Guard

He protecc

Adviser @extendedapp

I write about conflict & strategy etc at

[Guard @PoorGuard]

OK I'm redoing the substack.

This time I'll write it a bit like I would write a textbook on strategy and operations.

(except I'll be less obsessive about finding the right references every time since it's just a substack and very much "take it or leave it" kind of advice)

[Guard @PoorGuard]

@heart_ This is the early modern equivalent of the "Oura is funded by Fidelity, therefore Oura is not a European company"

[Purrteil @derteil00]

Your favorite broker in Europe will have no choice but to integrate Extended into their backend.

Expecting more

[Guard @PoorGuard]

"We are already in conversations with wallets, CFD brokers and fintechs across Europe, and we repeatedly hear the same request: a regulated venue with a broad range of crypto and RWA markets they can integrate."

Extended is how you bet on tokenisation

[rf.extended @rf_extended]

Why Extended is pursuing a regulated path in Europe

TLDR: European retail already trades inside licensed apps, and regulated platforms typically need regulated venues they can integrate. Extended is building one. Builder codes let partners plug Extended into their own product: through the existing venue for self-custody users where available, and through the regulated venue for regulated clients once live.

Europe has close to 10,000 fintech companies, and hundreds of licensed investment firms and credit institutions. Most are exploring new ways to engage their retail user base, and perps are consistently near the top of the list. All of them are potential clients for a regulated exchange.

That market opportunity drove our decision to build a regulated venue in Europe:
1. Retail is the user base we are building the regulated offering for. We have said before that sustainable growth is built on product quality, distribution and community rather than financial incentives. For a trading product, the largest pool of users is retail, and reaching it is a distribution problem.
2. Perp DEXs processed roughly $600 billion in volume over the past 30 days. CFD brokers alone show the size of the addressable market: around $30 trillion a month, with a large share of it in Europe. The largest platforms already earn most of their volume outside FX, in equities, indices, commodities and crypto. On-chain perps is a market we know well and intend to keep serving, but the larger opportunity sits next to it: tens of millions of retail traders already active on regulated platforms, many of whom have no access to perps today.
3. There are three retail markets at the scale that matters: the US, Europe and Asia. The US is the most contested, with many major exchanges and brokers competing for the same users and a long licensing path. Asia has high perps penetration but regulatory approaches vary by jurisdiction. Europe is where we are starting, and we will look at other regulated markets as and when it makes sense.
4. Regulated crypto derivatives in Europe have only recently expanded. Kraken, Coinbase and Bitstamp (owned by Robinhood) launched futures for EU clients over the past 18 months, each using regulatory infrastructure obtained through an acquisition of a licensed investment firm or exchange. That route is open to a handful of firms with the balance sheet for it, but for the far larger group of fintechs and brokers with users and no perps infrastructure, it is not. Our model is to offer builder codes on both venues: a way for partners to plug perps into their own apps, route users’ orders to the venue and earn a share of the fees. Self-custody wallets can integrate with the existing venue where available. Regulated brokers and fintechs will be able to use the regulated venue once it is live.
5. A regulated perps setup takes significant time and resources to build from scratch, and many fintechs lack the product and market expertise to run it well, starting with established market-maker relationships. For smaller players the economics may not work. For larger ones, regulated builder codes cut time to market, especially inside slow-moving large organisations, and deliver a quality product from day one.
6. The demand is clear. We are already in conversations with wallets, CFD brokers and fintechs across Europe, and we repeatedly hear the same request: a regulated venue with a broad range of crypto and RWA markets they can integrate.

Importantly, this does not change our DeFi offering or our commitment to the early community. The existing venue stays for crypto-native users where it is available. The regulated venue adds a new distribution channel and a new user base.

Europe is the first step. Over time, we expect to replicate the same model in other markets, including the US. Our plan is subject to the relevant regulatory authorisations, and we will share specifics as they are confirmed. At a high level, we have an initial route to market, followed by a transition to our own licences.

Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and is not an offer, solicitation or recommendation. It contains forward-looking statements that are subject to change and to regulatory approval. Perpetual derivative contracts do not provide ownership of, or shareholder or other rights in, the underlying assets or companies. Trading involves leverage and significant risk, including possible total loss. Availability is subject to eligibility and jurisdictional restrictions.

[Guard @PoorGuard]

@0xairtx "how odd, they buy all our chips but literally no new data centres, oh well"

[Guard @PoorGuard]

oh my god

are we... we're free

[OSINTRadar @osradar]

🇷🇺 Yandex Unable to Restore Its Data Centers Until at Least 2028 Due to Chip Shortages

[Guard @PoorGuard]

@kethcode I just checked a couple of my old ones today, didn't find anything. I was almost disappointed.

[Guard @PoorGuard]

The Emperor's New Clothes is my favourite story

[Ana @wavelettes]

My bf and I made the mistake of going to an experimental coffee pop-up in NYC. We’d just spent an insane amount of time walking in the pouring rain and we were tired, hungry, and desperately in need of caffeine so decided to pull up. The line was a sea of microbangs and enormous trousers. Everyone looked like they could explain the history of a lamp for 45 minutes without ever mentioning whether it provides light. In retrospect, this should have been sufficient warning that we were about to order some bullshit.

