Aug 13, 2025

Back in 2014, clients and banks in Hong Kong got carried out backward when a sharp move in USDCNH blew up clients who’d unwisely bought Target Redemption Forwards (henceforth TARFs). I wrote about it at the time, and republished the piece here a year later. The conclusion was that TARFs are a terrible trade for everyone involved: clients will inevitably blow up because they’re leveraged short low-delta wings, and bank exotics desks will blow up because these things are a cast-iron bastard to properly hedge1.

Aug 8, 2025

TL;DR SEC v Ripple has come to an end, with Ripple agreeing to pay a $125mio fine; XRP is officially not a security, and Ripple is not barred from selling XRP except through certain channels; Re-running my analyses from 2022 gives a valuation for Ripple common stock in the mid-500s per share, based on a $3.30 XRP price—compared to a $120 price in secondary markets1, and a recent tender at $175; Ripple is also aggressively buying back stock, which is compressing the discount, but the company needs to accelerate the buybacks or go public—preferably the latter—to justify the current price and compress the discount.

Apr 21, 2022

Disclaimer: I own a bunch of Ripple common stock thanks to being an employee there for nearly five years, so I’m absolutely talking my book with this article. Ripple’s common stock has always traded at a significant discount to the value of the company’s assets. In this article, I’m gonna break down how to value Ripple’s stock; what it might be worth on a sum-of-parts basis; and what it might be worth in various scenarios once the SEC lawsuit is resolved.

Aug 11, 2019

Let’s hop in the hot tub time machine and head back to the other financial crisis of 2008. While Bear was having two-dollar bills taped to its headquarters, Lehman was turning into Less-Than, and Citibank was living up to its Shi[see me—ed] nickname, Zimbabwe was having its own economic meltdown despite being pretty much cut off from the rest of the world’s economies. Zimbabwe’s problem was hyperinflation—the second-fastest episode of hyperinflation in history, as it turned out.

Jan 3, 2019

I’ve banged on a little bit on Twitter about how digital asset markets are continually recapitulating discoveries from fiat markets (securitization, credit-default swaps, corporate actions oh wait no disregard that). But aside from an effort by Genesis Trading, there’s been a surprising lack of interest or development in crypto interest rate markets. From what I’ve heard (and @ me if I’m wrong), crypto lending markets are not big. You can borrow bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies for shorting or market-making purposes, but the rates are stiff (8-10% on cash-collateralised loans) and volumes are small.