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Selling Vol, Market Making, and the Future of Crypto Options | Marty
1 Plays4 seconds ago
Marty joins the Insilico Terminal Podcast to talk about his path from early Bitcoin and BitMEX to becoming a top perps and spot market maker on FTX, and later moving deeper into crypto options. We discuss why options market making is so different from perps, why retail still prefers simple up/down leverage, how structured products work, what went wrong with DeFi options, and why portfolio margin matters. Marty also shares his view on volatility selling, surviving major market stress events, the current state of Bitcoin and ETH, and why Hyperliquid has become one of the most important venues in crypto.
00:00 Marty’s path from early Bitcoin to market making
06:17 Becoming a top FTX perps and spot market maker
12:00 Why crypto options are still behind perps
16:17 How institutions use structured products
20:31 Why DeFi options struggled and what changed
25:03 Prediction markets, binary options, and retail gambling
30:37 Better ways to express directional trades with options
37:51 Surviving 10/10, volatility spikes, and exchange outages
43:14 Why Marty is skeptical about the current crypto market
52:01 Bitcoin’s narrative problem and what could bring it back
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Transcript
Marty's Crypto Journey
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to a new episode of the InSilico Terminal podcast. My guest today is Marty and I like people to, or I like to ask people to introduce themselves a bit to to the audience. So can you tell us who you are and and what you're doing?
00:00:30
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I'm Marty. I'm the one-man party, as some people call me. I don't know why, but we are, what are we, I think we're at Selling Vol on Twitter now.
00:00:42
Speaker
We're probably most prominent on crypto Twitter for selling all the volatility on Bitcoin and ETH and every other one of your favorite options that that you've tried to buy. um In the space, we're an options market maker, but Before that, we were a huge purpose maker on on FTX. Maybe we can get into that after and and kind of into my journey into options. But for now, we're an options maker selling all the vol and, ah you know, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:01:13
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you for coming
Transition to Market Making
00:01:14
Speaker
on. Can you tell us a bit about how how you got into market making and then crypto in general? yeah i think it's kind of you know I've been in crypto for a decade, so that makes me 100 years old now. I've aged quite a bit, but I think it's kind of the same path that everybody had had started in in my time. right like um Bitcoin was cheap and my friends were using Bitcoin to buy fun things online you know back in the day.
00:01:43
Speaker
and Then at some point we're like, okay, there's something here, you know, maybe maybe we'll hold on to it a little bit. One of my buddy's dad's was ah it's like a mathematician professor guy and was like, you you kids are dumb. Like you should be holding this thing, not not trading it in for, you know, not selling it for for fun things online. So, okay, i don't know, Bitcoin was...
00:02:03
Speaker
was cheap at at this point and then i think it was kind of the same story that everybody goes through like okay you have Bitcoin how do we make more Bitcoin let's let's get into derivatives at the time was um was perps and you know futures so BitMEX came out with the perp okay everybody's trading on BitMEX making more and more coins or losing more and more coins And then as as time progressed, we're like, okay, well, I don't want to be a buyer, right?
Team Building and Success
00:02:35
Speaker
I'd rather be a maker. And it's not it's not me who's the main maker. I think I'm just the public face, but we run a small team and and ah run a small fund and we're able to
00:02:50
Speaker
It was originally market making perps. Then you can get into basis, which is holding spot and and selling futures. There's like some simple trades. There was even like click trading arbitrage at the time where you can buy spot on one exchange, send to another and make a profit. Like this was the golden days and you know, things have gotten progressively harder throughout the time. but So this this was like 2017 or?
00:03:14
Speaker
Oh, this is way before. This is way before. Darabit came out in 2016 or 17. So that was options. BitMEX was before that, for sure. This was before the run. see.
00:03:33
Speaker
see Do you have a background finance? no, no. BitMEX launched in 2014 and launched the PERP in 2016. The run was 2017. And then went to that, right?
00:03:43
Speaker
and launched the purp in twenty sixteen the run was twenty seventeen and then and then it it re you know it it went to zero after that right ah No, no, no background in in finance. I think it was right time, right place, and you know right group of friends, right um right team, you know just kind of everything, all all the pieces felt fell in at the same
Options Market Dynamics
00:04:12
Speaker
time. I don't have like a finance background or anything like that. I'm a crypto native.
00:04:16
Speaker
I see. how How did you, like, did you get started in market making through your friend group then? Because I think it's kind of sophisticated topic to to get into as a non-technical or financial person. Well, at first the spread is, you know, multiples of percents, right? Like the spread is insane in pervs, right? You could even click trade it if you wanted to do like a simple grid bot, right?
00:04:39
Speaker
I guess first was spot, then was basis, and then was like simple market making. That was like kind of the steps, right? um Basis was a basis is like 3% now, but you know, you were doing multiples of that and you could even leverage it and do even crazier numbers with that um on BitMEX. So that was like kind of the the progression into trading. i did I did the day trading. I did the, you know, the the swing trading, you know, I did the technical and out like I think I did all of those kind of phases that everybody kind of goes through.
00:05:14
Speaker
But you know, if we just had to bundle it up and like what those beginning years look like was like spot. Okay, how do we make money on our spot? Let's do some basis basis was juiced and then let's get into some simple market making. But um my team's smarter than me, man. I'm just the the public face.
00:05:32
Speaker
i see. how How big is your team? We're just four people. And you've been the together for all these years now? It was two. And then we added two, you know, people come and go. But you can do a lot with a small team. Like, I don't think you need a crazy crazy, crazy big team, especially for what we do, right? Like we swim in this like niche pool of of money or of capital where maybe the big shops, it's not worth their time to do it, right? So maybe we'll market make a smaller exchange or we'll market make a smaller protocol or we'll go out and get like these crazy DeFi incentives that like
00:06:16
Speaker
I don't know if you make 100 grand in a month, like that's insane to to us and and to the big shop is like, and or we're that's not and enough, you know, like we need we need more. um So, you know, if if we were to to put it in the beginning few years was like spot basis, simple market making, and then ftx came along was I don't know, 2020, 2019, something like this.
Options vs. Perpetuals
00:06:44
Speaker
And and at that point, you know we were more sophisticated and ah into FTX. We became like the top 10 per person spot market maker on US and on international.
00:06:57
Speaker
um That's just 30 day notional. I think that that's kind of where our like claims to fame or whatever, like how we became recognizable on crypto Twitter was like we were on the leaderboards and there was like a leaderboard season. You know, there's like Alex Weiss, there's Gainsey, you know, like you had this whole the google class of, yeah, the the golden days of of trading, you know, you have this golden era and we were just on, um on perps and spot and then same same sort of like evolution in our company happened where okay FTX went down, options are still 1% of total perps volume. There's still crazy spreads and options. like you know We have an options background, like some of the team members. like Okay, we can pivot into getting more spread than trying to get a penny and competing with you know the likes of Wintermeat or Amber or whoever, you know the big shops, or even now you know Citadel or whatever, the big guys.
