Knot, one of the engineers behind Insilico Terminal, joins Sokio to talk about how a degree in jazz performance and coding audio plugins turned into a career building trading systems. A TradFi systems trader told him "TA is astrology for men", so he went into arbitrage instead, running fat-finger and new-listing loops across exchanges when crypto still felt like easy mode.  We get into the FTX leveraged-token trade he ran for about a year and a half: working out how much each daily rebalance had to buy or sell against the market's open interest, scraping FTX's token pages into Excel with VBA, and executing by hand. Then the Australian funds he ran funding-rate trades for, why he tried to short FTX's own USD collateral token, and what happened to the fund that thought FTX was too big to fail.  Plus: shorting UST during Terra/Luna, modelling stablecoin depeg options at Y2K Finance, why he left DeFi for Insilico Terminal, what he's building there now, and why he thinks ego holds back talented people in this space.

00:00 Intro: going from jazz to code 

07:52 Why he started with arbitrage, not TA 

12:01 Fat-finger arbitrage, new-listing spreads 

21:28 Frontrunning FTX leveraged token rebalances 

38:21 Selling funding trades to Australian funds 

48:00 Calling the FTX collapse 

56:39 Shorting UST, depeg models at Y2K Finance 

1:02:17 Why Insilico Terminal, what he's building 

1:12:35 Final advice: drop the ego

Knot on front-running FTX's leveraged token rebalances

Nelly joins Sokio to talk about going from on-chain trading to scalping Bitcoin perps. After a heavy loss around the April 2025 tariff selloff, he joined a trading group having never taken a perp trade, put in 14 to 16 hour days, and by November had a VWAP rotational system that worked, first in Asia and then in New York.  We get into how he trades the VWAP bands, why Asia is price action and ticks while New York is order flow, a failed-continuation setup he explains with a joke nobody high-fives, and why he trades without hard stops and sizes into trades that are still moving against him.  Plus: getting caught when ranges break, right idea with the wrong timing, going from 20 trades a day to fewer with more size, market orders and fees, running three accounts, staying up to trade London, weekends and the Sunday futures open, and why he says there is nothing special about him beyond the reps.

00:00 Intro and going from on-chain to perps 

09:22 Building a VWAP system around Bitcoin 

15:27 Sticking with it until it clicked 

22:26 How Asia and New York trade differently 

30:07 Failed continuation, wide stops and trend days 

41:23 Early mistakes and getting the timing right 

49:20 Work-life balance and the London session 

58:37 Weekends and the Sunday futures open 

01:02:10 Execution, fees and scaling into size 

01:11:22 Final advice on hard work and reps

Nelly on going from zero perp trades to scalping Bitcoin full-time

FlowTrader sits down with Sokio in the studio for an IRL episode on trading a market that moves on headlines. Nine years in, from crypto-miner stocks in 2017–18 to high-leverage perps, he now keeps trades to three to five days and avoids holding exposure over the weekend.  We get into his macro framework and why debasement made gold one of his best trades, Bitcoin as an overflow bucket for excess capital, rising yields against the AI build-out, and why he reads every Trump headline for its incentive rather than its content. On oil, he explains why he doesn't buy reports of Hormuz flows nearing pre-war levels, and why refined products and diesel are the real constraint.  The second half looks at the Iran war on purely economic terms: decentralised command, China's incentives, Syria as the early signal, trade routes, and a 2009 Brookings options paper he says reads differently in hindsight. We close on why he thinks Bitcoin is now an institutional asset tied to America's success.

