Hong Kong’s 2021–2024 wake‑up call: “crypto risk” was often counterparty risk

Hong Kong didn’t just experience global crypto volatility. It experienced a very specific failure mode: platform risk disguised as innovation.

2022–2023: JPEX becomes the headline everyone remembers. The SFC issued a public warning naming JPEX as unlicensed and highlighted multiple “red flags” — including extremely high advertised yields (examples cited included 21% on ETH, 20% on BTC, 19% on USDT) and investor complaints about being unable to withdraw assets or seeing account balances altered.

Hong Kong police later reported a large volume of complaints and losses associated with the case, and arrests followed. AP reported 1,641 complaints involving HK$1.2B at one point, and later 2,417 reports involving HK$1.5B (about US$191.6M). Whether you focus on the exact number or the pattern, the lesson is the same: when custody and “truth” are off‑chain, investors can’t independently verify solvency or enforce mandates in real time.

Same case also happened worldwide, with well known and widely reported crash from Terraform Labs (LUNA and UST) (article) and ftx. (article)

It started with a simple promise: “Give us your assets, get a safe, steady yield.”

The user interface was clean. The marketing was slick. It felt like the future of finance.

But behind the app was a black box.

Deposits from BlockFi , Gemini Earn, Celsius , and Voyager didn’t stay in a transparent, on-chain world. They were swept into an opaque labyrinth of off-chain deals, where risk was hidden and promises were un-auditable.

This was the great betrayal of 2022.

When the market turned, the black box shattered. We discovered the “yield” was fueled by reckless, under-collateralized loans to the same few players:

• Celsius Network, with $4.7 billion in customer deposits, had deep exposure to collapsing $UST and 3AC. When it filed for bankruptcy, it had only $167 million in cash left. A black hole.
• BlockFi, once a $3 billion titan, had made huge, risky loans to Alameda Research. Users who trusted them were lucky to get 25% of their money back.
• Voyager Digital had loaned over $377 million to 3AC. Gone.
• Gemini Earn wasn’t a Gemini product; it was a front-end for Genesis, which was lending billions to Alameda and 3AC.

They all sold the dream of crypto returns with the supposed safety of a centralized company. What they delivered was TradFi’s worst habits — opacity and concentrated risk — with none of the protections.

The lesson wasn’t that yield is bad. The lesson was that opaque systems will inevitably be abused.

The era of “Trust me” is over. The future must be built on “Show me.”

And that distinction is exactly why the next chapter of fintech — and the future of active management — will be built on blockchain infrastructure and smart contracts, not just prettier apps.

“Rebuilding From Scratch” Means Rebuilding Trust — Not Just Technology

When people say “blockchain will replace TradFi,” it usually triggers an eye-roll. I get it.

Because the real job of finance is not moving numbers. It’s producing trust at scale.

That’s why fund management has so many moving parts. If you want to run an investment fund properly, you typically need:

• Auditors (validate reporting)
• Fund administrators (reconcile NAVs, subscriptions, records)
• Custodians (protect assets, enforce segregation)
• Legal counsel (structure, compliance)
• Directors / governance (accountability)
• Regulated manager / licenses (filter unserious actors)

TradFi is a trust architecture — built from intermediaries.

But that trust architecture comes with costs:

• High setup friction for new managers
• High fixed operating burden
• Slow reporting cycles (monthly/quarterly mindsets)
• Trust that arrives after the fact (audits, reconciliations, investigations)

Smart Contracts Change the Trust Model

Smart contracts are not magic. They don’t delete risk.

But they change where trust lives.

Instead of relying purely on institutions to promise they followed the mandate, smart contracts let you encode parts of the mandate into enforceable rules.

Assets sit in a smart contract-controlled vault. The system can enforce:

• Whitelisted venues and counterparties only
• Whitelisted tokens only
• Approved transaction types only
• Multi-step controls (multi-sig, time delays, risk checks) before capital moves

This doesn’t eliminate risk — it transforms it:

• Less “manager can run away with funds” risk (rules restrict what can be done)
• More emphasis on smart contract security and operational key management

Smart contracts compress multiple layers of trust into a smaller number of verifiable controls.

