solving frag liq with my friends
Astral
Joined December 2025
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BrettTheTRDR retweeted
Finance was built for humans: working hours, manual approvals, and slow trust. Its next users may not be.
At Amber Group, we believe AI agents will need what once felt like friction in crypto: machine-readable rules, programmable settlement, and provable digital ownership.
That’s where agentic finance begins — and why we’ve believed from day one that the convergence of AI and finance is inevitable.
Where do you think agents will reshape finance first?
#AgenticFinance #AIAgents #Crypto #DigitalAssets #Fintech #WealthManagement #Web3 #InstitutionalCrypto
BrettTheTRDR retweeted
But the richest man keeps pushing the narrative that October 11 had nothing to do with them, just as they always do.
No matter what facts or publicly available evidence are presented—including the company’s guilty plea in the U.S.—they simply deny or dismiss them. Accountability is never the response.
Instead of facing the problems, acknowledging what happened, and strengthening their risk controls, they accuse anyone who raises legitimate questions of being “jealous.” 🤣
Everyone thinks you’re crazy and out to lunch. Until reality sets in, and the illusions of what is vs what we choose to see escalate to the point of not being able to hide from the truth, aka reality.
Funny enough, people listened to me more and heard my opinions WAY more before establishing and branding myself to where I am today.
This is new for me. I’ve always put energy and focus into truth will prevail, and darkness will never win over the light. But the difference today vs former - is that wisdom now has started to become very visible.
What fights are worth the energy, who is projecting their own flaws and issues - instead of taking accountability and looking in the mirror. The less I fight back nowadays, trying to “prove a point” or “win an argument “.
One of the biggest learning lessons early on from this, is the more I just don’t “choose or have to prove my point” and just put energy into where I’m understood and respected instead of trying to “prove it” - the more I step into my confidence and convictions vs colluding it with psychological garbage. The more the other side comes to the truth themselves and or continue to go down a bad route that is in the wrong direction the train should be going and are further from where they are hoping to be vs where they could be.
TLDR - I have zero time , energy, desire to play the “I’m smarter than you game”. It’s exhausting and boring. And the major focus in life is about growing and surrounding myself with other like minded individuals where I can spend that energy less about proving and more about growing / nurturing/ and elevating the people around me - in return , results into them elevating me.
God bless, exciting times ahead.
Be true to yourself and never let someone make you feel small, anytime that happens, it’s usually an intimidation factor as the other side actually knows your onto something and rather keep it for themselves and roll with it than allow you to step into your light and moment.
BrettTheTRDR retweeted
Compute trading probably won't happen anytime soon.
...and I really want it to. I also want to see @BrettHarrison win.
I watched people try and fail to financialize LNG liquidity for years.
As I study compute mkts, I am increasingly convinced they will go the way of LNG for the following reasons:
1/ Due to obsolescence, there is no enduring benchmark:
A contract on H100s loses relevance as the world rolls to H200/B200/GB200/Rubin. WTI, meanwhile, has been useful for decades.
2/ The chip universe will fragment:
NVIDIA won't be the only game in town for long. Soon you'll have AMD, Google TPUs, Trainium, custom hyperscaler ASICs, inference chips, sovereign AI chips, and workload-specific silicon competing for inference & training cycles. This will make benchmarking even more of a nightmare.
3/ The physical is too bespoke:
Successful commodities futures have a solid benchmark w/ physical delivery at a hub (to prevent manipulation) plus a few relevant bases. In compute, it's the opposite: no solid benchmark and bases galore.
PCIe vs SXM, InfiniBand vs Ethernet, 8-GPU node vs 4,096-GPU cluster, region, uptime, reserved vs spot, bare metal vs containerized, storage, egress, security, support, etc...too many taxonomies to financialize.
4/ Incumbents benefit from opacity:
This one really murdered the LNG exchange startups.
Just like Vitol/BP/Shell, the best-positioned compute purveyors make money from relationships & information asymmetry. They will not abdicate that edge for a few bps of startup equity.
5/ You need physical settlement for compute trading to be sustainable.
There are already plenty of potential “hubs,” but until real capacity can be delivered, rejected, upgraded, discounted, or arbitraged against the screen, the futures contract is too prone to manipulation by the oligopoly of compute producers & marketers.
Physical settlement, or a real EFP mechanism, is what forces convergence. Cash settlement should come after that, not before.