00:00 Intro and Flow's path into trading 

02:14 Short-term trades, the macro framework and gold 

05:11 What Bitcoin is right now 

06:42 Rising yields, the AI build-out and the wall of worry 

10:12 Headline trading and the oil math 

14:55 Who has the upper hand in the Iran war 

18:29 Syria, trade routes and US strategy 

23:38 The "leave it to Bibi" playbook 

25:38 Bitcoin is a bet on America

Follow the incentives: FlowTrader on trading Trump headlines, oil and Iran

Kieran Duff, systematic portfolio manager and Head of UK Growth at Darwinex, joins Sokio to talk about running a multi-strategy book across FX, metals and indices, built and managed on his own.  We get into why he quit discretionary trading, how he turns any idea into a backtest (including a Friday-red, Monday-long S&P system he dropped because it had no capacity), what BOJ intervention did to a long-running USD/JPY breakout strategy, and the incubator and governor layer that decide which trades actually reach the market.  Plus: moving everything to market orders with spread and slippage filters, how Darwinex works, splitting orders to raise capacity, CFDs vs futures and A/B-book brokers, his one-loss-a-day rule, and why new traders should let the data build the thesis.

00:00 Intro and his path into trading 

08:41 Why he went fully systematic 

18:33 Regime change and a USD/JPY breakout 

23:30 The incubator and the governor layer 

30:01 Execution filters and raising capital  

38:26 Scaling capacity with futures and order splitting 

43:49 CFDs, futures and A/B-book brokers 

48:50 Correlation limits and one loss a day 

53:38 Advice for new systematic traders

Kieran Duff on building a one-person systematic trading desk

DegentradingLSD joins Sokio to talk about going from options market making in TradFi to trading crypto, starting with a flat Deribit vol surface and the GBTC discount during the Genesis unwind.  We get into why keeping money is harder than making it, how much cash to hold, and why half or quarter Kelly is easier to live with than full Kelly. He explains why he thinks retail's edge sits in trades institutions can't or won't take, why crypto has stopped moving as one market, how he reads rate hikes against the AI capex boom, and why the same ticker on two venues isn't always the same trade.  Plus: private inference and privacy, Zcash's locked-up supply, where perp DEXs and crypto options go from here, and his outlook into the midterms.

00:00 Intro and Finding an Edge in Crypto 

08:21 The GBTC Discount Trade 

15:33 Keeping Cash and Managing Risk 

19:42 Why Crypto Isn’t Moving Together 

26:15 Rates, Liquidity and the AI Trade 

35:26 Equity Perps and Choosing Your Venue 

42:19 The AI Race and Privacy 

47:08 Zcash, Supply and Crypto Narratives 

53:11 Perp DEXs and Crypto Options 

01:00:01 Market Outlook Into the Midterms

Finding the Trades Institutions Won't Touch | DegentradingLSD

QuantXBT joins Sokio to discuss building a crypto HFT business, finding his first BitMEX–Binance arbitrage, and why JavaScript wasn't the bottleneck people expected.  We cover shrinking edges, the move toward mid-frequency trading, exchange risk, collecting market data, and the role of discretion in automated systems. He also explains why forced trading creates opportunities and why being right about an asset isn't enough to make money trading it.

00:00 Intro and Early Crypto Trading 

05:55 Finding the First Arbitrage Edge 

11:31 Running HFT in JavaScript 

19:17 Finding Edge Across Exchanges 

25:19 Consistent Returns and Hidden Risks 

33:53 Research, Automation and In-House Data 

38:14 Quant vs. Discretionary Trading 

45:29 Volatility, Forced Trading and Finding Edge 

51:33 Bitcoin Conviction and Why Altcoins Fail

Why Even Quant Traders Need Discretion | QuantXBT

Arb joins Sokio to explain how reading the details led him to a Tari arbitrage and a series of oil trades on Hyperliquid. The conversation moves from finding temporary market inefficiencies and knowing when to walk away to using AI for data collection, research, and building trading systems. He also shares his case for owning compute, why systems thinking matters, and the opportunities he sees for small teams.