On-Chain Vaults: The Next Infrastructure for Asset Management

Vaults enable noncustodial and programmable asset management — what DeFi-natives call “asset curation.”

In traditional finance, products are scattered across siloed infrastructures. Combining them into structured products is costly and inefficient. Every new integration is slow, intermediaries are numerous, products ossify, and liquidity doesn’t flow freely. More importantly, it is not transparent and risks are hard to track.

The 2008 Global Financial Crisis was not caused by a single bad product. It was caused by financial instruments layered on top of each other across disconnected systems, with no unified view of risk.

Mortgage loans were originated by one party, securitized by another, tranched into CDOs by another, insured via CDS by yet another, and distributed globally through balance sheets, off-balance-sheet vehicles, and structured investment conduits.

No single institution — and crucially, no regulator — had a real-time, consolidated view of exposure.

Fast forward to 2020+, and the lesson repeats — even in a more technologically advanced era.

Archegos collapsed due to total return swaps across multiple prime brokers.

Critical failure:

• Each bank saw its own exposure
• No one saw aggregate leverage

Result:

• $10B+ in losses
• Credit Suisse later collapsed (partially downstream impact)

Vaults change this.

On-chain infrastructure changes the default visibility of risk — from inferred to observable, from delayed to near-real-time.

They act as a single container that can allocate across many types of assets and strategies, all within the same atomic on-chain environment:

• Composable management enables more liquid, affordable, and personalized financial products
• Ease of integration — anyone with a wallet and stablecoins can access them — democratizes access dramatically
• On-chain programmability makes asset management safer, providing transparent and irrevocable safeguards that come natively from being on-chain

As a16zcrypto noted: “More people — not just high net-worth clients — will be able to access wealth management.”

Vaults are the infrastructure that makes this possible.

A structural shift is happening worldwide:

• Prime brokers are acquiring on-chain infrastructure (Ripple acquires Hidden Road, FalconX acquires Arbelos)
• Crypto Exchanges are acquiring on-chain businesses (Coinbase acquires Echo)
• Asset managers are tokenizing products to put on-chain (BlackRock BUIDL Fund)
• Payment companies are integrating stablecoin rails (Stripe/Bridge, PayPal PYUSD)
• Traditional brokers are crossing into crypto (Robinhood acquires Bitstamp)

The convergence is happening faster than most expected. The question is no longer if TradFi and on-chain capital markets merge — it’s who builds the infrastructure layer that connects them.

The On-Chain Mandate

There is only one way to rebuild: on-chain.

Not just for marketing, but as a fundamental architectural principle. Every transaction, every loan, every position must be verifiable on a public ledger, 24/7.

But transparency alone isn’t the final answer. It solves the trust problem, but it doesn’t solve the usability problem.

The on-chain world is a chaotic, fragmented jungle of protocols. This creates a new barrier: complexity.

This brings us to the $4.5 Trillion Problem.

In the old world, asset management is dominated by middlemen who charge trillions for infrastructure, access, and administration. We are at risk of rebuilding this same fragmented, expensive system on-chain.

This is the problem we solve.

Neutral Trade: The Infrastructure for a New System

Neutral Strats — Curated strategies across market-neutral, directional, structured products, RWA, index, and private credit. Professional managers, on-chain infrastructure, global access.

Neutral Vaults — Whitelabel vault SDK plus tokenization and on-chain capital raising infrastructure. For projects and funds that want to raise and manage capital with smart contract transparency.

Neutral Trade will be the standardized, transparent infrastructure layer for the future of asset management.

Our vision is to democratize access to institutional-grade financial products globally.

We are building the rails for a world where your financial security depends on verifiable code, not on trusting a CEO’s promises.

