Lengthy update to my $DRV bull thesis incoming, but TLDR: Price has doubled to $0.08 since my first post and I'm still looking to accumulate more at this price level. That's virtually never the case in crypto. Candidly, as bullish as I am on $HYPE, I'm absolutely looking to trim some of my position if it were to quickly run up to $70 because the bull case just wouldn't be the same at that valuation. It's fees/mcap ratio would go from fair value territory to highly speculative. The valuation framework I apply to most coins can be succinctly summed up by four questions: 1. The classic "Can I see this doubling, and can the guy buying it from me also justify it doubling?". $DRV currently sits ~$100m FDV. My base case is $250-500m FDV, and I think there's a reasonable path to $1bn+ FDV over a 1-2 year time horizon. Buying here is still deep value territory by every metric. It's annualizing about $2.5m in fee revenue YTD, which puts it in the same ballpark as @Hyperliquid on a fee/FDV ratio (so significantly better than 99% of other coins). The key difference get's to my next question... 2. What's it's valuation relative to it's total addressable market (TAM)? While the TAM for on chain perps is massive, $HYPE valuation already reflects that. @DeriveXYZ occupies a similar, arguably even stronger, monopoly status in the on chain options market. $HYPE now trades at 300x the valuation of $DRV, and I do not think on chain perps have 300x the TAM of on chain options. Deribit does about 2x the options volume of OKX and is valued at ~10% ($2.9bn valuation when Deribit was acquired by Coinbase vs $25bn valuation for OKX on the recent ICE investment). Acknowledging different market conditions for those valuations, I still think it's conservative to say crypto perps only have a 25-50x larger TAM than options. If the on chain perp dex market is currently worth ~$40bn, I feel very comfortable saying on the on chain options protocols market can be worth ~$1bn. And @DeriveXYZ is 80-90% of it. 3. If my thesis is correct, does the token actually stand to benefit? Surprisingly important question in an industry full of useless governance coins with no value accrual. 🤡 The $DRV token is the only form of equity for @DeriveXYZ. No dual equity structure here. Currently doing 25% buybacks, which I actually think is the correct percentage at this stage of development. The market is not properly pricing in the current level of fee growth, and it is especially not pricing in the potential of that buyback % increasing over time. The team tokens don't even vest until certain metrics are hit, a practice I'd like to see the rest of the industry adopt. I feel comfortable in saying that $DRV token price will increase commensurate with Derive's metrics. 4. What's the catch? Why am I right and the market is wrong? What do I know that other's don't? Here are the other points of my thesis that I think are being mispriced by the market: The nature of the opportunity here is timing and attention. All crypto valuations are highly depressed (or simply finding fair value justifiably much lower). This is not the only 5-10x candidate out there right now. There's just no eyes on it and not enough money looking to invest in liquid tokens. On chain options used to have a terrible UI/UX. Not enough people know how to use RFQ (request for quote) and they think there is no liquidity because they're only setting limit orders in the order book. @DeriveXYZ is accomodating massive size via their RFQ system. You can see massive positions getting filled. As more people understand this, adoption is likely to skyrocket. In the same way that @HyperliquidX at it's core is part regulatory arbitrage (giving US traders access to perps when they couldn't get Binance/OKX/Bybit accounts), @DeriveXYZ is connecting you directly with top OTC desks that would never deal with you directly. There is a huge moat in doing all the BD work to provide users this access. Perps volume and OI on @DeriveXYZ HAVE to scale with increased options volume and OI. Market makers need to hedge their positions on app to benefit from cross margining and netting of risk. If I buy 100 $BTC calls, the maker that sold them to me needs to hedge that delta via an offsetting perps position. It is massively advantageous, if not necessary, for them to do this on @DeriveXYZ. This is why there's $1bn $BTC OI on Deribit perps. @HyperliquidX is obviously the premier and superior perps dex, but don't underestimate @DeriveXYZ perps volume on $BTC, $ETH, $SOL, and $HYPE going forward. In a world of useless perp dexes getting wash trade volume, they are positioned to get meaningful and durable perps flow. Market is absolutely not pricing any perps adoption growth for them. On chain forms of yield and carry are drying up. @ethena Funding rate arb, @pendle_fi PT token looping, perps dex point farming, it's all barely above the risk free rate. All of these forms of excess yield were always destined to dry up. The only meaningful way to generate excess yield will be taking the risk and selling volatility. This is why $IBIT options do so much volume. Institutions love harvesting vol premium. Whether they know it or not, all @Uniswap or @aeroxyz LP's are just selling volatility for yield. I'd argue most of them are being wildly undercompensated for the volatility they are selling. Options are the correct and only way to express these views, and more and more teams will try to productionize options into a more pleasant UI/UX for users looking to generate income against their crypto at the expense of taking on that volatility. Obviously I'm biased and I own some $DRV. But it's objectively shaping up to be one of the best growth stories of 2026. Don't look a gift fire horse in the mouth; $DRV is still a steal at this level.

