Roman Basar

Crypto & Alt Investments | HFT & Hedge Funds | Raised ~$300m | Capital raising @Wincent | Building with integrity

[Wincent @Wincent_co]

Wincent x @wyden_io 🤝

Wincent is now integrated with Wyden, expanding access to our deep, institutional-grade crypto liquidity for banks and brokers worldwide.

Through this integration, financial institutions can seamlessly tap into Wincent’s market making capabilities via Wyden’s infrastructure.

Read more: https://t.co/TC9444ADIt

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

This was fun! Thank you @AndrewSteinwold for having me!

[Andrew Steinwold @AndrewSteinwold]

One of the most competitive games in finance isn’t equities.

It’s high-frequency crypto market making.

I just spoke with @RomanBasar, Director of Business Development @Wincent_co a crypto-native market maker that scaled from nothing to $500M+ AUM in a few years.

A few takeaways:
🔹 They’re the “make money on trading” kind of market maker (not the “market make for tokens/options” model).

🔹 Crypto HFT is messy by design: cloud infra, fragmented venues, and during big moves… things break.

🔹 Fragmentation is a moat: you can’t just throw capital at it, you need deep exchange + microstructure know-how.

🔹 Exchange risk is still the big one. Some “prime broker / custody” tooling isn’t fast enough for true HFT yet, so firms build internal systems to monitor exposure.

🔹 Spreads compress → you either innovate or die. 2017 arb is gone. The edge now is research + infra + execution.

🔹 Culture matters: Roman compared it to F1, best driver + best car, plus ruthless feedback loops.

My favorite moment: Roman asked the Wincent founders mid-interview,

“Remind me again why do people give you money?”

That candor is what got him hired.

If you allocate or want to learn about market-neutral crypto, this is a good reminder: strategy is only half the diligence, ops + risk controls are the other half.

YouTube: https://t.co/Z0rXbyRTcv

Spotify: https://t.co/9dMG2R54DH

[Stacy Muur @stacy_muur]

https://t.co/Iwza0w72Yi

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

My first crack at this podcasting thing!

(CZ/SVK only unfortunately)

[Petr Lukáč @RuzovejSlon]

Dnes trochu víc do hloubky o market makingu v kryptu.

s @RomanBasar z @wincent se podíváme, jak market making funguje (a kde a jak ho dělají ve Wincentu)
+ na obří kaskádu likvidací a jestli za to mohla Binance či Wintermute a další, anebo jen přepálená páka traderů

Linky 👇

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

WALL STREET JUST BANNED BITCOIN COMPANIES FROM THE STOCK MARKET

January 15, 2026. Mark it down.

MicroStrategy gets deleted from every major index on January 15, 2026.

$9 billion in forced selling follows automatically. The biggest financial exile in modern history happens in 55 days and almost nobody knows it’s coming.

Here’s what actually matters:

Michael Saylor spent five years building a machine. Buy Bitcoin with shareholder money. Stock price goes up. Raise more money. Buy more Bitcoin. Repeat.

It worked flawlessly. MicroStrategy accumulated 649,870 Bitcoin. Worth $57 billion today. They became the largest corporate Bitcoin holder on planet Earth.

The machine just broke.

MSCI’s rule is simple: when cryptocurrency exceeds 50% of your assets, you’re not a company. You’re a fund. MicroStrategy is at 77%. They crossed the line months ago.

On January 15, 2026 … every pension fund and index tracker that owns MicroStrategy stock must sell.

Not because they want to. Because the index forces them. Algorithms don’t negotiate.

The premium already died. MicroStrategy used to trade at 2.5 times the value of its Bitcoin. That premium let Saylor raise $20 billion extra. Today it trades at 1.11 times. The market already priced in the funeral.

What this actually means:

The five year experiment where companies could disguise Bitcoin buying as corporate strategy just ended. Wall Street drew a permanent line. Bitcoin is its own asset class now. Want exposure? Buy an ETF.

Every future dollar that would have gone into MicroStrategy flows to BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF instead. The game didn’t just change. The board got flipped.

Tesla holds Bitcoin. Block holds Bitcoin. They’re safe because they stayed under 50%. They’re still companies that happen to own Bitcoin.

MicroStrategy became a Bitcoin fund that happens to own a software business. That’s why they’re getting exiled.

This is the reset. Corporate treasuries can hold Bitcoin as one asset among many. But build your entire strategy around it? Wall Street just showed you the exit door.