If Neutral Trade — and the broader smart contract infrastructure movement — succeeds, the biggest change won’t be that people suddenly love “crypto.”

The change will be more subtle, and more important:

• “Trust” shifts from periodic paperwork to continuous controls
• “Risk” becomes something you can constrain at the transaction layer
• “Active management” becomes easier to launch, easier to monitor, and easier to allocate to responsibly

And in five years, the average family office portfolio may not say “crypto” anywhere —

But it may hold strategies powered by smart contracts the same way portfolios today hold ETFs powered by market plumbing nobody thinks about.

The future is being built. Join us in this movement & Stay Neutral!

Hong Kong is one of the most dynamic fintech markets in the world. As of mid-2024, with support from HKSTP — Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation and Cyberport Hong Kong, the city had 1,100+ fintech companies employing 25,000+ people.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most fintech breakthroughs in the last decade have been UI innovation layered on top of legacy financial railways.

They made finance look modern. They didn’t make finance run modern.

Hong Kong Fintech Is Real — But Most Wins Are Still “Wrappers on Rails”

The Faster Payment System (FPS) launched in 2018 and lets consumers move money almost instantly, across banks and e-wallets. This helps with a range of fintech innovation in HK, including:

Virtual banks — Hong Kong licensed eight virtual banks starting in 2019, including ZA Bank, Mox Bank, WeLab Bank, livi bank with big backers from tech and finance giants. They were meant to reinvent banking — but most ended up as digital interfaces sitting on top of old rails. The HKMA noted that none were profitable as of end-2023, despite growing deposits and narrowing losses. Profitability remains difficult and uneven

Attractive cashback for using MOX Cards

Wealthtech & robo-advisors — Platforms like Endowus, StashAway, AQUMON brought modern UX and lower minimums to investing. Endowus crossed US$10B+ AUM and became the first digital advisor approved to advise on MPF. These platforms genuinely democratized access and reduced fees — but underneath, they still rely on traditional custody, conventional fund structures, and the same T+2 settlement conventions. Better wrappers, same rails.

Endowus with its marketing in HK’s MTR Stations

Lending & credit — Qupital 橋彼道 built invoice financing infrastructure connecting SMEs to institutional funders. Innovation in credit decisioning, but settlement still flows through traditional banking channels.

Cross-border payments: A standout example is Airwallex — it scaled global payouts and multi-currency money movement into a developer-friendly product. Airwallex reported US$130B annualised transaction volume and US$600M annualised revenue (2024 metrics), and later disclosed surpassing US$1B in annual recurring revenue and serving 150,000+ clients, with a huge Series G fundraise.

What do all these categories have in common?

They dramatically improved packaging, onboarding, and distribution — but most still rely on the same foundational rails underneath.

To be clear: improving UI is not a mistake.

UI innovation works — Futu Holdings Limited and Robinhood proved that distribution matters

In fact, some of the most successful fintech companies of the last decade prove the opposite — distribution is power.

Founded in Hong Kong, Futu Holding re-imagined retail investing across Hong Kong, mainland China, Singapore, and the US with a clean interface, low friction onboarding, and community-driven features. As of 2024, Futu reported over 21 million registered users and ~2 million paying clients, with revenues driven largely by trading commissions, margin financing, and interest income on client cash balances.

Or look at Robinhood in the US. Robinhood didn’t invent equities trading. It didn’t invent options or margin. What it did was radically simplify the experience — zero-commission trading, mobile-first design, instant onboarding. At its peak, Robinhood reached over 23 million funded accounts, fundamentally reshaping how a generation interacted with markets.

Exponential growth in online brokerage fintech wrappers

These companies proved something important:

Better packaging, onboarding, and distribution can unlock enormous user demand.

But distribution-only models hit a ceiling when they don’t own the rails

Despite their scale, Futu and Robinhood are still largely built on top of legacy financial infrastructure — and that creates structural value leakage.