00:07:55
Speaker
and you can come into the option space and options are still ah tradable fluid. There's order books, there's RFQs, there's, you know, size is traded. It's just not the size of purse, but the spreads are still juiced.
00:08:09
Speaker
There's tons of up and coming protocols. Lots of people need market makers for retainers or those incentives I was talking about earlier. and And that was kind of like our and i I know I put 10 years journey into you know five minutes, but yeah that was our original original path. So options weren't first, if that makes sense.
00:08:34
Speaker
how How is options market making different from purpose market making?
00:08:39
Speaker
Options are priced at whatever you want to price it up. There's a mark price what it should be at, right? But at every single venue, there's a different price. And this usually comes down to settlement.
00:08:55
Speaker
um Not necessarily that like the mark is way off. and If there's depending on if they settle to the index price or the futures price, if it's exactly at one timestamp, or if there's like this weird T-WAP time, 10 to 30 minutes before settlement can all give you a different price. So it could look like there's an arbitrage across all these venues, but when you actually go to try to take it, like you're never, you would, after a settlement, you you don't really make any money. Where in perps is like,
00:09:29
Speaker
Sure, you have funding. Sure, you have a thousand different ah venues now or whatever, a few hundred different venues. if The price is fairly in line.
00:09:40
Speaker
And for their mark price, they're using a a combination of various exchanges kind of to find like their index price or their mark price, right?
00:09:52
Speaker
Instead of, but and if one gets super wonky, like on like a, and not like a, maybe like a 10, 10 day or like a flash crash day, they'll just knock that one out of like, what, I don't know, an an example, a fake example, Kraken goes super crazy one day or Coinbase goes super crazy one day. They just knock that out of the equation to not make their own book go crazy.
Structured Products and Retail Strategies
00:10:14
Speaker
um you know Unfortunately, we don't have like a New York Stock Exchange where everybody's competing on one venue um or a CME where everybody's competing on one venue. You have hundreds of different venues, hundreds of different pricing, hundreds of different ways to price it.
00:10:30
Speaker
um i think the thing with with perps is like, the spread is a penny now or something, you know, like even on something like a hyper liquid is like a penny and then options could be $500 still, you know, you you have.
00:10:45
Speaker
OK, well, i'm I'm happy to take the risk for a $200 spread where maybe somebody is happy to take it for 500 or somebody is happy to take it for 50.
00:10:55
Speaker
um there's There's some other things in there too, like is it USD cease is it usd settled or you know stable settled? Is it coin margined? Because as the price moves, you're making coin and you need to hedge this out if you're in dollars or euros or whatever. um You have a lot of different pricing angles and think the biggest thing is you know spread is bigger. You can price it how you want to.
00:11:18
Speaker
um But you also, if you're a small guy, you don't have to go compete on the big exchanges. You can go compete and make just fine money on the small exchanges. and And I think that that's kind of where we we've you know found found our calling or whatever. But we're partnered with Darabit. There's 10 firms, let's say, for on Darabit for SMA, which is like separate managed accounts. So if you have ah a treasury on Darabit or you want to run some sort of strategy on Darabit, there's like 10 of us you can pick from and contact and, and, ah you know, we can run that sort of, uh, exchange exchange traded or sorry, SMA based strategy on, on your account.
00:12:04
Speaker
So there's no movement of money. It's all on your account. We just collect a fee on the profit.
00:12:11
Speaker
What is the options exchange landscape look like nowadays? I think like Deribit, they got acquired by Coinbase last year, but there is still the biggest and then I think what else is there even like Bybit has options and then OKEx and I think Binance too and then the on-chain stuff like Derive and Kian and I don't really know too much about options be honest.
00:12:34
Speaker
There's ever everyone that that you listed There's also Thalex, which is the Bitfinex guys. I forgot them. Shout shout out to them because they always like. Shout out to them. I like them. those You know, the the Cayenne guys, the derived guys, ah you know, we had a cycle, an option specific cycle.
00:12:52
Speaker
I don't know, two two years ago now or like a year ago, like you had all these different projects. You had like Strike and, you know, so sorry if if they're still around and and I'm botching this, but you had like Strike, you had Moby, you had you had like a few. There was like some hacks. There was some unwinds, you know, that Options really hasn't had the spotlight that Purps has had.
00:13:15
Speaker
And I what what you think that is There's a few reasons, right? And you can probably write a thesis on this or like some book, right? But retail likes clicking red or green up down. They don't care about Greeks.
00:13:31
Speaker
They don't know about they they don't want to know or you know, if they it's just a and higher barrier to entry. I always try to educate people. Everything's always for free. You know, I always do newsletters or podcasts or, you know, chats or if you want to DM me ask questions, you know, I'm always here to help.
Challenges in DeFi Options
00:13:52
Speaker
But versus like somebody comes into perps exchange. We'll just use Hyperliquid because it's at an all time high. Shout out to them. they They deposit a grand. They so they slide the lever.
00:14:05
Speaker
they They ate you know a grand on 10x. They have this position and okay, now I can just close it out. The spread was 10 cents. They don't care or one cent. They don't care if it was a maker taker. They just knew red or green up down, right? That's super easy.
00:14:21
Speaker
versus options is like, okay, well, the spread's $500. Do I want to cross that spread? I'm already down $250 if I buy a contract. Like, okay, well, there's earnings. Let's buy options into earnings, like just an outright call. Well, the earnings didn't move as expected, um so there was a vol crush. And even though I was right and the price went up, the price didn't go up ah enough for me to to pass my break even, so I was directionally right, but I still lost money. And you're like, what the hell? like If I would have bought a the the stock or the perps, I would have just been up. you know it's ah It's another level of of sophistication, but I will say that retail loves options if they don't know that it's options.
00:15:07
Speaker
They love prediction markets. They love will Bitcoin hit 80K in the next day. You know, they love this. It is a you know ah ah binary option. It's a type of option that's just packaged in a retail friendly way.
00:15:24
Speaker
Robinhood also did a great job as a like showing you payoff graphs or you know showing you simple ah user experience or UI for the user to go through.
00:15:38
Speaker
um i think that that's why you saw a pickup of zero DTE options because there's no more theta. It's just pure directional betting now. Like if the thing moves, I'm going to make money. If it doesn't, it's already burned out. And and that was it. You know, I spent 100 bucks. I'm happy to lose 100 bucks.
