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Market structure
A balance on an exchange screen is a database entry and a claim on a company, not a coin the account holder controls.
01 — What custody at a centralized exchange really means
A balance on an exchange screen is a database entry and a claim on a company, not a coin the account holder controls.
7 min
02 — Automated market makers versus order books
One mechanism collects the intentions of traders in a queue; the other quotes from a formula and lets arbitrage supply the price.
8 min
03 — Liquidity, depth and slippage: what market cap omits
Market capitalization is a multiplication, not a pool of money; depth and slippage are the figures that describe what can actually be traded.
8 min
04 — Perpetual futures and the funding rate that anchors them
A futures contract with no expiry needs another way to track spot, and periodic payments between longs and shorts do that work.
8 min
05 — Leverage and the mechanics of a liquidation cascade
How a modest price move becomes a violent one: margin arithmetic, forced selling into thinning depth, and the loop between them.
9 min
06 — Who market makers are, and when they step away
Continuous two-sided quotes are a commercial service with an inventory problem, not a permanent feature of a market.
8 min
07 — Wash trading and volume figures that cannot be real
Self-dealing volume costs almost nothing to manufacture and leaves statistical fingerprints; the cross-checks that expose it are simple arithmetic.
8 min
08 — A market that never closes: weekends, gaps and no halts
Continuous trading removes the overnight gap and the circuit breaker, while the banking system that funds it still keeps office hours.
7 min
09 — How price discovery actually happens across venues
There is no consolidated tape, so any single reference price is a constructed estimate drawn from venues that legitimately disagree.
9 min
10 — Reading a drawdown, a volatility figure and a correlation
Three risk numbers that are simple to compute and easy to over-read; what each measures, and the assumptions each one hides.
8 min