in the costs.
#funding-rates#perpetual-futures#cash-and-carry
Market Structure•
Fraud in receivables finance: fictitious debtors, duplicate invoices, stacking, and the controls that catch them
Receivables fraud is rarely sophisticated. It is a document that looks right, submitted to a lender that did not check. The controls that stop it are equally unglamorous, and they work.
#receivables-financing#fraud-controls#factoring
Market Structure•
Why the futures basis converges, and what the term structure tells a carry desk
A dated future must equal spot on the day it expires. Everything between now and then is a price for time, leverage and scarcity, and reading it is most of the job.
#basis-trading#futures#term-structure
Market Structure•
Bitcoin-backed lending enters its institutional era
Three years after the collapse of the last generation of crypto lenders, collateralized lending is growing again. What changed is not the demand. It is the structure.
Strategy•
The borrowing base explained: eligibility, advance rates, dilution and the certificate
Asset-based lenders do not lend against a forecast. They lend against a formula that converts a pile of collateral into a number the borrower can draw today, and recomputes it every time the collateral moves.
#asset-based-lending#borrowing-base#receivables-financing
Strategy•
Concentrated liquidity: what a range actually does to fee income and inventory
Choosing a price range is the whole decision in modern liquidity provision. It sets how much of the pool’s fee income a position earns, how fast its inventory changes, and how often it has to be moved.
#liquidity-pools#concentrated-liquidity#uniswap
Strategy•
Impermanent loss, in plain arithmetic, and when fees cover it
Every liquidity provider is short the divergence between the two assets they supply. The loss has a closed-form shape, a well-documented history of exceeding fees, and a small number of ways to manage it.
#impermanent-loss#liquidity-pools#automated-market-makers
Regulatory•
The GENIUS Act and where stablecoin yield lives now
The first US federal stablecoin law bans issuers from paying interest on payment stablecoins. It did not end stablecoin yield. It moved it.
Infrastructure•
Underwriting from the processor: what settlement data says that a P&L does not
A small business’s financial statements are a story it tells about itself. Its payment processor and bank accounts are the record. Lenders that read the record directly underwrite a different, and truer, business.
#cash-flow-underwriting#payment-processors#bank-data
Strategy•
Looping: how a supply, borrow, swap cycle builds leverage, and where the health factor bites
Looping amplifies a yield spread by borrowing against the asset that earns it. The arithmetic of the loop is simple. The arithmetic of unwinding it under stress is what decides whether it was a good idea.
#looping#leverage#lending-markets
Market Structure•
The stableswap invariant, and why a pool’s balance is the earliest de-peg signal
Curve’s pricing curve keeps two dollar assets trading at parity until one of them is being sold hard. The composition of the pool tells you that before the price does.
#stablecoins#curve#liquidity-pools
Regulatory•
Qualified custody for digital assets: the SEC’s modernization proposal
The custody rule that governs how advisers hold client assets was written for a world of brokers and banks. A proposal to rewrite it for digital assets has reached the White House.
Market Structure•
UCC-1 financing statements: why first priority is the whole game in small business credit
A loan agreement gives a lender a promise. A perfected, first-priority security interest gives it the collateral. In small business lending the difference is decided at the secretary of state, usually before the money moves.
#ucc-article-9#secured-lending#private-credit
Market Structure•
Lending market rate curves: the kink, utilization, and why suppliers watch it
On-chain lending rates are set by a published function of one number. That number also tells a supplier whether they can get their money back.
#lending-markets#interest-rates#utilization
Market Structure•
Isolated versus pooled lending markets: Morpho, Aave, and how risk is shared
Two designs dominate on-chain lending. One pools every supplier’s risk for depth and simplicity. The other walls each market off and asks the supplier to choose. Neither is free.
#lending-markets#morpho#aave
Strategy•
Uniswap v4 hooks and the impermanent loss problem
Most liquidity providers in volatile pools lose money to the pool’s own rebalancing. The newest generation of market makers lets pools change the rules. Whether that fixes the problem is an open question.
Infrastructure•
MEV, private order flow, and what execution quality means on-chain
Every transaction is visible before it is final, and a market of specialists is paid to act on that. The gap between the price a position should have got and the price it did is a cost like any other, and it can be managed.
#mev#execution#private-order-flow
Strategy•
Sizing a leveraged position from the loss you will accept: liquidation distance, margin asset, and funding as a cost
The venue will lend far more than a disciplined desk will use. Position size should be derived from the loss a view is allowed to cost and the distance to the liquidation engine, not from the margin the exchange permits.
#perpetual-futures#leverage#liquidation
Market Structure•
SAFE plus token, warrants and SAFTs: how crypto venture deals are papered
A venture investment in a digital asset company can be a claim on the company, on its future tokens, or both. The document decides which, and the market has settled on a preferred answer.
Strategy•
Restaking after slashing went live
For two years restaking offered extra yield for a risk that existed only on paper. In April 2026 the paper became real.
Market Structure•
Understanding funding rates in perpetual futures markets
A perpetual future has no expiry, so something else has to pull its price back toward spot. That mechanism is the funding rate, and it is the single most important number in a carry book.
Regulatory•
Event contracts at a regulatory crossroads
Prediction markets have grown into a large, federally regulated market while the rules that govern them are still being written and the states dispute who writes them.
Market Structure•
Synthetic dollars: from basis trade to credit
The largest crypto-collateralized synthetic dollar was built on a funding-rate trade. As funding compressed, its backing began to change. Holders should know what they are now holding.
Infrastructure•
What institutional custody actually means for digital assets
Custody is the word allocators ask about first and define least precisely. The useful questions are about key material, transaction authority, and segregation, not about brand names.
Strategy•
Yield in decentralized protocols: sources, sustainability, and risk
Some on-chain yield is payment for a real service. Some is a marketing budget denominated in tokens. Telling them apart is most of the work.
Tokenization•
Tokenized Treasuries and the collateral efficiency question
The most useful thing tokenization has done so far is not create a new asset class. It is stop margin from sitting idle.