00:15:55
Speaker
If 100 turns to 300, great. If 100 goes to zero, screw it. So you have this gambling side and retail side that loves options if they don't know that it's an option. And then you have the more sophisticated players and the more institutional players that don't think that we have enough options, right? So if you go on the total other side of the spectrum and TradFi and structure products, which let's just say is a more is a basket of options. it's You can create any sort of payoff that you like with options. That's why options I think are superior.
00:16:29
Speaker
um Options, you can make money if it goes up. You can make money if it goes down. You can make money if volatility goes up or down. You can make money in a range. You can make money if it goes out of the range. Whatever you can imagine, you can build it. And let's say whatever you can imagine and the multi-multi legs is a structured product. So a structured product is just a a basket of of options, is a derivative that you can buy or sell.
00:16:56
Speaker
But institutional people or players like these sort of options. um it It goes... simply into earning yields all the way to that some crazy exotic multi-leg that you could
Strategies for Retail Traders
00:17:10
Speaker
think of. You can build it, and they love it. But in Tradify, these options are... Is structured product something like this... I don't know what the the term for that is, but something like this butterfly or or a call spread or like straddle or all these things? It can be a beginning version, but like a structured product is...
00:17:30
Speaker
An example is a PPN, a principle protected note. So you can create a payoff where let's make it easy. One Bitcoin is 100K. You have one Bitcoin and you're like, I'm happy. I want upside. I i don't want Bitcoin to go ah to zero, but I want to hedge out all my downside. So the more downside that you protect, you can protect 100%. If Bitcoin goes to zero, you still have hmm.
00:18:00
Speaker
in this in this payoff okay but let's keep it quite simple if bitcoin goes to 200k maybe you don't get a hundred percent of that upside maybe you only get it when it goes to 130 140 but you're happy with us you know k as long as you protected all your downside. So you had no downside risk. If Bitcoin went to absolutely zero, you still had 100K, but if it goes to 200 or 250, you lose out on some of that upside.
00:18:30
Speaker
So this is like a simple product that that's sold. The less downside that you hedge out, the more upside that you have. ah It goes as crazy as you want. You know you have barrier notes, you have ah knockout options, you have whatever sort of payoff that you could create in your head, you can do it with options. Tradify loves this. they They know exactly what they're doing. They want this specific payoff.
00:18:55
Speaker
They're throwing size at it. They're going to block it once and that's it. where retail is like, man, is it going to go up or down, man? Like, yeah I want 1000x today. i want 1000% right now. And ah that's why I think you get this weird disconnect in options where retail is like, I want to hit home runs right now.
00:19:14
Speaker
And then Tradify is like, OK, we need more ah longer dated options so the market can mature and we can offer more structured products to our clients and sell to banks and sell to you know institutions and sell to bigger traders.
Risks and Misconceptions in Options Trading
00:19:28
Speaker
um that that want to build out whatever payoff they want and and you see this in in trad five but you you just really haven't seen this in in crypto another way that they've tried to package it is in earn products.
00:19:46
Speaker
So, Bybit earn products, OKEx earn products. So, okay, you can, they're just selling you a simple option structure and taking the spread. So they're like, okay, it's a no fee product. Okay, let's say the profit's $100 total. You don't know it's $100, but it's a no fee product to you. They build you a simple option structure Dude, they're taking 60 to 70% of the premium.
00:20:11
Speaker
Out of that 100 bucks, they're taking 60 to 70 bucks and giving you 30, you know, 30, 40 and saying, okay, cool. Look, you made 30, 40 bucks. Who do you care? It was a no fee product, but on the back end, they made more money than you.
00:20:24
Speaker
And that was a simple option structure that they repackaged and say, hey, look, it's our earn offerings, earn products. And it's you know, they're just fleecing retail. This is a simple structure, a simple structure product that they're offering in a repackage that is rinsing retail.
00:20:43
Speaker
What do you think is needed for like ah options to succeed more or like more options on chain exchanges to succeed or what what has like prevented them from succeeding in the past?
00:20:55
Speaker
I think at first, if we look at DeFi, right? If you look at DeFi, you have this like the golden days of DeFi, right? Or like we're decentralized, right? And we can look at premium now Cayenne as this example, right? I'm not an owner of premium or Cayenne. I just do the market making and and run the the podcast for them, right? I think people get this weird disconnect that I have ownership, but I don't. Okay.
00:21:24
Speaker
um Cayenne was you know DeFi native. We're going to build everything on chain. It's going to be 100% collateralized. It's you know pure DeFi. We have nothing to do with it. um Okay, that that makes sense when Bitcoin's you know three grand.
00:21:39
Speaker
But when Bitcoin's $100,000 and I want to sell one contract of Bitcoin and let's say I'm going to make 200 bucks, ah I have to post 100 grand to make 200 bucks?
00:21:52
Speaker
Doesn't make any sense. there was There's no capital efficiency. So now in this new iteration, and and others have, you know, Derive has come through previously Lyra, right? And now that everybody's offering this ah hybrid model on-chain, off-chain.
00:22:08
Speaker
um where the risk engine runs off chain because it's just not possible to run it on chain and now everybody's offering portfolio margin so portfolio margin is It helps you when you start doing these multi-like options to offset margin. It it helps with capital efficiency. You don't need a hundred grand to sell this contract. Now, whatever the risk engine spits out is how much capital you need.
00:22:31
Speaker
Um, it helps with, with a call spread or, um, you know, these butterflies or a condo, whatever, you know, let's just keep it simple. Uh, a two leg option, a three leg, ah four leg, ah you the more you have, if you add a perps hedge, it all your margin works together and and gets lower and and helps you the more complex that it gets, um which does give you more leverage.
00:22:56
Speaker
If you start doing more, which is, I think, a misconception in in retail, too, you get way more leverage in options than you do in perps. Maybe not this 1,000x perps, you know, where your liquidation is $5 away. But if if you're really being smart about it, you can get crazy leverage in an options play if you do it the right way.
00:23:19
Speaker
Um, you can build anything that you desire in options. You can even build out a perps kind of payoff, a directional payoff with options. You can make money in the range bounds. You can make run money outside of the range. You can make money directional. You know, I said it earlier, right? but Vol goes down. You can make money.
00:23:38
Speaker
Um, So I think that that this is like the misconception or or why it's harder.
Impact of Institutional Players
00:23:46
Speaker
um you know deep DeFi landscape is now just getting portfolio margin and just getting advanced where Darabit's had it from a long time ago, OKEx and everybody else has had it, but Darabit's still the king, right? Darabit runs don't know 70 80 percent of the 80 of the volume maybe more you know and 70 or 80 of their volume is all institutional clients it's not retail that's running and paying the bills and keeping the lights on right uh i think i think coinbase saw this right like options are only going to grow the space is only going to grow
00:24:21
Speaker
um It's not that we need just a bit, right? One exchange, right? we All the exchanges can can have a slice and have a sliver, but of course, you know, only some some will retain market share and some will fall off like like always. But the the space is option space specifically still so new that you still have opportunity for the space to grow. perbs I mean, we saw this, like how many new purpose exchanges pop up every day and you know everybody goes farms it as soon as the farming is over. that That's it, right? That's not really new mindshare.
