Dealer gamma, perpetual funding, forced liquidation flow and on-chain liquidity.
29 articles in this section of the Journal, grouped by topic. Every one is free to read.
On-Chain Structure 20
- A Ticker Is Not a TokenOn-chain a symbol is a string anyone can write, and one ticker can cover many tokens. The contract address is the only thing identifying what you actually buy.
- Gas Fees Are a Trading Cost, Not a TechnicalityA fixed cost per transaction changes which strategies are viable and which position sizes make sense. It has no real equity analogue.
- Holder Concentration: Many Wallets or a FewThe same market cap can be held by thousands of wallets or by five. It is the same number describing two completely different exit risks.
- How an AMM Prices a TokenThere is no order book and no quote. An automated market maker derives price from the ratio of what is in the pool, which changes how every trade behaves.
- Impermanent Loss, and Why Liquidity LeavesA pool automatically sells what is rising and buys what is falling. That is the whole mechanism, and it explains why depth departs from tokens doing nothing wrong.
- Liquidity Added or Pulled: Depth as a FlowA pool depth reading is a stock. The useful signal is the direction it is moving - and that only exists if something was recording yesterday.
- MEV and Sandwich Attacks: The Cost You Cannot See on the ChartYour order is visible before it settles, and that visibility is worth money to someone else. What MEV extracts, and which part of it you can actually defend against.
- On-Chain Liquidity vs an Order BookMost tokens have no options book, so there is no gamma to read. What they have is liquidity structure - and when the real risk is the exit, that is the better read.
- Pool Depth Is Not VolumeTwo numbers constantly reported side by side and constantly conflated. One says what you can trade; the other says what was traded. They can point opposite ways.
- Slippage and Price Impact Are Not the Same ThingOne is the cost of your own size against the curve; the other is what changed between quote and confirmation. Traders conflate them and mis-price both.
- Solana vs EVM: Two Different MicrostructuresThe same trade behaves differently depending on the chain underneath it. Block times, fee models and pool designs differ enough to change execution outcomes.
- The Liquidity Lifecycle of a New TokenDepth on a new token follows a recognisable arc rather than a random walk. Knowing which stage you are in changes what the same depth reading means.
- Tokenised Stocks and a Tape That ClosesA stock token trades continuously while the equity it references does not. That gap is structural, and it is not the arbitrage it looks like.
- What Is Robinhood Chain, and Why Does It Matter to a Trader?A broker running its own settlement layer changes where liquidity forms. What Robinhood Chain is, and what it means structurally rather than as an announcement.
- What the Quote Asset Tells YouA token paired against a stablecoin, against the gas asset, or against another token are three different instruments with three different risks.
- When the Exit Does Not Exist: Honeypots and Unsellable TokensSome tokens can be bought and not sold, by design in the contract itself. The chart looks perfect and the sell never executes.
- Where Is the Price Actually Made?Pools and exchanges quote the same asset and one of them is usually following. Knowing which changes what a divergence means.
- Why Wrapped Assets Exist, and What They Cost YouWETH, WBTC and their relatives are plumbing, not products. Knowing why they exist explains several things that otherwise look like duplicate markets.
- Why a Thin Pool Behaves Like a Short-Gamma RegimeShallow depth and negative dealer gamma are different mechanisms that produce the same behaviour: moves that feed themselves.
- Why the Biggest Pool on a Chain Is Usually PlumbingRank any chain by turnover and the gas asset against its stablecoin wins every time. That pool is infrastructure, and counting it as demand corrupts the ranking.
Crypto Positioning 4
- Crypto Funding Rates: A Published Price for CrowdingFunding is the periodic payment between longs and shorts that holds a perpetual future near spot. It is the clearest read on which side of a crypto trade is crowded - and equities have no equivalent.
- Liquidation Cascades: Forced Flow at Prices You Can ComputeA liquidation cascade is forced selling that has to happen, at levels derived from open interest and leverage. It is the crypto answer to a gamma squeeze.
- Open Interest and Price: The Four RegimesPrice and open interest moving together or apart sorts crypto into four regimes - new longs, new shorts, short covering and long liquidation. It is the cleanest positioning read in the market.
- Spot-Perp Basis: Reading the Price of LeverageThe gap between a perpetual future and spot is the market's price for leveraged exposure. Widening basis is leverage arriving; a collapsing one is leverage leaving.
Crypto Dealer Flow 3
- Bitcoin Gamma Exposure (GEX), ExplainedBitcoin has a dealer map. Deribit carries almost all crypto options open interest, so BTC gamma exposure can be computed the same way it is for SPY - and it moves spot the same way.
- IBIT Is Not Bitcoin: Two Books, Two MapsBTC and ETH each sit under two options books - crypto-native and US-listed ETF. Different multipliers, hours and expiries; reading one as the other is an error.
- The 08:00 UTC Expiry: Why Crypto Pins Every Single DayDeribit options expire daily at 08:00 UTC. That gives crypto a pinning study with 365 samples a year, where equity monthly opex offers twelve.
Crypto Costs 1
- What It Actually Costs to Trade Crypto on RobinhoodRobinhood crypto is commission-free, but not free. The markup is disclosed in its own API, and a round trip typically costs around 1.9%.
Crypto Volatility 1
- DVOL: The Crypto VIX, and How to Read ItDVOL is Deribit's 30-day implied volatility index for BTC and ETH, built the way VIX is. Divide it by 20 and you have the market's implied daily move.