Behind every “zero-commission” trade sits a complex web of intermediaries:

• custodians and clearing firms
• prime brokers and settlement agents
• exchanges and market makers
• banks holding client cash
• legal, compliance, audit, and regulatory overhead
• payment for order flow (in some jurisdictions)
• interest spread sharing on idle client balances

Every layer takes a cut.

Which means that even at massive scale, a meaningful portion of the economic value generated by users does not accrue to the platform or the end investor, but to the underlying infrastructure providers.

And there’s a second, more subtle cost. These platforms use client cash balances to earn interest and yield, with only part of that value passed back to users.

The real opportunity isn’t choosing between UI and infrastructure — it’s combining both

This is where the next phase of fintech begins.

• Fintech 1.0 in Hong Kong was distribution-layer innovation (wrappers)
• Fintech 2.0 is infrastructure-layer innovation (blockchain + smart contracts)

Legacy rails still dominate global finance — and they weren’t built for real-time, programmable markets

The easiest way to understand modern finance is to separate interfaces from infrastructure.

Most global money movement still depends on systems designed for a different era of computing, regulation, and trust. SWIFT was created in 1973 by 239 banks across 15 countries to standardize cross-border financial messaging. In 2024, SWIFT processed 13.4 billion messages, averaging 53.3 million messages per day. SWIFT itself openly points out that delays often come from frictions like batch processing and other steps around the “messaging layer.”

This isn’t a criticism of SWIFT — it’s a reminder that global finance is a patchwork of messaging + intermediaries + reconciliation + time windows.

Fintech can only move as fast as the rails it rides on.

So what would it actually take to make finance “run modern,” not just look modern?

Blockchain and smart contracts

They are the first true 0→1 innovation in finance in decades.

Not because they’re “faster databases.”

But because they enable something fundamentally new:

• verifiable ownership
• atomic settlement
• programmable rules
• transparent auditability
• financial logic that executes automatically

This isn’t just “better UX.”

It’s a new financial infrastructure.

The case for on‑chain infrastructure is really a case for verifiable finance

This is where blockchain and smart contracts stop being a “crypto narrative” and start being a financial infrastructure thesis.

On‑chain rails change the default setting from:

• Trust me, I have your assets (off‑chain custody + statements) to
• Verify it — the rules and balances are inspectable (on‑chain custody + programmable controls)

This is what “on‑chain transparency” actually means in practice:

1. Assets can be held in auditable structures (e.g., wallet addresses / vaults) where flows are visible and traceable.
2. Rules can be enforced by code, not policy memos — for example:
3. Reporting becomes closer to real time, because “the ledger is the ledger” — not a PDF after month‑end close.

That doesn’t eliminate risk. It changes the risk model. Instead of concentrating risk in a black‑box intermediary (where the first sign of trouble is often “withdrawals paused”), you move toward systems where governance and transparency are first‑class design constraints.

If the future of finance is programmable, then the future of active management must be auditable, rule‑based, and composable by design — not just distributed through better UX.

The future of finance cannot rely on better interfaces layered on unverifiable systems.

It requires infrastructure where rules, custody, and reporting are visible by design.

Connecting the Dots

And this is where the future of active management comes into focus.

If payments, brokerage, and wealth platforms have already proven that UX unlocks demand, the next step is obvious: build platforms that combine great distribution with ownership of programmable, transparent financial infrastructure.

That’s the problem Neutral Trade is designed to solve.

More on this in the next article!

Happy 2026, everyone! It’s been over a year since Neutral Trade launched!

From $0 to $60M+ TVL ATH, 17+ strategies, top 5 at Colosseum, 3x audits, and a $2M raise.

Here’s a month-by-month look at some of our key highlights over this year. We’re Grateful for all the community support in 2025!

October 2024: The Launch

We officially launched our flagship, the JLP Delta Neutral vault. The world’s first delta-hedged JLP product on Solana!

Powered by Jupiter perps fees and Drift funding rates.