00:24:57
Speaker
um i think Hyperliquid was the last real one that has still the cult following even post um airdrop, you know post everybody got paid that they're still a relevant player and and they're doing a lot of a lot of volume.
00:25:15
Speaker
What do you think about these, ah we we touched on a briefly earlier, like binary options so that got popular by by Polymarket and now ah implemented via HIP4 by Apple Liquid.
00:25:26
Speaker
Do you think they they're like a good instrument for retail to to bring them closer to this kinds of products?
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah, mean, I don't think that it's a great product, but maybe it's a good way to introduce somebody into options. Like options, Perps are very easy. It goes up and down, red or green. This is your P&L. Here's your funding. Like, that's it, right? you You don't have a lot of variables, options. You have every variable under the sun, right?
00:25:55
Speaker
Price could be exactly where it is today. You buy a call option. Price didn't move at all. Volatility goes absolutely crazy because there's some earnings thing that's coming or there's some, you know, FOMC meeting and you make money on the option, but you didn't do anything. Price didn't even move a dollar, right? Just volatility went up.
00:26:13
Speaker
um You have all these different variables and options are a learning curve that never ends. You know, people are still writing books about it and mathematicians are still writing models. And, you know, it just is a never ending thing where Perks is like, this is the price, man, pay it up or down. Like this is it. The spread's tight.
00:26:32
Speaker
It's competitive. Here's the funding. um Funding only is different. Funding is only there if it's way off of spot, right? Depending on the side. that that's pretty easy to understand. i think that this is why we haven't had like retail, but the more products, the more options, you know no pun intended, but the more products that users have to trade, the better.
Future of Crypto Options
00:26:54
Speaker
But at some point, like is it just gambling? right like Will Bitcoin hit 100K in 12 seconds? Dude, there was blueberry finance. i think it was blueberry. like It's like in five minutes, will Bitcoin be up or down? you're like this is You have no edge here. You have no edge. like Yeah, so I don't want to you know lead lead people down down the wrong path, but if you're looking into options, you can build out any sort of payoff that you can imagine.
00:27:20
Speaker
You can even use it to hedge, right? So I was explaining, my buddy has all these tech... tech options or tech shares of this company that he used to work for you know decades ago, he's up mega.
00:27:32
Speaker
And he's like, okay, I want to sell, right? But let's if we take taxes out of it right or or not, right selling is a taxable event, right? But he's ah ah like, why do you want to sell when you can sell some options, right? You can sell some puts. So i don't know, let's just say the thing is a thousand bucks. It's not SanDisk if anybody's curious, but let's keep it simple. It's a thousand bucks and he's happy to sell at 800. His cost average is, you know, nothing, right? Nothing, nothing, nothing from years ago. He's happy to sell at 800.
00:28:03
Speaker
ah Earnings is coming up. He can put on a On the short put, if the thing goes under 800 bucks, he gets to sell at 800. If not, it keeps going up. He still has his shares and he makes, I don't like using the word income, but you know he has some income from the shares and he collects the premium from that short put. He never sold the option or he never sold the the stock. He has no taxable event and he can do this next earnings or next quarter and he can keep doing this and keep riding it up until that one day that he gets knocked out. And he was happy to get knocked out because he was going to sell anyways.
00:28:37
Speaker
So, you know, there's there's some simple things and maybe he's in a different position because he has you know tens of thousands of shares of this company versus you know a retail with a thousand or a hundred dollar account.
00:28:50
Speaker
But there's some simple plays that you can put on to profit. I don't want to keep saying make income, right? Because it can go both ways, but to give you better odds to profit or to profit.
00:29:03
Speaker
And you know if you read five pages of a book, you'd probably understand it. And you can put on some simple stuff, just like you would with a perp. Maybe there's some things that you see. Maybe you can find some edge.
00:29:15
Speaker
You don't need to be some crazy mathematician to put on a call spread and and be right directionally trading an option. right like You don't need to be a market maker. you don't need to i have some friends that are like, oh, I'm going to build a market making bot. And I'm like,
00:29:29
Speaker
We've been doing this for years. The competition is getting you know harder and harder. like you You need to find the edge, not necessarily market making, right? Yeah.
00:29:39
Speaker
Do you say so use those kinds of of structures to express directional opinions yourself or do you just strictly do market making, selling us all the wall, advertising your own services here for people to to ape into?
00:29:54
Speaker
but Dude, I wrote this in a group chat yesterday, right? And I was like, the guy's like, oh, i want to buy this option. Like, you know, what what what should I look for? And I was like, you should probably, if you're just going to look directionally to put on an option, let's say long, right? You think it's going to go up. Your best bet is probably just a call spread, right? You buy a call at at one price and you sell a call above at another price. If it's above that top strike, you make money. Mm-hmm.
00:30:22
Speaker
That's the easiest way to, you know, you cash, I don't know, prices 77 right now, you buy the 77, you sell the 78. If it's above 78, you make money. Like that's super simple to understand, right? Where if you just bought the 77 call, now you have this time decay thing called data, you know, now maybe it goes to 77.3.
00:30:46
Speaker
but you still lost. You were right. You know, it was up 300, but you you you overpaid for the option because of this is priced ah in high vol and you overpaid and your break even was above 77. And it just gets messy, right? ah Long calls are great for gambling you know or if you're going to buy like a leap, like a one-year-out option and you want you want that time.
00:31:10
Speaker
But like just gambling on like a call or a put for for tomorrow is ah you know thanks for the donation. That's pretty much it. Thanks to the donation right to the the Marty Fund.
00:31:22
Speaker
But you know there's some simple stuff. so the seventy And the crazier you go out on this spread, the more money you can make, right? The max profit is is basically the spread, right? So the max profit's a thousand bucks there. it probably costs 400 bucks or 500 bucks to put on that spread, depending on on where you put it on the time. And and you make the thousand bucks. So, okay, you doubled your money. you're like, okay, well, just do that a few times and you'll be a millionaire. you know It's not not that easy, right? But...
