jakarta surprisingly nice

.@boros_fi by @pendle_fi is probably one of the more sophisticated DeFi products out there right now. We've had perps for years, with billions in open interest across exchanges, but the funding rate itself has been relatively difficult to trade independently. Especially considering how much capital is deployed in delta-neutral strategies where funding is a major component of returns. Boros creates a market for that exposure, allowing traders to take positions on expected funding rates through Yield Units (YU), with an implied APR determined by the market and settlements based on realized funding. The mechanics are pretty clever: Long YU = pay fixed, receive floating. Short YU = receive fixed, pay floating. Say the implied APR for BTC funding on Hyperliquid is 12% over the next 60 days, but you expect the realized rate to average 20%. Going long YU gives you exposure to that 8% spread. On $1M notional, that's approximately $13.2K over 60 days before fees, assuming you hold to maturity and realized funding averages 20%. The hedging side is where this becomes particularly useful. If you're running a spot-long/perp-short basis trade, you're collecting floating funding, which can fluctuate considerably depending on market conditions. Shorting YU against that exposure lets you receive a fixed rate while offsetting the floating component, effectively locking in the funding portion of your carry. You can also trade funding spreads between venues, opening up strategies around relative funding rates rather than just taking a view on a single exchange. There's another layer of complexity around how these positions are priced and margined. Even if the realized funding is moving in your favor, changes in implied APR can affect mark-to-market PnL and margin requirements before maturity. So there's still liquidation risk, even for someone running an otherwise delta-neutral strategy. It's interesting to see crypto derivatives developing to this level, especially as perp markets become increasingly liquid and institutional trading strategies become more common onchain. I'd expect funding-rate markets to become more relevant for market makers, basis desks and funds looking to manage their carry exposure more precisely.

Over the last few days I’ve been going into a few watch boutiques again, looking at AP, Patek and some other brands, and it randomly reminded me of something I used to do when I was 16/17. Back then I had a fairly big Instagram page covering entrepreneurship, collectables, etc, with an audience that skewed toward high-net-worth people. Through that page I met someone who became a really good friend and a mentor to me. He was older, already very successful in business, and one of the companies he had invested in was dealing watches on the secondary market. I already liked watches, so at some point he told me that if I could find buyers for some of the pieces they had, he’d give me a cut. So I started doing that. I learned more about references, pricing, which pieces actually moved, how dealers sourced inventory, margins, and also how important trust is when you’re trying to sell something worth hundreds of thousands, or sometimes millions, to someone you met online. Most of the stock started around €20k, but the average piece was probably well above €100k. They were much more focused on complicated Pateks, Richard Mille, rare independents and unusual pieces than on normal Rolexes. Some of the watches were multi-million euro pieces, which obviously made them incredibly hard to sell. Through that I also got to know other dealers. There was one in London who had some of the most insane watches I’d ever seen. Proper rare timepieces, the kind of stuff being sold to billionaires, presidents and serious collectors. He helped me source a lot of pieces and became a good friend. Another one in Miami was basically the Richard Mille king. He had a physical boutique too, which made things much easier because if I introduced someone to him they could actually go there, see the watch and deal face to face. And one thing I found funny pretty quickly was how much of this market happened on WhatsApp. Even deals for watches worth hundreds of thousands or millions. Pictures, prices, offers, sourcing, everything just moving around between dealers and clients in WhatsApp chats. There was also another problem. I didn’t own the kind of watches that got you into serious collector circles. So me and a dealer friend created a private WhatsApp group for collectors instead. He already knew a lot of serious people and had a great collection himself, so we invited them in and the group became surprisingly active. People would send wrist checks almost every day with ridiculous pieces. Rare Pateks, RMs, independents, watches worth six or seven figures. Meanwhile I was there trying to make sure I actually knew what I was talking about. But it was fun, and over time it became more than just watches. People talked about business, travel, investing and random things going on in their lives. I met a lot of interesting people through that group. I wasn’t especially successful at the actual watch dealing part. I think I sold one Richard Mille, helped buy another, did a Vacheron deal and maybe a few smaller things I don’t even remember anymore. I didn’t make much money from it either. A lot of the margins were small, especially on quick flips. Then crypto happened. I got completely absorbed by it, put basically all my attention there, and slowly stopped caring about the watch side. Looking back, that transition is also funny because the two markets have ended up having quite a few similarities. Watches have had their own cycles, hype, speculation and huge price moves. There are models I remember seeing years ago at prices that already felt expensive at the time, and then watching them go completely insane later. And the market itself has changed a lot too. I was just talking to a dealer recently about how difficult it has become to get certain pieces directly from authorized dealers. For some models you’re waiting years. For others, realistically, you may never get the allocation. So coming back into boutiques now feels very different from how I remember the market when I was younger. These days I mostly wear a Garmin. But going into boutiques again recently made me realize I actually miss that world a bit. Not even the buying and selling side necessarily. More just watches themselves. If you actually get into horology, the mechanisms, history, references and manufacturers are genuinely interesting beyond the price or status. Funny how something I was doing mostly to try to make some extra money at 16 ended up being one of those random experiences I still think about years later.