00:00 Introducing Arb and his first crypto arbitrage 

09:25 Oil perps: trading the market rules 

16:43 Bitcoin, hardware and the AI opportunity 

26:40 Where AI value accrues 

33:26 Why small teams can move faster 

39:08 AI for trading research and automation 

45:51 How to think in systems 

51:07 Manual trading and AI-built systems 

55:38 AI workflows and what changes next

From crypto arbitrage to AI: finding edge with iArbpairs

Trader Morin turned more than 18 months at breakeven into a repeatable trading process built around ranges, mean reversion, order flow and strict risk management.  He explains how he plans trades days in advance, builds price-action and footprint execution playbooks, sizes positions using confluence, and distinguishes reaccumulation from redistribution. We also discuss surviving the unprofitable years, handling FOMO, reviewing trading data, using leverage responsibly and why Morin deliberately reduces risk after a major winner.

00:00 First blow-up and playing the long game 

08:05 Why Morin focused on BTC and ETH 

18:07 Building conviction, trade plans and playbooks 

25:27 Surviving 18 months at breakeven 

35:00 Turning discretionary trading into a system 

41:00 Range trading and footprint execution 

48:39 Reaccumulation vs redistribution 

58:16 Leverage, risk and reviewing the data 

01:08:56 Teaching, monetization and staying grounded

How Trader Morin built a repeatable edge after 18 months at breakeven

Benoit Dubosson, better known as Beni the Boss, joins the Insilico Terminal Podcast for his first interview about crypto. He explains how he built a trading career around markets other people ignored—from Cryptopia arbitrage and onchain deposit signals to FTX funding trades, the Luna collapse, TradeOgre market making, and strange dislocations across CFD brokers and fintech apps.  Beni also talks about counterparty risk, the mental cost of trading your own money, why he eventually left crypto, the role of luck in success, and why beginners should spend far more time researching than trading.

00:00 From online poker to early crypto arbitrage 

13:55 What trading crypto was really like in 2017 

22:42 Finding edge where others do not look 

31:09 FTX trades and the Luna collapse 

41:44 Market making Monero on TradeOgre 

50:47 The mental cost of trading 

01:00:04 Advice for new crypto traders 

01:09:07 Networking, luck and when not to trade

Cryptopia, FTX and the hunt for overlooked edge - Beniduboss

Parker, co-founder of perps.fun, joins the Insilico Terminal Podcast to discuss building the first HIP-3 launchpad and opening Hyperliquid market creation to teams outside the existing deployer structure.  We cover why perps.fun pivoted from building a trading terminal, how new markets are vetted, fee sharing and market ownership, exotic and long-tail perps, sourcing liquidity, oracle and funding design, the Kinetiq partnership, and why permissionless perp creation comes with serious risks.  We also get into the wider Hyperliquid ecosystem: HIP-3 market concentration, HIP-4, regulation, institutional adoption, Trade XYZ, competition between DEXs, and the long-term vision of being able to trade wherever the volatility goes.

00:00 What is perps.fun? The first HIP-3 launchpad 

05:15 What kinds of markets will launch? 

10:17 The perps.fun fee-sharing model 

15:10 Why official brands and indices matter 

19:24 Building safe markets: liquidity, oracles & funding 

25:03 The Kinetiq partnership and HIP-3 economics 

30:30 Where Hyperliquid stands today 

35:32 Regulation, institutions & the “gray market” 

39:38 Hyperliquid vs other DEXs & trading everything

Trading Everything on Hyperliquid | Perps.fun Co-Founder Parker

Insilico Terminal (@sokio8) · Zencastr

Insilico Terminal (@sokio8)

Dive into the fast-paced world of cryptocurrency trading with the Insilico Terminal Podcast, the ultimate audio companion for traders of all levels. Hosted by the team behind Insilico Terminal - the high-performance, user-friendly platform. We bring you expert insights, market analysis, and behind-the-scenes stories straight from the crypto trenches.

Each episode features in-depth discussions on trading-strategies, execution tips, emerging trends in crypto, and exclusive interviews with top traders, builders, and industry innovators. Tune in for actionable advice, real-time market breakdowns, and the latest updates on Terminal's advanced features. 