---
Compute will probably financialize eventually...but not as "compute." It will start as narrow, ugly, basis-heavy contracts around specific chips, regions, terms, and vintages. These will probably be traded peer to peer, forming an OTC market more akin to treasury bonds than a futurized derivatives mkt akin to oil or crypto.
A Guide to the US Financialization of Compute
We frequently receive questions about compute trading from neoclouds, GPU-as-a-service providers, data center operators, training and inference companies, energy companies, HFTs, brokerages, investment banks, FCMs, CTAs, RIAs, ETF issuers, VCs, and others. Here's a current summary of the market structure and participants:
Three main participants in the US compute derivatives universe:
1. CFTC-regulated derivatives exchanges (DCMs)
Definition
• Exchanges where CFTC-regulated futures, options on futures, and swaps can be legally traded in the US.
• Designs, certifies, and lists derivatives contracts. Engages with third-party index providers for cash-settled derivatives’ underlying settlement prices.
• Facilitates capital formation and investment in new US commodity, currency, and energy products.
• Responsible for market monitoring, position limits, circuit breakers, recordkeeping, and protection against market manipulation.
Participants
• American Innovation Exchange: Architect acquired a DCM this year to launch the first AI-industry-dedicated futures exchange in the US. Going live soon with listed compute futures and options, with index data from Compute Desk.
• CME: the largest US futures exchange by volume, concentrated in stock indexes, rates, and agriculture. In an exclusive agreement with data provider Silicon Data to list compute futures later this year.
• ICE Futures US: the second-largest US futures exchange (run by NYSE's parent), concentrated in energy/power and soft agricultural derivatives. ICE announced intent to list compute futures in an exclusive agreement with data provider Ornn.
(pending regulatory review)
Role in compute futures/options
• Create derivatives contracts that allow commercial compute consumers, compute producers, financial firms, and individuals to hedge and speculate on the price of compute for different GPU types.
• Build a broad liquidity profile to create price discovery across the futures expiry curve.
• Facilitate sufficient liquidity and volume for the creation and redemption of compute ETFs, currently registered by six ETF issuers.
2. Compute index providers
Definition
Independent third parties that combine rental price offers and private transactions into single values representing the cost of compute per accelerator.
Participants
• Compute Desk, Silicon Data, Ornn, SemiAnalysis.
• Free aggregators (not formal index calculators): United Compute, AI Multiple, GPU Lease Index, CloudePrice_net, Thunder Compute.
Role in compute futures/options
• Standardize pricing data across the range of GPU manufacturers, SKUs, configurations, and geographies to build a useful index for hedging by commercial consumers and producers of compute.
• Build non-manipulable, IOSCO-compliant benchmarks for use in CFTC-regulated cash-settled futures contracts on DCMs.
3. Spot/forward compute capacity platforms
Definition
• Marketplaces that match customers seeking short- and long-term capacity with the neoclouds and GPU-as-a-service providers that make delivery.
Participants
• Nvidia DGX Cloud Lepton, Compute Desk, Compute Exchange, Vast_ai, Andromeda, VoltagePark, HydraHost, RunPod, Ornn, SF Compute, Shadeform, Spheron, Hyperbolic, SaladCloud, Prime Intellect, Clore_ai, Cudo Compute, Akash Network, Digital Ocean, Aethir.
Role in compute futures/options
• Collect and normalize raw GPU pricing data for index providers.
• Aggregate fragmented physical supply/demand and establish compute grades as precursor to development of physically-settled exchange-traded futures.
• Create transparency in a market where suppliers may prefer opaque pricing power.
————————————————————
Architect’s thesis is that compute will mature as a US exchange-traded asset class very quickly. We're excited to compete with incumbent exchanges, support index providers, provide ETF liquidity, and partner with capacity platforms to augment our cash-settled futures markets with physical delivery capabilities.
With market condition like rn, global macro headwinds as we see, I would just be very careful with counter party risk.
Remember, there is massive players in these games now that can eat much more pain and suffering than you could ever in a million life times.
Sometimes war isnt always present to the eye so clearly. I don't say this to add fud, predictive take/stance etc.... but I just have that feeling inside me, prolly for like 1-2 weeks now that something really bad is coming re our global economy/crypto.
The contagion levels are now railed to tradfi broker/dealer more than ever - which is why , I probably am mainly not feeling to positive above whats to come.