00:31:49
Speaker
There's some simple stuff you can put on that I think it's going to go up or I think it's going to go down and you and you do this call spread. If you do the 77, 79, your max profit's around 2K. Maybe you spent one around to buy or 8, 900 to buy it. or eight nine hundred to buy it you still doubled your money like that's an insane trade like you did amazing you can also now lever this up you can buy more because ah portfolio margin and you're not just spending thousands of dollars on this outright call to watch it go to zero right If it's anywhere in between the spread, 77 and 79 or whatever the example was, in that $2,000 range, you're going to make some money. You're not going to double your money, but you'd make some. If you're absolutely wrong and if it it's under 77, yeah, okay, tough. You lost the money. You lost 100% of it. But you didn't get liquidated.
00:32:37
Speaker
You didn't blow your whole account. you know you're You didn't just deposit another thousand and blow the account. like you know that It was a smarter way to put on a directional bet. ah
00:32:50
Speaker
but what ah What kind of data do you look at for like the options markets? Is there anything that's like um maybe interesting for people that aren't like too familiar with options, but it's still like influential on on the market as a whole, like call-put ratio or skew or whatever all of that is called?
Volatility and Market Events
00:33:07
Speaker
ah Yeah, like if you're really just starting out, Velo.xyz, shout out to Frederick. they They offer simple things that that you would want to know, right? ah The term structure, so what what the at the money implied vol IV is at different expiries. what the top 24 options are, you know what the spot fall correlation is, what what um basis is. You can see in the they even have perp stuff, funding rates and liquidations and CVD. It's all there for you know for somebody to look ah quick quick and easy.
00:33:49
Speaker
I think that that Hardest thing is pricing an option. So you have a simple model called black shoals, which pretty much is the standard for if you want it to price an option, but, but it goes out and it goes as deep in the math as you want. And you could get a PhD in it and still not still lose money, you know, right. you Maybe you made this amazing model, but that doesn't mean you're a great trader. Right.
00:34:18
Speaker
Um, I think that like some simple things, if if you're looking to come into options now is like, don't play directional crazy bets into earnings.
00:34:29
Speaker
You're probably going to lose. Don't play into events. So as the event comes, volatility lets builds, right? or Yeah, it's just, I'm trying to think of another word to make it easy, but the hype builds, right? So there's some excitement around the event and then the event comes and nothing happens, okay? You bought that option. You're like, oh my God, I'm making money. It's gonna pop. It's gonna, you know, it's gonna 10X. I'm gonna be rich. The event happened. It didn't move as much as was expected. The volatility has a fall crush and and you lose, even though it still went up and and it was right in your basic direction. uh you lost money so that's not to say that you should go out and you should start just selling every option and selling the vol and that the thing goes down forever and you know like if you look at at um bviv or eviv which is volmex products or you look at devol which is the darabit volatility uh product
00:35:33
Speaker
It goes down forever. Vol's meant to be sold. Vol goes down literally forever. That's like, as the market matures, there's more. We've talked about it yesterday on this podcast with ah Block Shoals, not Block Shoals. Block Shoals is a data provider out of London. They provide data to institutions and and I think even derive in Cayenne, right? So from platforms to to institutions or or even individual traders.
00:35:56
Speaker
Vols meant to be sold as the market matures more and more in more and more more sophisticated players come in. They start selling structures. They start selling calls. They start selling puts. All of these are vol dampening. So vol should go down over time. But then what happens when it's compressed so, so, so much, which we're kind of in this area again in like 30s of D vol, it gets compressed so much that it just pops.
00:36:22
Speaker
and the thing goes to 80 vol, 100 vol again, and everybody who was short options now needs to start covering. There's a lot of hedging going on. you know Think of like a 1010 example, right? Like vols going down and then oh all of a sudden, like all hell breaks loose, volatility spikes, everybody's imploding. I think 200 something people blew up alone just on Terabit. Like, dude, that's a lot of people in one in one day for for options.
00:36:49
Speaker
um how How did you deal with that day as like the the most famous wall setting person on on Twitter? dude I was on the computer all day and then i went outside and then it blew up. So just listen in there. Don't go outside.
00:37:08
Speaker
i literally went for lunch or something and then the thing imploded. yeah I think that the biggest problem there is that APIs went down. So there was nothing you can do. Like Binance API went down. Darabit was, I think they said they weren't down, but I i think they were. um we We have a co-located server there and we couldn't reach it. So something happened, right? um we also just run like a different book right like a lot of people um like let's say you just sell calls sell calls over and over okay well that's like a simple strategy price went down you made money right okay so even though you were short calls you were short vol you made money but let's say you have this whole portfolio you have this whole book of options and you're not delta hedging and you don't have the money to cover it
00:37:56
Speaker
you can implode, right? So you have you short calls, short puts, and price moves, out of whatever it was, thousands of dollars and in a few seconds. um You can implode if you can't get off the Delta Hedge fast enough.
Managing Risks in Trading
00:38:10
Speaker
Well, if the API is down, then you couldn't, or your server is down, you can't Delta Hedge. And it just becomes this, that's why it kept getting worse and worse. It wasn't just like over, right? um And there's a lot of people that were bigger than us that there was like some chatter that you know one of the biggest players on one of the biggest biggest exchanges lost all their money on that one exchange.
00:38:30
Speaker
Like we're talking, i don't know, a yard, i don't know, billions or you know hundreds of millions at least. Just poof. You know what i mean? like i don I don't know if it's true, but that was the chatter on the back end, right?
00:38:42
Speaker
So if you're coming in and you're like, oh, the options are easy. I'm just going to sell calls or puts all day long. And it's like, okay, sure, but you know be be careful or or be ready to get knocked out or you know have have these weird days. like if you're so If you have one Bitcoin, just sell one contract, sell one call or or one put, right? Don't sell 10 or seven. yeah Don't sell more than you have um to lose.
00:39:11
Speaker
There's a famous guy. I forget his name. I i should know it ah by now. But it's he's like a meme, right? So he was, i think it's like optionsellers.com. Like that was their fund. It's hundreds of millions of dollars. It's all, you know, and investors money. And they they just blew up, right? So like, it's not like, and and then he goes on YouTube, like crying that he he lost everybody's money, right? But it's still, I'll send you the link. it It's a crazy video, right? Yeah.
00:39:37
Speaker
Like it just happens all day, every day where everybody gets complacent. I'm just going to sell all day long. And then it just like pops. So like last one was a January before that was 1010.
00:39:49
Speaker
ah Before that was like January last year. Like, i mean, man, if you sold vol all year, at it if you just look at IV, right, because you you have this weird thing of You have something called VRP, which is IV versus ah RV, RealizeVol and IV. And this is when you can price, is it fair for me to sell options or or is it not fair for me to sell options? But let's just say all last year from January to October, it was just down.