It kicked off with ~70% APY 👀

October 2024: Recognition

Shortly after, we were featured by Drift after being the first team to offer the JLP Delta Neutral Strategy!

November 2024: USDC Basis

During this time, $SOL funding was quite negative on Drift. Using $INF from Sanctum, we created the USDC Basis vault, which at the time earned +30% APY!

We have disabled this strategy for now until rates improve.

Nov 2024: Hackathon

We came forth at Colosseum!

Thanks again crabbylions, mattytay, and n8levine for recognizing our efforts, and thank you to our first angel, TakayamaJoe, for recommending us to participate!

March 2025: Exposure

Our products, along with an interview with our founder Jared_Terminal, were featured by DriftFDN!

Also, we launched our new website!

April 2024: REKT

While JLP DN hedges both JLP’s unutilized assets and trader PnL, we noticed one thing.

Over time, traders lose.

This brought us to create the Traders REKT vault, where we hedge JLP’s unutilized assets but kept exposure to trader PnL!

Our first “Bet Vault.”

May 2025: Entry To Indices

Our first venture into index products. The Hyper JLP vault!

Recreating $JLP with a few changes, we had $HYPE instead of $ETH, LST’s instead of $SOL, and JLP DN instead of $USDC.

Want top cap tokens + yield? If so, this vault is for you!

May 2025: Support From Early Believers

We raised $2M from skylandvc, Ergonia, BlackPine, enzymefinance, MonkeDAO, and Solana-native angels and quants to build the ultimate platform for sharing strategies on-chain!

This fuel accelerated everything that followed.

June 2025: Bootstrap

With our first private credit vault, we helped bootstrap TermMaxFi.

While our goal is to democratize access to hedge fund strategies, with this product, we democratized access to private deals.

The $2M cap was filled in a week!

June 2025: All Roads Lead Back To Solana

With our own vault infrastructure built and audited, we were able to bring all yields back to Solana!

We did so with the Hyperliquid Funding Arb vault.

Take deposits on Solana, execute on Hyperliquid, then bring returns back!

July 2025: Generating Yield For Our Partners

Everyone loves yield. Individuals, projects, funds and foundations.

In July, we were happy to serve our close partner, Perena, with their first vault product!

July 2025: External Traders

Seeking to onboard additional products for our users, we onboarded a trading team offering a CTA-Momentum strategy that has returned 90% YTD for our in-house capital.

Trading on OKX and Binance , we mitigated counterparty and custody risks by using Copper Clearloop and Ceffu MirrorX.

Powered by our Neutral Strategy Vaults, the trading team holds trading access only via sub-accounts, with Neutral Trade retaining the authority to cut off trading if the drawdown cap is reached.

Aug 2025: Lending Market Curation

Kamino invited us to be a curator!

The NT Max Yield vault focuses on maximizing yield while employing a sophisticated risk management framework, including rebalancing when utilization reaches a threshold to ensure withdrawal liquidity.

Sep 2025: Aggregate

Naturally, it would make sense to curate yield across all lending protocols with our in-house risk management framework!

While still in the early stages, we are optimizing protocol caps and utilization caps based on protocol & liquidity risk, and managing liquidity coverage while maximizing yields.

September 2025: Unifying Liquidity

More recently, we introduced Moon LP, a cross-venue liquidity engine unifying Solana perps markets ( Jupiter + FlashTrade + Adrena ).

Unfortunately, Adrena was placed on maintenance mode; as such, we had to unwind and derisk. Shortly, we will be improving Moon LP to maximize the yields we farm for our users!

Oct 2025: Bring A Friend

We launch our Referral Program!

Capital introducers should be rewarded. Refer users, earn more points. Simple as that.

Look forward to more things on the way!

We also survived the black swan during 10/10 which turned out to be one of the biggest liquidation event.