A few thoughts after @token2049 Singapore. Overall, crypto feels healthier than it did a few months ago. The mood was noticeably better than at Consensus Hong Kong earlier this year. People seemed more optimistic, there was more activity, more capital around, and less of the feeling that everyone was trying to leave crypto for AI. But I also came away with a few contradictions. The industry is bigger, more professional and more institutional than ever. At the same time, a lot of people who have been in crypto for years still seem tired. There have been a lot of layoffs, companies come and go very quickly, career progression is often unclear, and there are still enough shady situations to make people question whether they want to spend another five years in the industry. And the biggest thing I noticed is that crypto increasingly feels like a B2B industry selling products to itself. There is an enormous amount of infrastructure. Custody, staking, APIs, wallets, stablecoin infrastructure, cards, payment rails, compliance, tokenization, institutional DeFi, data, execution, market making. But when you ask where the users actually are, the picture gets much less clear. A lot of chains still have relatively few real users. A lot of applications are dependent on incentives. A lot of ecosystems are trying to attract the same relatively small group of builders. And a huge percentage of companies seem to have eventually arrived at the same conclusion: go institutional. Part of that is obviously because institutional adoption is real. Most large financial institutions I spoke to no longer need to be educated on what crypto is. Many banks, asset managers and financial companies are already involved in some form. That is a big change from a few years ago. But institutional awareness does not automatically mean institutional demand. A lot of family offices still seem fairly indifferent to crypto. Some banks are involved because they need the capability, not because they suddenly want large crypto exposure. For many allocators, crypto is still a relatively small part of the portfolio. So I think one of the biggest problems in crypto right now is not infrastructure. It is distribution. We have become very good at building things and relatively bad at getting large numbers of people to use them. That is also why the few products that do have real distribution stand out so much. Solana continues to feel like one of the strongest ecosystems in the industry. Hyperliquid is probably one of the clearest examples of a crypto-native product that people are genuinely excited to use. Both have something a lot of the industry is missing: actual mindshare combined with actual users. A few other things stood out. DeFi vaults seem to have significantly less adoption than I expected. There is a lot of infrastructure and a lot of products being built around them, but user demand still feels early. AI agents also seem to have cooled down. Six or twelve months ago it felt like every second project was building an agent. A lot of those projects are barely part of the conversation now. On the other hand, RWAs and tokenized equities continue to feel increasingly real. There is still a lot to solve around liquidity, regulation, distribution and market structure, but the interest seems much more durable than a lot of previous narratives. Stablecoins, payments and cards are also everywhere. Possibly too everywhere. There are now so many companies building crypto cards and payment products that it is difficult to believe the market can support all of them. The underlying use case is obviously real, especially for cross-border payments and people living between different financial systems. But a lot of current usage is still driven by incentives, convenience or jurisdiction-specific advantages rather than a product that is fundamentally 10x better. I would expect significant consolidation there. Another area I think becomes more interesting as crypto institutionalizes is privacy. The more crypto starts looking like traditional finance with blockchains underneath it, the more valuable some of the original properties of crypto become again. Privacy, self-custody, permissionless access and financial sovereignty are probably going to matter more, not less. One other thing TOKEN reminded me of: Crypto Twitter is an extremely incomplete representation of the crypto industry. There were huge sponsors, companies spending serious money, packed side events and entire categories of businesses that I almost never see discussed online. Some companies have very little mindshare but real customers and revenue. Others have enormous mindshare and very little underneath. Being at these events makes that difference much easier to see. So my biggest takeaway is probably this: Crypto is not dying. If anything, it is becoming a much more mature industry. There is more infrastructure, more institutional participation, better products and more serious companies than there were a few years ago. But the next stage cannot just be another thousand companies building infrastructure for each other. The industry needs users. And increasingly, I think the scarce asset in crypto is not technology. It is distribution.