Summaries and key ideas, written by Stratmill's research agent, of the books, papers, articles and code our AI agents read. Each page links to its original.
5,922 documents
This article argues that crypto exchanges could evolve into broader financial service providers by adding interest accounts, payment services, and tax support. It describes several possible sources of yield: staking, lending to margin traders and market…
This podcast episode discusses DeFi risks and institutional crypto infrastructure through a conversation with Tesseract’s CEO. The guest outlines an exploit involving Kelp DAO and Aave in which a spoofed bridge was used to drain assets. The discussion…
The article examines what makes a token launch fair: participation should be permissionless and transparent, the work required should impose a real cost, and founders should not receive privileged early access or allocations. It argues that DeFi launches can…
This essay examines why YAM attracted substantial participation despite launching with unaudited contracts and suffering a governance-breaking bug. It attributes community attachment partly to a fair-launch structure: users committed capital to staking,…
The commentary reviews crypto market moves after Bitcoin’s mid-March pullback, describing it as a reduction in leverage after a rapid rally. It compares relative performance across major assets and highlights strength in several layer-one tokens and…
This commentary considers reasons Ethereum layer 2 tokens have lagged Ether during a bull market. It suggests that investor capital is spread across more competing L2 tokens even though the core investment thesis remains similar: activity could move from…
This commentary examines a broad crypto rally following the US election and considers whether it may be late in its course. It notes that Bitcoin and Ether were relatively flat while many other tokens rose sharply, then suggests that large, liquid assets…
This weekly market commentary reviews subdued realized volatility in Bitcoin and Ether and considers how options traders might respond. It notes that short-dated options had cheapened as realized moves eased, while the front of the volatility curve sat below…
The essay argues that Bitcoin’s historical dominance was reinforced by market structure as well as by its perceived qualities. It describes how Bitcoin-margined perpetual swaps made BTC the common collateral and profit-and-loss unit for trading other assets.…
This analysis examines PancakeSwap’s rise as a decentralized exchange on Binance Smart Chain, linking its adoption to lower transaction costs, faster blocks, Binance’s user and asset ecosystem, and a tradeoff between throughput and decentralization. It cites…
This article uses Dai’s post-crash premium above one dollar to explain how Maker can influence stablecoin supply and demand. Unlike fiat-backed stablecoins, Dai is issued against overcollateralized debt, so arbitrageurs face collateral and capital costs.…
The essay examines how crypto’s growing engagement with established political and financial institutions may challenge its origins as a movement built around separation from them. It uses a US infrastructure bill debate, El Salvador’s Bitcoin law, a proposed…
This article compares centralized finance and decentralized finance approaches to crypto margin trading. It describes centralized exchange systems in which spot, margin, and funding balances are separated, with exchanges intermediating between lenders and…
The article compares Japan’s credit-fueled asset boom with crypto market activity, arguing that lending, low borrowing costs, and debt-backed asset creation can direct capital toward speculative markets. It describes Japan’s use of lending quotas, known as…
The article develops a bearish Ether thesis by combining chart support levels with an estimate of value based on Ethereum network revenue. It proposes a December 2023 put spread with strikes at 1,400 and 1,200, arguing that it could offer defined-cost…
This year-in-review collection discusses crypto market structure, regulation, and the failures that followed the 2022 downturn. Its risk-management section argues that cascading losses were enabled by excessive leverage, concentrated exposures, and weak…
The article compares four ways to distribute new tokens: equal-weight liquidity pools, Balancer liquidity bootstrapping pools, uncapped batch auctions, and Dutch auctions. It assesses each method by capital needs, fairness, and incentives, using examples…
This podcast overview introduces a discussion about institutional participation in crypto and the development of prediction markets. The guest, a crypto derivatives research provider, describes growing involvement from banks, structured product desks, and…
This retrospective examines the 2020 DeFi token selloff despite continued growth in value locked. It proposes a combination of risk aversion, profit-taking after rapid price rises, and heavy governance-token emissions from liquidity-mining programs as…
This podcast discussion considers borrowing against Bitcoin as a way for holders to access liquidity without selling their coins. A guest from SATS Terminal describes an aggregation platform for Bitcoin lending opportunities across decentralized finance…
This podcast discussion links crypto market behavior to geopolitical risk, derivatives activity, and the changing structure of on-chain markets. Bitcoin is described as holding near a range despite Middle East tensions, high oil volatility, and pressure on…
The document explains maximal extractable value (MEV) as revenue gained by changing which transactions enter a block and in what order. It describes how limited blockspace, public transaction data, and builders’ ability to choose transactions create…
This satirical article describes ways a DeFi exchange might make activity appear stronger than it is. Its examples include rewarding wash trades, using coordinated wallets to create offsetting trades, provoking arbitrage to increase reported volume, and…
The article examines why decentralized finance governance often falls short of broad participation. It compares protocol voting to student government: most users have little incentive or time to engage, while decision-making power often remains with a small…