00:40:19
Speaker
So you have a whole year. You're like, I'm winning, I'm winning, I'm winning. And then October comes and you lost everything. Like in one day, in one hour. turkey yeah the turkey the turkey chart, right? Yeah. So you have this too, right? So you can backtest this too, like, i don't know, selling 10 Delta calls for the last two years. Like you made money 22 months or 20 months, I think it was 22, 22 months out of the 24. And those two months, you lost all of your profit for those two months. So it's not as easy as like people want to make it out to be. And and maybe I like joke around and like, you know, like vol's meant to be sold or talking shit on Twitter. But like,
00:40:58
Speaker
It's more complex when you start having a full book of options versus if you're just putting on a call spread or selling a covered call. You have the one Bitcoin, you sell the one. OK, I'm in options. I'm exploring. I'm i'm you know making profit or or not. you know i'm I'm experimenting versus like, oh, I'm running a whole book. I have dynamic delta hedging. I'm not trying to implode.
00:41:22
Speaker
um You know, I'm market making, people are crossing the spread. It's a different <unk> different game, right? and And I don't expect anybody to play that game. you don't You don't have to play that game to be successful.
00:41:37
Speaker
There's levels to the the option game. just Just like perps, right? like I don't know, maybe maybe the one guy that comes in and takes he only takes people's liquidations. Maybe that's a winning strategy, you know eight out of 10 times. Okay, but then maybe the liquidations just keep coming and then you have this 10-10 cascade and and it just goes to zero.
00:41:57
Speaker
that Looking back, 10-10 wasn't even the worst of it, right? 10-10 was like the top. We're 40K under It had nothing to do with 10. That was just that one day, right?
Global Influences on Crypto Markets
00:42:08
Speaker
But...
00:42:09
Speaker
1010 we're way, way, way under.
00:42:14
Speaker
what's What's like a current perspective on the the market as whole after we've been, i feel like we've kind of, we've we've been for like a very bad period and now we're kind of like looking on the up and hyperliquid is at all time high and then might take us to Valhalla but Bitcoin is like not looking that great so.
00:42:31
Speaker
Dude, I just looked, that's disgusting, that's disgusting. So 1010 was like 120 to Bitcoin. That was, like or sorry, to right? It was like that drop.
00:42:48
Speaker
and you're like okay well we're 40% under that. like It's way worse than than we thought. 1010 was the pre-show to to what what came, right?
00:43:03
Speaker
um I don't know. I had a show with um
00:43:09
Speaker
with Hacker Man Ace. We run like this bi-weekly show, weekly show, and And last time, last show, was just like, I don't know, maybe i wasn't in the right mood and I was just talking shit, but it's true, right? Like you got rugged by a sitting president, okay? Meme coins.
00:43:26
Speaker
Meme coins are now not illegal. And then you got rugged by a sitting president. Bitcoin's 40K under 1010. You know, of course it's up 30% from the lows, but nobody bought at 60K. Everybody bought at 100. You're sitting way under.
00:43:41
Speaker
right Nobody bought at 60. You're down 25% from 100. And if Bitcoin goes to 200K, you're still poor.
00:43:51
Speaker
Same thing with ETH. Like ah ETH is 2K. It's been 2100. It's been 2100 for five years. And you're holding a high vol product. you know You held a 70, 100 vol product. I think ah you know it's 50 now. Okay, sure. 48. Okay, sure.
00:44:07
Speaker
ah yeah forty eight okay sure you're You're holding a high vol product and you didn't get the outsized return that you were expecting. Sure. If you bought at a thousand and wrote to 4,000, 5,000, whatever it was and sold. Okay. And you did did that five times.
00:44:24
Speaker
yeah Sure. You're the greatest trader, but that's not the case. When I go talk to my friends that are, you know, ETH maxis, or, you know, I even have a buddy here in Rio, he works with all these guys. He's he works with these big institutions, you know, he works for a huge crypto company and and he's like i don't president of some you know engineering or whatever it is, vice president. Right.
00:44:46
Speaker
And he's like an ETH Maxi like and he's he's having conversations with the ETH Foundation and he's just like, I'm just not seeing it like I did before. Right. All the institutions are coming in. They all want to build on ETH, you know but we're just not seeing like that price appreciation. And he's been holding this fucking rock for five years and he's literally flat or under all of his buys.
00:45:11
Speaker
And here in Brazil, we have something called Saliki, which is the overnight interest rate, borrow rate. It's 15% a year. it's fifteen percent a year Okay, this is common, like it's high. Okay, sure. But it's 14.75. Okay, whatever. It's been high for many years. He could have put it in and got 15% a year and been just fine. Sure, you have currency risk. But then if you go look at USDBRL ah around the same time of ETH, even earlier, let's call it 2020, we've been in this range from five to six usd brl and if you look in the last year from december or january yeah december dude it's down 20 so like if you held brl against the dollar you made 20 doing nothing in dollar-based terms and you made 15 on top of that that was one of the greatest trades i've ever taken you know uh uh in like a forex kind of situation
00:46:17
Speaker
right And so for five years, he could have been getting... It wasn't exactly five years because in 2020, rates were like 2%, but it it was every month it was going up. right So, whatever. Roughly, he could have been making 10% over the past five years.
00:46:32
Speaker
Sure, you have the currency risk, but ETH is flat over the past five
Market Dynamics and Regulations
00:46:35
Speaker
years. And he's all in ETH. He's not like a fiat. yeah No, he's like, I'm serious. it's He's like an ETH guy. Like only ETH.
00:46:43
Speaker
Like it's like only fans, but it's only ETH. I should make him a hat, dude. Only ETH. Only ETH. He doesn't have stocks. He doesn't have shit. It's literally only ETH. So you know you get in this weird situation where you're like, okay, you held, if if you bought at 15 cents at the whatever ICO, or you know you bought it at 90 bucks, like who cares what you're who cares that it's 2K, right? You're up mega, right? But if you bought at three, four, five, and now it's two, like you really made a bad investment,
00:47:11
Speaker
ah a generational investment? I don't even know, you know? like Like, if we take everything out of crypto, like everything stock related is going up, every index is going up, you know, Japanese index is up, Euro index are up, Brazilian index, US index, like everything is ripping besides crypto. And maybe we were the first mover and, you know, maybe everything has time to fall.
00:47:37
Speaker
Right. But I don't, I just don't see like, like that's the case. Mm hmm. So that's my rant. Can Hyperliquid save us?
00:47:48
Speaker
Dude, at the very beginning, I think I was like a big critic of Hyperliquid and just like every other probe stacks, like why do we need another one? um At the beginning, you know, the features were kind of shit. that They did like some maintenance on like FOMC or like, you know, CPI data, whatever it was, like nonfarm payroll. Like it's just like simple shit.
