Carlos Zendejas

CEO & Co-Founder at Deep Q Digital | QBTC -- Quant Trading + AI + Nebraska Cornhuskers are my happy place

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Conspiracy theory time…what if Tradfi firms are selling the shit out of crypto right now in order to whip Coinbase and the crypto community on the whole into line to accept the CLARITY act

[Tom Farley @ThomasFarley]

Asked about the CLARITY Act on @SquawkStreet today. Leaders like @Sen_Alsobrooks and @RubenGallego are the reason it's moving but the crypto crowd needs to get in line and stop the whining and push it right now.

Crypto is helpful to under-served communities and now is the time to get this done.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Someone explain to me how there are bigger market dislocations between USDT and USDC than there are for crypto risk assets?

Curious...

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

The hard part about trying to build businesses in crypto isn't that the price volatility is crazy, it's that the price volatility makes it practically impossible to do business planning...every time you think, "this market is maturing, let's plan for the future"...you get met with 6 months of brutal hell where nobody does any business and you just have to cock-roach to survive

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Funny to think about the second and third order effects of regulation on financial markets:
> Jane Street, HRT, and XTX all exist today as "Non Bank Financial Institutions" because of Dodd Frank (IMHO)
> The prevailing wisdom was that trading revenues were "low quality earnings" and that proprietary trading was too risky for banks.
> This meant that Banks started over-indexing on fee-based revenues
> They missed out that a high quality systematic trading desk is a lot more stable revenue than wall street analysts gave them credit for.
> Now Jane Street, HRT, and XTX are absolutely crushing it and at the leading edge of AI and systematic trading.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

What does it say about you when you realize that you do way better numbers on LinkedIn than you do on X...

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

@dev0xx_ @ChipotleTweets I love this...I'll exact my revenge one way or another. Their AI bot responded to me as well, so I'm sure I ate up at least 4oz of chicken worth of compute credits for them to play defense on my original post.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Just ordered @ChipotleTweets for the first time in years…it’s 2x the price and literally half the food.

This is just sad. Did you guys get acquired by a third-tier PE firm recently?

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

@krugermacro So Vitalik is also out then, too?!?

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Massively talking my own book here...but with Jane Street, XTX, and HRT making record profits and unleashing AI resources that make the frontier labs jealous...I think it's time the market take a deeper look at the revenue quality of systematic trading shops.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

https://t.co/pVyMnrT8vK

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

https://t.co/pVyMnrT8vK

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Even if you don't believe @fundstrat or @dunleavy89 about how the institutions are coming and ETH will likely capture a metric ton of institutional RWA value.

Then bank on boomers sending a few points of their stack towards "Dino Coins" on a BTFD trade.

[Hunter Horsley @HHorsley]

Vibe right now —

Crypto twitter: “after 15 years, this might be the year it’s over for [new recent reason]”

Financial advisor I’m with at happy hour in Florida: “saw price is down, it’s time to buy right? It’s amazing to finally have access.”

Somehow the roles have flipped upside down in 2026.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

It's interesting to me that despite the narratives around ETH...it really just trades like an interest rates product. If you look at it through that lense then this all makes total sense.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

@VivekVentures One could argue that the EF’s pool of ETH going down to ~16bps of supply is actually a REALLY good thing for a credibly neutral global financial settlement layer…last time I checked decentralization was sort of the point, right?

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Didn't say I was fading Hyperliquid? This is more of a statement that as crypto grows up these fantastic products are going to have to face deeper and more well funded competition, and that I would like to see Hyperliquid retain more of its earnings so they can reinvest it back into winning. Token buybacks are short sighted IMHO.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

This. I love HL, but this is the exact scenario in which HYPE holders maybe wished the money spent on token buybacks was held in reserves for the lobbying it will take to make sure they win this battle

[Beanie @beaniemaxi]

CFTC approves perps and HYPE moons which proves that crypto traders have absolutely no concept of second-order effects. If anything Hyperliquid will lose it's regulatory arbitrage advantage to licensed players like Coinbase and others which offer a secure controlled environment.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

They do...and that is the correct thing. But I'm afraid they are going to be bringing a knife to a gun fight. Coinbase, NYSE, CME, JP Morgan all have much bigger lobbying arsenals.

I love HYPE, love Hyperliquid...I just am being an old curmudgeon who thinks that this is going to be a big fight and I want to make sure they are armed properly.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

@ShaunFischer I’ll allow it…GBR

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

@hedge__x GSIB Banks: ETH is critical infrastructure. Be Long.

CT anons: I’m an ADHD squirrel with Stockholm syndrome to max extractors…Short ETH

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Put away your DCF models boys!!! 100% agree with this thesis...I feel like it understates the degree to which large financial institutions have already been building on ETH, and how sticky those technology integrations will be once they are in place.

Remember, the problem they are solving for is NOT throughput...it's credible neutrality and security.

ETH has the regulatory foundation, the boring and proven technology moat, and the track-record of security that will make it the preferred public blockchain of financial institutions.

It then follows that any reasonable valuation framework for this asset should consider the value of the underlying assets which the network secures.

[Tom Dunleavy @dunleavy89]

https://t.co/ScdxYDB6Zi

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

Trading crypto is easy...you just need to constantly be asking yourself, "What would a non-regulated market with lots of non-regulated market participants who all have inside information do to max extract from retail traders in this moment" and then you have a 50/50 shot of being right. EZPZ.

[Carlos Zendejas @CLZen]

1. Great work -- this post should be given as an IQ test ;)
2. As we move to a multi-polar world this value proposition gets even stronger. You need a credibly neutral store of value that nation-states can get behind...it's actually more compelling that central banks will require staked ETH reserves than the arguments for BTC reserves.