Nov 2025: Under The Hood

Beneath the surface, we have made a huge number of optimizations to improve user experience, security, transparency, and infrastructure for the long term. There were delays in withdrawals and data loads during the tech migration but we should be smooth from now on!

Key changes:

- API showing our live performance.

- No hot wallets / private keys in any of our whole tech stack — fully supported by MPC and automations with whitelisted protocols and tokens.

- Clear separation between trading, tech and operations team.

A lot of studies and improvements were made observing the activities happened during 10/10, Stream finance and its ripple effects.

December 2025: Security & Transparency First

We completed our 3rd audit with OffsideLabs, this comes after our first two with Quantstamp and HalbornSecurity!

No major issues found!

December 2025: Website Updates

- API live, live portfolio data.

- Displaying allocation between trading venues, custodians, strategies.

- We also like AccountableData and have plans to use them soon.

Highlighting this year’s articles for long-form reads:

Covering our updates and products over the year, our long-form articles go into detail, providing an in-depth view of Neutral Trade.

https://x.com/TradeNeutral/articles

Thank You!

None of this happens without our depositors, partners, and community. Thank you for trusting us with your capital and our team’s risk management and execution capabilities.

The Power of Staying Neutral

When investing in markets, many people think they need to pick a side: betting that the market will rise or fall.

But markets are unpredictable. Central banks change course. Headlines shift sentiment overnight. Volatility spikes surprise even the smartest directional calls. That’s why some of the most resilient trading strategies don’t focus on predicting the market.

Instead, they prioritize neutrality and yield generation regardless of direction.

These strategies often have multiple components and can get quite complex. In this article, we’ll cover the fundamentals using a simple delta-neutral strategy example that uses spot positions and perpetual futures positions.

Perpetual Futures and Funding Rates

Perpetual futures differ from traditional futures as they have no expiration date. To keep their price close to the spot price of the underlying asset, funding rates are used. These rates encourage or discourage buying and selling, balancing supply and demand.

Funding rate fees are periodic payments exchanged between traders holding long and short positions in perpetual futures contracts.

Depending on different factors, perpetual shorts or longs can be the ones paying or receiving funding.

*Positive Funding Rates = Short positions earn funding

*Negative Funding Rates = Long positions earn funding

Funding Rate Arbitrage

Delta-neutral strategies stand out because they offer what most investors crave but rarely find: passive returns in volatile markets, allowing traders to shift their focus away from speculation.

Instead of making directional bets, delta-neutral strategies construct portfolios in which different exposures offset each other.

For example, funding rate arbitrage strategies. Gains in one position are balanced by losses in another, removing the need to be “right” about price direction and shifting the focus toward capturing funding.

This highly simplified example shows how to farm positive funding rates from perpetual short positions while removing their directional exposure.

This is executed by taking a long position using spot and a short position of equal value using perpetual futures. These two positions together negate directional exposure while permitting you to collect funding payments.

Funding rates flip (negative funding rates), with perpetual future long positions earning funding?

You can flip the strategy.

To continue farming funding payments, a perpetual futures long position is now required. To remove its directional exposure, you can open a short position using spot. A lending market short.

Risk

Nothing is 100% risk-free, even delta-neutral strategies. Here are some common risks that you should be aware of. While these risks can be managed, it’s important to understand them!

ADL Risk: An abbreviation that many of us may be familiar with now is ADL (auto-deleverage). Essentially, with perpetual futures, there must be someone on the other side of your trade. If not, perhaps due to extreme volatility liquidating the other side, insufficient liquidity, and an insurance fund pushed to its limit, as a last resort, ADL is used [Not all exchanges have ADL systems].

“Typically what happens is the ADL system will select positions on the winning side to close out using a ranking system based off 1) most profit; 2) leverage; and 3) size.”

This means that your delta-neutral strategy, consisting of spot long positions and perpetual futures short positions, can have its “winning” short positions closed during extreme market crashes.

Find a great breakdown of this system from Doug Colkitt:

Basis Risk: The price spread between the spot and perpetual contract can change, leading to an imperfect hedge.