00:48:11
Speaker
But do they have 11 people? they They make a billion dollars and make a yard. ah They have Colt following, the product works. ah you know Now is a great product, but at the beginning, right you had those stepping stones and it was pretty shit. But I think you know a lot of beginning protocols are pretty shit, but it's at what, all time highs, 60s, something 60s.
00:48:34
Speaker
ah They just did the Circle, USDC, Coinbase partnership, but it wasn't It wasn't me who said it, it was a high stakes cap. He's like, yeah, you still have like hacking risks. You still have like ah enforcement risks. Like what if the US is just like, yeah, we're done. Like that's it. You know, you got too big hyperliquid. You're, you're the target now.
00:48:57
Speaker
The thing goes down fucking 30% in a day. Right? So i feel I feel like we have until Trump isn't president anymore and until that happens. So most like yeah crime season. Yeah. Yeah. We have some time.
00:49:08
Speaker
Yeah. after After, like, if you get Democrat in 2028, it might all be over for, like, all of us completely. But until then... The other thing, right, is, like, there's the world, right? So the only issue where you run into this is that you were allowing U.S. persons to trade on your exchange willingly or unknowingly, you know, knowingly letting them...
00:49:33
Speaker
Yeah, allegedly, whatever word you want to use that that to trade there. But if you ban all US, s which, okay, they all say they do, they they, you know, okay, but you have this, all this VPN stuff, you you know, at some point, you need some layer of KYC. I don't know, you know, can't wait for KYC on Hyperliquid. Like that was the meme or whatever, right? But who Who knows where this leads? But I know when you get too big, and I think we saw it in BitMEX, we saw it in Luna, you know like you're a target, right? So you have to be careful of that.
00:50:09
Speaker
And mean, Hyperliquid is obviously number one in DEX. in des Dexland, right? like they're not Not even number one. Dexland, they're huge in in just terms of volumes, right? yeah Their open interest on Bitcoin was like $2 billion last time I looked. OKEx was $3 billion. They're not a small player anymore. you know It's $100 million versus $3 billion. it's Sure, it's still a billion oi difference, but it it's huge now, man. It's it's huge.
00:50:42
Speaker
So when our options come into Hyperliquid, they started this burps, or sorry, they started this ah prediction market kind of thing or binary options. Like it's just a matter of time where they're like, okay, now we have options on the front end and you can trade it, right? Like it has not, it's just a matter of time, right? What what do you think about Bitcoin and then after after we concluded that ETH is dead and Hyperliquid is looking good for now?
00:51:08
Speaker
Even after we like underperformed so much. it's certainly like What what's an scenario do we do we even need at this point for Bitcoin to like go back to all time high
Long-term Crypto Market Outlook
00:51:16
Speaker
and beyond? Hmm. ah ah um I don't know, man. Give us something. Oh, man.
00:51:26
Speaker
So copious. No, okay. Bitcoin is like this chameleon thing, right? So like, okay, it's a risk asset, right? We're the first mover. It's the last free market. This Bitcoin thing's great. you know then Then the next thing we just changed our narrative, right? Okay, now it's digital gold. you know this It's amazing. It's the best gut. Inflation hedge, all this stuff. Okay, sure, if you go look at Turkish Lira, I think it's down 99% or something. Like, you know, go look at the Argentine peso. Like, yeah I think it's at all-time highs still, right? Or maybe not against the peso now, but definitely against Turkish Lira, right? It's at all-time highs. So for different people, different scenarios, yes. I also think that...
00:52:04
Speaker
It is, I don't want to say digital gold, but it it has value. it's It's not just worth one trillion because of nothing. right It has value in that you can move it across borders willing and freely, ah unlike trying to get on a plane with bars of gold and they're like, what are what are you doing now?
00:52:23
Speaker
And when people are in need of ah a safe haven, like if there's a war or, you know, whatever political unrest or and they need to flee their their country, ah try to do that with gold or with silver or whateverladium whatever, palladium, whatever you want to call versus, you know, a Bitcoin on a gold storage and and you can make it out and somebody will always buy that.
00:52:48
Speaker
from you, right? like we're We're past the point of where like this is a pet rock. It's definitely here to stay. Blockchain technology is real. But, like okay, Bitcoin can still go, I don't know, I'm just talking crap, right? Bitcoin can go to 40k, but it still has that that value to it that you can move it and you can flee your home country if there's some some chaos or some unrest, some you know war. what You can still move it, right? But we're not seeing... i mean, Bitcoin's up 30% since like this Iran war started, 20-something percent last time I checked.
00:53:26
Speaker
it's It's not at $200K, but it also we also don't have the spotlight on us anymore, where ah like the US was like, oh, we're going to build this Bitcoin strategic reserve or crypto reserve, which just meant that they were going to take well Yeah, which just meant that they were going to take, they have crypto scattered around all these different agencies, and they're going to put it all under the treasury to manage. And then the treasury is the overseer of all crypto assets. That never meant that they were going to go out and buy ah Bitcoins or other crypto with taxpayer money, which is what they made it sound like, which is why we had this hype, right? Now you have this clarity thing. We don't have much clarity yet. It's actually kind of crazy that people actually thought that they would like buy Bitcoin with like taxpayer money for like no reason. We literally went from whatever that was, 60-something to 120k on this thesis, right? oh But then you had a Sailor was going absolutely nuts, right? But when you just have Sailor and you just have Tom Lee for ETH and they' they're just like the marginal buyer, like...
00:54:29
Speaker
Dude, if Bitcoin goes to a new high, Saylor is like a genius. We are all laughing at him. Oh, how'd you get filled at 81 and it's 77? Like you're an idiot, whatever. Right. But if it goes to whatever, even brand new high, 130, 120, dude, he's up billions of dollars. Like he might be the greatest trader of all, like if he's right. Right. If it goes to 200, He's up billions and billions. like We're just laughing at him now because it's down. But when it's up, nobody's going be laughing. He won't be laughing.
00:55:00
Speaker
um but what What do we have to save us? I don't know, man. I don't know. like We have the space that's grown. The space has continued to grow. Regulations are obviously coming. But I had this conversation with my ETH buddy. If everybody is building on ETH and wants to build on ETH, then why isn't the price up?
00:55:21
Speaker
Because we don't need the price to go up for people to build on ETH. We actually need it less. Like gas needs to be near zero, which means ETH is worth less. It's not that like we have NFTs now and you need ETH and, you know, gases, $900 to mint this fucking monkey on your screen, you know, or this. Dude, that's a real story.
00:55:43
Speaker
I burned $900 minting an NFT and I've never done anything on mainnet ever again. So, and now it's not 900 bucks. you know now Now after some upgrades, it it would be much less, but you know you so you need activity, sure, but activity doesn't mean that ETH needs to be $900 gas fee anymore, right? You need it. If you want billions of people to use it, it needs to be less. We're probably still early.