55 days until the most boring document in finance rewrites the entire rulebook.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Read what’s happening - https://t.co/CnbGRrYDU3

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

Warren Buffet, the ultimate inspiration

[qw @QwQiao]

closing section of buffett's final letter:

"One perhaps self-serving observation. I’m happy to say I feel better about the second half of my life than the first. My advice: Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes – learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. You can start with Tom Murphy; he was the best.

Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who – reportedly – read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior.

Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.

Greatness does not come about through accumulating great amounts of money, great amounts of publicity or great power in government. When you help someone in any of thousands of ways, you help the world. Kindness is costless but also priceless. Whether you are religious or not, it’s hard to beat The Golden Rule as a guide to behavior.

I write this as one who has been thoughtless countless times and made many mistakes but also became very lucky in learning from some wonderful friends how to behave better (still a long way from perfect, however). Keep in mind that the cleaning lady is as much a human being as the Chairman."

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

7) You can do better crypto.

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

So @StreamDefi collapsed or is in the process of. And yes we have the benefit of hindsight, but I looked at their website, and found it almost ridiculous!

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

6) Do they have the skill, trust and expertise for me to trust them with my money? Have they done similar projects? The answer is more often than not that all I see are buzzwords of a project lead by a guy hidden behind a nickname with a picture of a cat.

[Wincent @Wincent_co]

Wincent at The Bridge, New York 🇺🇸

We’re heading to The Bridge by @TheTieIO in New York City, joining top institutional leaders, funds, and innovators shaping the future of digital assets.

Meet our team on the ground:
@sebosik — Chief Business Development Officer
Paul Howard — Senior Director, Institutional Sales
Anya Leasor — Sales & Head of Relationship Management

We’re looking forward to connecting with partners and peers to provide liquidity in digital assets. 🤝

Let’s connect in New York! 🗽

🔗 https://t.co/5AdJ6FQPkB

#TheBridge #TheTie #NewYork #Crypto #OTC #DigitalAssets #Networking #Wincent

[Galois Kevin @Galois_Capital]

Some friends of mine run a top crypto MM responsible for 1% of global volume. They are currently looking to hire an HFT quant/trader based in HK and a Chief Legal Officer.

HK Quant/Trader: https://t.co/5vfm9c3WHS

CLO: https://t.co/3GqfkVHIds

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

I wonder if you’d make the same argument of distributions in kind had crypto continued it’s decline 🤔

[SBF @SBF_FTX]

[SBF says:]

This is where the money went. https://t.co/HVRwEw5Z1k

[Matusko3 @MatusKopf]

Some of the ADLs from last Fridays crash have been a bit ridiculous. Its time to talk about ADLs📉📉📉

[Dusan Matuska @dusan_matuska]

🚨 Kids on Roatan just received 775.778 sats (~$460) for their education efforts on @Get_Yzer.

👇This is how our new project "Miners4Kids" works:

We decided to run an experiment.

"What if we connected one miner we have in Paraguay and make it mine #bitcoin directly for kids on Roatan?"

And if the community crowdfunds the electricity for a particular month over @geyserfund , we distribute all the sats mined in that month to kids based on their "proof of learn", not just as a pure charity donation.

We said: "Lets's try it out."

We rolled it out at @BTCPrague. And to our surprise, during the conference we crowdfunded over @geyserfund the funds to cover the electricity all the way till November 2024 😲https://t.co/ksetO2Qt80

Yesterday we distributed the funds to kids who joined the project based on how many XP points they earned on @Get_Yzer (the Duolingo for Bitcoin) during July.

👏The most passionate learner, Claudio, received almost $150 worth of bitcoin for studying Bitcoin itself.

All of the kids in the project are graduates of @MyfirstBitcoin_ Bitcoin Diploma on Roatan so they had a previous knowledge of Bitcoin and had their wallets set up.

Making a direct connection between our bitcoin mining and bitcoin education within @AmityAge , utilizing the "proof of learn" approach was the idea worth exploring.

We believe to inspire more kids to join for August and onwards and more communities to explore similar approaches for their own education activities.

We believe that injecting bitcoin in various ways into the economy is a crucial cornerstone of building a proper Bitcoin circular economy.

And kids receiving their sats is a foundation for them to learn how to manage them well for future and learn about financial responsibility in a hands-on approach.

We would love to scale this project in future to encompass more communities around the world, connecting them with miners and education platforms.

Let me know what ideas you would include or how to include more communities to take part.

Follow our journey and let the bitcoin learning experiment continue 💪🔥

[Roman Basar @RomanBasar]

Great timing! :D

[Conor @jconorgrogan]

I counted 1010 traders that are down $100k+ today and 206 traders that are down $1M+ today on Hyperliquid

358 of those accounts lost everything and have ~0 balance, including one person who lost all $19M+ in their account