For people watching my wallets, don't bother. I literally tell you most of my trades in near real time. For example right now, you all got turbo horny for $AERO and sent the funding on @HyperliquidX to 200%, so I'm shorting perps there and longing approximately 6 metric busloads via CEX perps, spot, OTC options etc elsewhere. Or I might be selling $BTC calls on @DeriveXYZ to long $BTC perps elsewhere. You're never gonna see the full picture of what I'm doing, and it's just gonna lead to a lot of confusion and false signals. I obviously want you guys to agree with my bull theses and be long the same stuff, but we are not in PvP mode right now. I will not bullpost just to dump on you guys 10% higher; that's what the TradFi suits are for 10x higher.

I rarely shill coins, but AERO at 1/7th of UNI's valuation seems cheap

*surprised Pikachu* It's rotation season in crypto right now, fundamentals are starting to matter again, tokens are pumping based on their own uncorrelated bull cases. No more varying shades of $BTC or $ETH beta. These type of pear trades are a great way to capture one tokens idiosyncratic catalysts while not being fully exposed to the broader market. Couldn't really ask for a more bullish backdrop specifically for $AERO here. Massive chain expansion into massive TAM expansion into huge tokenomic upgrade, all with a lot of sideliners. This is just the test pump on the hint that @aeroxyz will be competing across every chain for the gargantuan pie that is tokenization. I've long thought that the massive improvements in the upcoming Aero upgrade are so multi-faceted and complex that the market would not appropriately price them in until after the update had been live for a few days-weeks. $AERO bulls are starting to trickle in for the news, but they'll stay for when the flywheel really gets flywheeling. MetaDEX tokens, like $AERO, are some of the most reflexive assets in crypto; nothing runs harder when fundamentals align.

Jeff must have made some Faustian pact so that anyone who even remotely attacks @Hyperliquid is cursed with terrible fortune. Kyle Samani, Ostium, Bitget...

Idk why people assume the Bitget hackers will just full stack dump all the ethereum:native Not like they are the Ethereum Foundation or something

Initiate bullishunlock.exe on plasma:native One the most cursed looking charts in crypto finally showing signs of life

This was always the benefit of Clarity not passing. The SEC is espousing the benefits of zero knowledge proofs, and the CFTC intimately understands @HyperliquidX and @Lighter_xyz. They actually get this stuff, or are at least starting to. And then you have Congress where they think people are staking their $BTC for Ethernet coins...

$DRV buyback percent going from 35% to 50%. Already went up from 25% to 35% earlier this year. Wonder what percent it'll continue to trend towards 🤔 Incremental Derive Governance Assistance Fund (IDGAF) continues to intensify. @DeriveXYZ flywheel flywheeling...

My @DeriveXYZ trading account is a pretty great example of "it's not how often you win, it's how much you win when you win". Barely better than a coinflip on win %, but massively asymmetric payoffs. My win rate on perps is closer to 70% but I've made more money on options than perps YTD. That's the beauty of options/convexity. Also kinda cool to know I'm practically breakeven on fees from $DRV trading rewards mooning so much 😂

Had a small basket open from April of this year via @pear_protocol, just think it's interesting to look back at some of these prices and my picks from back then compared to now. Also think it's a great opportunity to reflect on the year so far. Everyone seems to think I can't miss right now, but I've had tons of big losing trades and whiffs on the year. 1. I made way less money on $ZEC that I probably should have. It used to be included as a long leg in this basket, but I manually closed it ~breakeven in the low $300 after the infinite mint scare. Despite being pretty early to $ZEC, it's probably accounted for only a percent or two of my years PNL. 2. Got absolutely smoked by being short $UNI. Fortunately I did very small size in this account and didn't put the larger shorts on until much higher. Completely underestimated that it's still considered "core DeFi" and is a very name brand blue chip. I still see it as similar to $COIN; bearish but scary to short boomer/TradFi first entry point to crypto if I'm betting on mass institutional adoption. I feel much comfier shorting at these prices though. 3. Correlated to above, totally whiffed on Robinhood Chain. Quite literally made $0 from $PONS, $UP, $ARB, $CASHCAT etc. Correctly identified that it'd be bearish my $SOL longs at the time, but didn't realize how successful it'd be. 4. I don't think I executed around the $HYPE bottom as well as I could have. I'm much better at trading options now than I am back then, but I think the $28-33 $HYPE was especially a time where my execution/sizing didn't match my views. I was willing to go "all in" there and I was looking at a 500,000x$35/45 $HYPE CS that I didn't pull the trigger on. Still had tons of exposure, but it could have been an absolute BBQ instead of just a solid cook. 5. Actually wished I went much harder on $LIT. Felt extremely high conviction that $1-2 was cheap, but treated it more like an altcoin pick than a core holding like $HYPE. Another good example where my sizing didn't match my conviction. Overall I think occasionally "clearing the board" and reconstructing your portfolio from scratch is a great exercise to really make sure you aren't just sitting in old, stale bags that no longer match your thesis. This account still ended up being up around 50% since April, so not too bad. I think for a lot of you guys, sizing not matching conviction is the biggest issue. I think one of the best lessons from poker is that the difference between pros and amateurs isn't really how often they win hands (card distribution pretty even for everyone over a large enough sample size), it's how much they win when they get good hands and how little they lose in bad spots. It's all about avoiding blowups and being all in for the really high conviction spots.