00:56:10
Speaker
you know Blockchain's real, but like i don't I don't know what brings us back to to all-time highs. like We have every buyer in the book. We had every institution in the book. Vol is just going to go down. If anything, vol gets sold off and we just see like this slow grind up of like a more mature market. But you know who it's worth 30 vol asset now. we're We're not going to see this 20K a day moves anymore, or 10K a day like like we used to have. So um
00:56:41
Speaker
I don't know. I'm not a believer. i'm also my you know I've been here for a decade, right? So maybe maybe my views are a little bit different. Like I held through whatever, 100 to 1000 back to 100. Then I held, you know, up to 20K back to three. Then I held 60 to 30 to 60 back to 15. And and now we're at 76. And it's like, man, if you told me 10 years ago that this thing was going to be 76K, like, holy shit, right? Like I definitely did it wrong, you know, looking back. But like now if you if you tell your buddies like,
00:57:21
Speaker
They're like, man, I bought out 100K. Like, fuck, like I'm down, you know, 30%. And Bitcoin's just not in the these like daily conversations that that I'm having anymore, right? So how do you feel about it? I know i know you were interviewing me, but and I was going on my rant, but...
00:57:39
Speaker
That's a good question. i don't know. i'm I'm a bit more optimistic than I was a couple of months ago, I guess, because we're not like at the at the total death bottom anymore. And we got like a little bit of ah of a boost of of the lows.
00:57:50
Speaker
And um hype is like giving a bit of hope, like growing and then reaching the all time highs, even though we are in a bear market. yeah.
00:58:02
Speaker
yeah i don't know i think bitcoin itself is like a good thing and will probably keep going up maybe just needs like a a little different environment like a bit of the spotlight from ai it needs to come back to us or whatever like something needs happen And I think it's also good that we didn't decline as much as we have in other bear markets before, at least yet.
00:58:25
Speaker
um But we already had this thing of like the underperformance for the the whole last year against gold. and like Because that's kind of the problem when you exhaust all the narratives. like It's digital to gold, but then gold goes up and Bitcoin does nothing. And then it's like tech stock beta, and then tech stocks go up, but Bitcoin does nothing. So like what but what is it? Maybe maybe it can just do Bitcoin and do its thing. Yeah, maybe it's just Bitcoin.
00:58:49
Speaker
Yeah. I think we have to to wait for the reflexivity to kick in again. Like we we're thinking it's kind of like shitty now because the price is down, but when the prices will be like higher again, then we will think better of it again. i think that Bitcoin is reflexivity. That's kind of like what it what it is in my view.
00:59:09
Speaker
Well, like if pick Bitcoin goes 130K, maybe we'd be having a different conversation. But like, you know, when when we have this ah
00:59:18
Speaker
you know i don't I don't know. It's not even like a bear market. It's just like this down market, right? And it's just flat. And we've changed and been a chameleon to to fit every sort of narrative that we possibly can. Like you said, the narrative's kind of run out. like like What do we have after that?
00:59:36
Speaker
And maybe it can just be Bitcoin. How about we just start saying that narrative? like There is some value to it. ah Maybe it goes up when all the AI agents realize that they need money.
00:59:50
Speaker
you know yeah right You never know. but Maybe we hit new highs. you know we don't We don't have this narrative now. We're kind of just floating. ah Same price that we were in April, same price that we were February this year, same price that we were April 2025, which was the tariff lows, and the same price that we were November 24, which is inauguration.
01:00:16
Speaker
of ah not inauguration, sorry, the election win of of Trump. Right? So we've been this again, we've been the same thing for two years.
01:00:27
Speaker
ah You know, price is the same and and we're coming at the end of this halving cycle, right? So October, i think, will kind of be like, that's where the halvers, I don't know, the people who still believe in the halving are saying that the bottom is is like October.
01:00:44
Speaker
ah What do you think of this four year cycle?
01:00:49
Speaker
Honestly, but before last year, or like before October happened, I thought it's kind of that because it's kind of like we have all these institutions now on ETFs and and spot flows and it's kind of a more mature asset class. But then it it happened just the same as it happened every time before. So maybe there's something to it.
01:01:08
Speaker
So i don't know if I can like fully discard it. But I also think it is a bit different now and I don't think we would go like minus 80% or whatever because there's like more, it's like a bigger asset class and there's ETFs and all of that stuff. And it's not gonna, like you always say, ah the the ball is going down, and like we're not gonna have these big swings anymore and maybe we'll just like, there's a bit more of a floor below it but there's also a bit more of a ceiling above it.
01:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, I agree there, right? Like, ah until we go to 40K. No, you know, like you know i'm I'm there too, right? Like, there's a marginal buyer, there's more institutions, there's ETFs, there's bigger, like, sure, the thing could float down. We saw it hit 60.
01:01:48
Speaker
We've had a 30% run since then. um you know, i don't want to do any price predictions, but I would assume vol down spot up. Wall keeps going down over time, spot keeps grinding up over time. But now if we do look and we're in like this weird 30 handle range, this is usually near the bottom of fall before there's like some crazy spike. That doesn't mean that it happens tomorrow, could happen in six months. But, you know, it it i wouldn't be surprised if we had some event again.
01:02:20
Speaker
And a wall spike is usually bearish. Are there British wall spikes? ah Spot up, vol up is a meme, but it happens sometimes. But there's ah there was a big... ah He's a smart guy. He's not like... He's super smart. He worked for one of these ah etf or ETF providers. And he he's like, you know, spot's going to go up, vol's going to go up, like this is why, like a whole thesis. And like the the meme, I was like, no, man, like, is the spot up, vol up in the room with us now? like Oh, yeah, remember, yeah.
01:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, and it's like, that guy's not dumb. He's super smart. He's probably smarter than me, but it's like, in this kind of market dynamic, when you have, like, crazy institutions now coming, like, you're just not going to get what what you thought, and we just saw spot up, vol down, like, forever, and and now ah we have this grind up, you know, 30% grind up, and vol's just going down. You know, it it works...
01:03:19
Speaker
like that normally, but sure, you could have spot up vol up, but it's not not as common as people think. Yeah.
01:03:29
Speaker
Is there anything anything else you want to say? I don't want to take up too much of your of your time. ah Whatever, man. we had a good chat. Thanks thanks for having me on. thanks laura Thanks for coming on. It was a nice discussion, a bit more options stuff than, I think it is the first time I talked this much about options because usually it's just like other kinds of, ah or most people just trade perps and and do quants or whatever. So it was kind of interesting to talk about that a bit as well and I hope the the viewers are also gonna enjoy it.
01:03:59
Speaker
Great, sounds good. Thank you for having me man. Appreciate it. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.