In our exhausted state, we ordered the special without bothering to look at the ingredients. This was a stupid oversight, because the special contained espresso, dashi milk, kombu, fermented rice, and fucking FISH FLAKES. In coffee. A beautiful beverage that has enjoyed a dignified existence for ages without the involvement of marine life!!!

I’m increasingly convinced this entire subculture is locked in a status-signaling arms race where the ability to enjoy something is actually a mark against it. A normal latte tastes good, which is precisely why it has 0 cultural value. Any idiot can enjoy a latte. To demonstrate that you possess taste and a truly sophisticated palate, you must drink something that tastes like the drainage system of a fish market, maintain a pensive expression, and comment on its “complexity”. Bc why were ppl at the cafe pretending to enjoy ts lmao

And the beautiful thing is nobody can call bs. Because the second you admit you don’t like the fishy espresso, you’ve exposed yourself as an uncultured moron incapable of appreciating experimental gastronomy. The entire status hierarchy of this subculture depends on everyone being too terrified of appearing unsophisticated to admit that something tastes like shit. The highest compliment you can pay a drink in these circles isn’t “delicious,” it’s “interesting,” which the universal term for something you suspect you're supposed to admire but would never voluntarily experience twice.

So everyone just keeps escalating. Today it’s a fish latte, tomorrow it’s a sardine cortado garnished with a single cigarette ash, and 30 people in those fuckass Tabi shoes will call it some shit like “challenging but rewarding”. Someone will write an essay about how the discomfort is actually the point, etc etc

It’s a prisoner’s dilemma sitch. Everyone is pretending to enjoy progressively more repulsive things because nobody wants to be the first person to admit that the emperor is naked and his coffee tastes like a tide pool.

Nobody actually wants fish coffee. They want to be the sort of person who has tried fish coffee. The beverage itself is completely incidental to the performance of having taste.

The coffee is more of a loyalty test than a beverage.

And tbc, nobody forced us to go. We are two grown adults who willingly stood in that line and proceeded with the transaction. We are going to get pumpkin spice lattes now.

Ps: Of course it was $37.58 for the two fuckass drinks.

Oh NYC.

[Extended @extendedapp]

Now available to trade: $ABNB and $PEP (Airbnb and PepsiCo) with up to 10x leverage

[303 @phonkdart]

Wildcat did 175x the revenue and chain fees of @berachain yesterday

[Dean @ideanoc17]

most british people are patriotic over our plugs but i’m patriotic over this little thing - uk made, uk owned, cheap, outperforms most modern vacuums.

[jeff.hl @chameleon_jeff]

Those who can, do
Those who can't, fud

[Guard @PoorGuard]

@DefiDiogenesYFI I can confirm I have certainly not passed one

[Guard @PoorGuard]

The essays are not really the point of the All Souls exam, except in the limited sense that the written arguments must be "good enough".

The *real* exam is what happens next--you go in front of all the fellows at All Souls College, and defend your arguments against them all.

[Dan Loewenherz @dwlz]

Today I learned about the All Souls examination, which is reputed to be the hardest exam in the world.

To even be considered, you need to have a degree from, or be a current graduate student of Oxford.

Hundreds of people sit and only two people pass every year.

Attached is last year's general exam.

Before I saw it, I wondered, how hard could it be.

Well, it turns out…it's "Defend ghosting.", "Does a pope matter?", and "Is body language a language?" hard:

[Guard @PoorGuard]

There is also a specialist subject paper (Econ, law, English, history, philosophy, politics, & classics), which also goes in front of the fellows' panel.

The prize is 7 years; all expenses paid, generous stipend, study anything you want in the entire university.

[Guard @PoorGuard]

Well that's my usage credits sorted for the next year

https://t.co/pRCUThAFUK

[Guard @PoorGuard]

@EvgenyGaevoy @rleshner But to whoever knows the tricks/bugs, Heroes II is just an insane game. Certainly a lot of fun though.

Heroes III is the real strategist's game, I've seen just some fantastic plays in weekend hot-seat LAN parties that border on divine genius.

[Guard @PoorGuard]

>start a war by bombing a school
>opponent doesn't surrender
>oil price uponly.exe
>run out of diesel
>pay a guy you know for diesel
>guy uses money to bomb schools
>guy doesn't have any diesel either

Does he just love bombing schools or

[Guard @PoorGuard]

Drill into the North Sea floor?>Strike oil
Divest from oil?
>Oil crash, everything else boom
Fuk, ok wealth tax?
>prove capital flight theory wrong
FUK ok just idk, hand it over to every citizen in a bag?
>every startup just got funded, unprecedented AI-assisted abundance
FUK

[Guard @PoorGuard]

Norway must have some kind of weird monkey paw curse that whatever they try to do, they always just get wealthier

[James Medlock @jdcmedlock]

I told you so.

[Guard @PoorGuard]

In my old workplace we were once advising a client whose net worth was in the 10-fig range

He actually said "I'm too rich, if you want to be totally free you have to make 100m, stop. If you make over a 1bn you'll have all kinds of politics and people to worry about"

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

Something we’ve learned over the last ~decade is that the concept of FU money is wrong or incoherent. If anything, it’s been the world’s richest people that have debased themselves more than anyone. Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose remains undefeated.

[Nathan Strang @NavyStrang]

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