Rebalancing Costs (Transaction Costs): Fees from opening and rebalancing positions can erode profits.

Funding Rate Risk: If the funding rates flip, the source of returns not only disappears but is a cost. Closing these positions and opening new ones will incur transaction costs.

Democratizing Access to Delta Neutral Strategies

While the concept of delta-neutral strategies is simple, their execution is far from easy.

It requires continuous monitoring, rebalancing, and risk management. Furthermore, the given example is only one type of delta-neutral strategy; there exist far more complex strategies.

This is where Neutral Trade’s delta-neutral vaults help, offering easy access to these strategies. The vaults manage the monitoring, rebalancing, and risk management while keeping the user experience straightforward: Deposit. Earn. Touch grass.

Strategies worth mentioning are JLP Delta Neutral and Hyperliquid Funding Arbitrage.

The JLP Delta Neutral Strategy is designed to generate returns by hedging underlying directional exposures while farming fees from Jupiter traders.

This strategy is much more complex than typical funding rate farming. I recommend reading further into it here: JLP DN Documentation

The Hyperliquid Funding Arbitrage Vault is a fully automated, delta-neutral strategy designed to capture yield from Hyperliquid’s perpetual futures markets.

By balancing spot and perp positions across assets like HYPE, BTC, and ETH, it neutralizes directional exposure while systematically harvesting funding payments.

TL;DR & Closing Insights

Delta-neutral strategies aim to remove directional risk while earning yield.

With Neutral Trade, these complex, institutional-grade strategies are now accessible to everyone, offering an easy way to earn yield without needing to predict the market’s next move.

Stay in the loop! Subscribe to our socials and never miss an update on new strategies, market insights, and exclusive opportunities.

Website: https://www.neutral.trade/

Docs: https://docs.neutral.trade/

Twitter (X): https://x.com/TradeNeutral

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/eECp6u5wvt

Telegram Chat: https://t.me/neutraltrade

Modern finance stands on two distinct systems: Centralized Finance (CeFi) and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

CeFi offers deep liquidity and easy onboarding. But it relies heavily on centralized custody and has limited transparency.

DeFi, on the other hand, provides democratized access to previously inaccessible products, programmability, and verifiable on-chain activity. Though it often struggles with fragmented liquidity and barriers to mass adoption.

Understanding CeDeFi

This gap has led to the rise of a new, innovative model known as CeDeFi.

The push for liquid, capital-efficient and accessible products is fueling the rise of CeDeFi.

By combining the liquidity and efficiency of CeFi with the accessibility of DeFi, CeDeFi brings together the best of both worlds.

Currently, Neutral Trade, among others, is pursuing this shift by democratizing access to institutional-grade strategies built on CeDeFi structures.

The Three Pillars of Institutional Adoption

For institutions, entering the digital asset space requires more than enthusiasm. It demands a framework that mirrors the strictness of traditional markets.

Three needs consistently stand out: security, liquidity, and regulatory clarity.

Security remains the primary need. With billions in capital, institutions cannot tolerate the risks of exchange hacks, private key mismanagement, or operational errors. Custody solutions must provide multi-layer protection to minimize this risk.

Liquidity is equally important. Institutional-sized capital requires highly liquid markets.

CeFi venues provide this, offering order books capable of handling institutional flows. Yet liquidity without custody solutions brings counterparty risk.

On the other hand, DeFi protocols, while transparent and often non-custodial, face the challenge of fragmented liquidity and limited depth.

Regulatory clarity is the final pillar holding back institutional adoption. Clear rules are seen as one of the biggest drivers for growth in the digital asset industry. One of the main issues is that regulations vary by region. This lack of consistency makes big players hesitant.

Hedge funds, asset managers, and banks want a predictable framework.