Yeah I gave and have a pretty neutral and nuanced view on $ZEC that seems to be getting misconstrued. Basically I've been in and out of the trade a bunch, mostly long. Did 10,000x500/600 CS OTC (wasn't listed on @DeriveXYZ at the time) earlier this year that hit. Currently in the put ladder structure I posted a week ago. It's very momentum/sentiment driven, pretty pure way to express risk on/off. It's very popular with UHNWI, and it's pretty heavily reliant on continued adoption by more billionaires. Obviously the driving theme here is fear of quantum and wealth confiscation/socialism. It's bull case is that it'll trade like early $BTC, in which case you'll have some nasty 50-75% drawdowns on the way much, much higher. It's bear case is that it'll trade like a memecoin, in which case you'll have eye watering fomo pumps that eventually hit gravity and correct massively if enough people rush for the exit door at once. I think $ZEC holders/traders, possibly more than anyone, should be learning more about options for it due to this dichotomy of outcomes and volatility. I explicitly said that shorting $ZEC via perps feels way too dangerous, even as a hedge potentially (your hedge could easily get liquidated on a short squeeze if you aren't cross collat with spot $ZEC). Deep OTM Puts are much more attractive to hedge imo. I'd be fine eating the 20-30% corrections, it's the 75% wipeouts you want to hedge against. Volatility is also extremely high on it right now so you can sell some very rich calls to hedge, possibly to pay for those puts (think like a 1,200P/2000C risk reversal where you sell the EOY $2k calls and buy $1.2k puts at little to no net cost). $ZEC is pure uncorrelated beta and the fastest horse in this market though, so it's excellent to hold and trade at times. Just not currently holding any long exposure here.

"Why be short $UNI and not just long $AERO?" Well, markets can go down too 😂

You guys aren't ready for the conversation of what @DeriveXYZ will enable for peer to peer trading for options. We're barely scratching the surface for $DRV. Some of the very first $LIT options traded on chain. No market makers required. Thanks for the trade @DeFi_Dad

I'm a huge believer that "gut" intuition is just the manifestation of tens of thousands of hours of pattern recognition, even if you can't perfectly articulate/quantify it. It's why trading can't really be taught, you just need to do it and learn from your mistakes.

I stand by my AERO/UNI L/S optimism. What's more iconic in crypto than to top on a CME futures listing. Doubling down on the L/S and adding more spot $AERO too. The same Selig comments that are sending $UNI apply to $AERO. Market is too afraid to bid $AERO pre update, I'm not. You get paid for the risk you're willing to take.

Great write up on @Kinetiq_xyz Elysium. Didn't even know myself that USDC on Elysium will count towards AQAv2 revenue for $HYPE buybacks. Highly recommend reading this, a lot of market participants think "L2 bad", but this will be a uniquely aligned L2 and highly accretive to $HYPE itself. There's billions of dollars of valuation that $HYPE is missing out on from spot trading, ecosystem apps, memecoins etc. Elysium will bring a lot of that home and be mutually beneficial to $KNTQ and $HYPE.

Something tells me the $ETH perma bull who thinks we're heading into a historical meltup for all assets will not stop buying $ETH once they hit their 5% goal like the market seems to think... $BMNR is sitting on over $700m in cash right now. mNAV ~1. He can either buy 250,000 $ETH now, or 100,000 $ETH when it's at $7k in March 2027.

Completely the opposite case actually. It's EXTREMELY expensive to "wash" trade options volume (wash doesn't even really make sense in this context). Spreads would cause massive negative PNL, the publicity could not possibly compensate for the monetary loss. You absolutely can do structures that are very high notional while being low premium, like a deep OTM butterfly for example, but these aren't malicious attempts at manipulation like wash trading on CEXs, and it'd still be a massive punt to try to do these to create the illusion of growth. Weekly options premium volume is probably the best metric to track for growth. This is how much people are actually betting and risking every week, not the notional of the structure. And the graph is pretty filthy for @DeriveXYZ. TLDR: Options volume does not equal perps volume, but that doesn't take away from the insanity of the @DeriveXYZ growth story.

See that's the thing though it's not even just reg arb anymore. You couldn't pay me to go back to using CEXs, like it's an actually miserable experience. I've posted about this in the past but the UI/UX of Hyperliquid, Lighter, Paradex etc is just straight up better than Binance or Bybit. I'm getting better fills on massive size on Derive vs Deribit all the time. We all got forced on chain by necessity and now we've built better systems that people would willingly choose. You see this all the time historically, it's literally the origin story of the United States. A bunch of cracked pioneers get forced out of the old world and built a better one.