But a black swan around now , would put massive stress on every product in our industry cefi/defi/lendborrow etc... So - doesnt hurt to maybe ship some inventory over to the ledger/cold storage incase of future potential counter party risk.
I hope were better than FTX times, I know we are. But the one main thing that really taught me, is how much the absolute UNEXPECTED UNIMAGINABLE CAN HAPPEN.
so maybe ptsd, but I rather be safu than sorry rn.
This all started with 10/10 btw. You know.... similar to another unowhat.
The people demand the truth around 10/10 - that is likely going to be the biggest criminal day in history we will EVER come across in this industry, and its comical how much lack of attention and focus are around that data/the coorelation to massive arrests/Dubai VARA fining a bunch of crypto shops , which has only escalated.
NOT YOUR KEYS NOT UR CRYPTO EOD - BUT I STILL LOVE U CEXS, THAT ARE NOT CRIME BASED.
THERE IS A WORLD WHERE WE ALL CAN EXIST, BUT WE NEED TO EXTERMINATE THE BAD ACTORS BEFORE THIS CAN HAPPEN AND WE FINALLY CAN PUSH FORWARD TO CREATE THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM WE ALL WANT AND DESERVE.
I interviewed someone at my last job, smart guy. Built out his crypto desk at a mid-level European bank.
End of the interview; knowing our shops focus was super heavy on market making for alt coins, he asked:
“What happens if this is the end of the alt markets, and alts never come back. What will you guys do”.
TBH , at that time, I never even considered this to be an option.
Fast forward. Maybe he’s right? Maybe he’s not 100000% right. But maybe he’s right that we really never see alt flow like we did previous cycles.
I still check the cexs delisting announcements frequently. And it’s more and more become true his statement.
Look, I’m not ignorant to the fact that there will be a non top 20 cycle. When , who knows. But the point is that once memes came in, market makers, crypto projects, vcs all got incredibly walked over by this new era of - MM == Bad , Projects just want to dump on you for exit liq, VCs just want there seed -> TGE , investment paid back if not more - rest of vesting cliff is just fixed income (ovbs not fixed by just stable payments etc).
I do believe that era is over. When we see alt coin rotation and alt szn - I just don’t think you have the participants that historically we have had , less informed , less ptsd scars , ai to compile all this research is minutes vs grinding discord trenches for good vs bad acting projects.
So where does this go.
Imo - we’ve bridged the gap between traditional finance and crypto - it’s early stages ,but here.
Unfortunately that comes with dollar influencer behind decision making - creating the banking cabal to try and bully there way into the crypto systems and gain control over something they always have been scared of.
Jeeze I remember my summer associate stint at the bank , my end of summer pitch/report was around blockchain and the use cases in capital markets.
I picked XRP at the time, and did a full pitch on how we could essentially replace the entire global trade finance e2e flow with immutable blocks.
I was young and naive , but I look back now and that was the start of the banks getting scared. This was almost 10years ago now.
You see. This dragged out as long as it could. But you can’t bury something that fundamentally makes sense to better our financial systems. But you can keep it a “controlled” fire by not allowing it to spread to masses.
Where are we right now? I don’t really know.
Onchain has its pros/cons. Cexs pros/cons. 3rd party custody pros/cons. It really just feels like an era of you can’t just win in on spot anymore. You have to spread out. It’s scary. It carries risk. But it’s the only way to navigate a new landscape we haven’t experienced before .
So I continue to delve into whatever , rabbit hole has been longer lasting than I can ever remember . But I still wake up excited , as each day is a mission to figure this out. To position my employees and founders to be ready for whatever may come/gets pushed to us.
Weird times, the most idk I’ve ever been in life tbh. But these times of transformation - enforce the need for patience . As this time of pause , is setting the stones and foundation of what’s to come.
This is why I am working towards Duel citizenship.
I love Canada, my partner is from Mexico.
I have a bit more of a “reason” of course to head down to Mexico.
What I think is important is noticing that Mexico is no longer labeled in public eye as just resorts.
Folks are finally really exploring the beauty of Mexico. Where Canadas get called “güero” just walking down the street. The real Mexico that has been clouded over for years , and labeled as unsafe etc.
I rather walk around Mexico at 4am than East Hastings/Moss Park/Skid Row etc… at 4am.
BrettTheTRDR retweeted
The CFTC just approved the first US-regulated bitcoin perpetual futures contract.
A perp is a futures contract that never expires.
Unlike traditional futures that settle on a fixed date and force you to roll into a new contract, a perp lets you hold the position indefinitely.
This works because to keep the price anchored to spot, longs and shorts exchange a funding rate every few hours. Whichever side is over-positioned pays the other.
Globally, perps did ~$85T in volume in 2025. The dominant crypto derivative globally - EXCEPT the US.
Perps were banned by the CTFC, whose framework was built for expiring futures - set settlement, basis convergence, weekday hours. Perps didn't fit.
As a result, for years, offshore exchanges built the deepest derivative market in crypto while US exchanges and trading firms were locked out entirely.
Billions in trading fees and funding rate yield got captured by foreign entities and capital. None of it could touch a US balance sheet.
Today, that has changed and the door has finally opened.
US based allocators that couldn't legally touch offshore venues can now get exposure to the most liquid derivative in crypto, and as more US exchanges list perps - that access only deepens.
At Blockhouse, we look forward to onboarding the asset managers, here at home, and closest to us. This is exactly the market we built our infrastructure to serve.
This is super smart, I truly believe this is the refinery vs product commodity situation in a new age form.
Now, anyone can refine, but what will always be needed is folks to install, manage, upgrade, etc.... a lot of that stuff is automated ovbs - but the physical labor of building/installing and then managing is where there is a ton of room for expansive market cap imo.
🚨BREAKING: Nvidia will pay you $1,000 a month to host a mini AI data center at your house.
It looks like a regular AC unit sitting in your yard. Nobody walking past would know what is inside.
Inside sits 16 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs and Dell servers running at full capacity.
A startup called Span builds and installs them. They are backed by Nvidia directly. The whole unit bolts onto your home and you get paid for the power and Wi-Fi you supply.
Some estimates put the monthly payout around $1,000. That is rent money just for hosting a box you never touch.
Span says the units deploy significantly faster and cheaper than traditional data centers. That is exactly why Nvidia is backing the suburban rollout instead of waiting for more commercial land.
The AI boom needed more compute. It found it in the suburbs.
The grid is being rebuilt one backyard at a time. Save this.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Span is partnering with Nvidia to pilot mini data centers (looking like AC units) in new homes. Homeowners pay a flat fee (e.g. $150/month) to Span, which covers their electricity and internet bills. The program does not involve Nvidia paying hosts $1,000 a month.
arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/the…
span.io/blog/span-anno…
realtor.com/news/trends/nv…
Monterrey has some of the best butchers around as well.
Carnes Finas San Juan beef is honestly the best meat I have ever tasted.
@CFSanJuan
It's gonna come in place, for real
*Consistent*
open.spotify.com/track/6p9G2…
Its not onchain vs offchain matching.
Both have flaws, both have risks.
It's about advancements in both - just like rfqb4ob not vs.
I lean more towards onchain of course being crypto/defi native. But doesnt mean we cannot also have really solid offchain.
It comes down to the individual users, some will not care to have offchain matching/settling - they likely smash taker buttons only anyways - let them live and breath. Some do the math of every fractional cent each tx will cost, and have the math, models, and algos to understand there price vs markets. Not everyone does this. Onchain favours latter, offchain favours former. We can all exsist and advance in parellel, and not even just advance, but also synergize to strengten digital assets as a whole.
We often get to into the weeds with these conversations, instead of appreciating the advancements in both realms.
#WEAREDIGITALASSETS
pls stop this.
RFQB4OB NOT RFQVSOB
Be better. See it to where there is a world where both fruitfully can exist and synergize.
Its not this vs that, its this and that & this or that.
Oh wow everyone is seeing how this can all work together now, we can have all the flavours. A world of not black and white.
What a beautiful circumstance.
RFQB4OB NOT RFQVSOB
KIND REMINDER ITS NEVER BEEN ABOUT RFQ VS OB, THATS PROPAGANDA TO MAKE EVERYONE FIGHT.
THERE IS ENOUGH RFQ, OTC, INTENTS, OBS WHERE SYNERGY BETWEEN THEM ALL IS WHERE THE SYSTEM FLOURISHES.
ITS NOT THIS OR THAT , ONE OR THE OTHER
ITS
RFQ B4 OB
NEVER
RFQ VS OB
#wearedefi