A clear shift is already underway through recent legislation. In the U.S., initiatives such as the Genius Act for stablecoins highlight a growing effort to establish well-defined guardrails, while in Europe, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCAR) introduces one of the most comprehensive frameworks for digital assets to date.

These changes make one thing clear: better rules attract bigger players and accelerate adoption.

The Role of Custody and Security Providers

For institutions to safely scale in digital assets, custody and security are non-negotiable.

Unlike retail users, institutions must manage large capital flows across multiple venues. This requires infrastructure that minimizes operational risk.

Providers like Fordefi, CEFFU, and Copper have emerged as essential players in enabling this environment.

FORDEFI

Fordefi is a custody platform built around MPC (multi-party computation) wallet technology.

Instead of storing a single private key, Fordefi splits key generation and signing across multiple parties. This makes it extremely resilient to attacks while allowing flexible transaction approval policies. Its design is tailored for trading desks and funds that need to execute strategies without sacrificing security.

CEFFU

CEFFU, formerly known as Binance Custody, specializes in institutional asset custody.

Offering asset segregation with the ability to mirror funds to centralized exchanges, it ensures funds remain separate from CEX operational risks.

This enables institutions to deploy capital efficiently while remaining secure.

Copper

Copper also provides CEX access while mitigating counterparty risk.

This setup allows institutions to trade on exchanges while holding assets off-exchange, reducing the risk of holding large balances directly on trading venues. Copper has become a leading choice for hedge funds and asset managers seeking maximum protection without slowing execution.

Without these solutions, deploying systematic strategies at scale would expose capital to intolerable risk.

The role of these providers is essential!

By offering MPC wallets, policy-based transaction approvals, and secure integration with trading venues, they form the backbone of institutional strategies within CeDeFi.

CeDeFi Strategies Accessibility

Democratizing a model that was once available only to the largest players!

The idea of combining CeFi liquidity with DeFi infrastructure has moved far beyond theory. It is now shaping the standard for how institutions interact with digital assets. Rather than competing, the two systems function as complementary.

Centralized venues supply execution speed and liquidity.

Decentralized infrastructure enforces accessibility.

Together, they create an environment where strategies can scale efficiently and meet the rigour of traditional finance.

As mentioned before, providers such as Fordefi, CEFFU, and Copper have laid this foundation. However, access to these strategies remains concentrated among hedge funds and large asset managers, leaving retail investors on the sidelines of this innovation.

Integrating these providers into its strategy framework and enabling hedge-fund-grade strategies to run on CeFi liquidity while maintaining the highest standards of custody and security, Neutral Trade closes this gap, making these strategies accessible to a broader audience.

What’s ahead for CeDeFi?

The recent momentum behind CeDeFi is only just beginning.

As institutions search for ways to participate in digital assets without compromising on security or execution quality, the convergence of centralized liquidity and decentralized infrastructure is becoming the natural path forward.

Over the next few years, two major developments will define this shift:

• Greater institutional adoption: Hedge funds, banks, and asset managers will continue expanding into digital assets as custody and compliance frameworks mature.
• On-chain and off-chain liquidity convergence: Settlement and custodial solutions will increasingly permit on-chain and off-chain convergence.

Neutral Trade is at the forefront of this shift, transforming institutional-grade strategies into accessible opportunities for a new generation of investors.

The rise of CeDeFi is not just the next chapter in finance; it is the foundation on which tomorrow’s markets will be built.

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Website: https://www.neutral.trade/

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The Rise of Stablecoins in Payments

Cryptocurrencies have shifted from being speculative assets to practical financial tools. What began as niche internet experimentation has now evolved into a real-world utility for everyday use.

What truly sets stablecoins apart in everyday transactions is their ability to mitigate volatility that plagues most cryptocurrencies. Nobody wants to worry about the value of their payment asset fluctuating between the moment they tap their phone at the register and the moment the transaction settles.

With stablecoins, this is addressed. The peg to the US dollar (or other currencies) guarantees that the cost of a coffee or a taxi ride remains exactly what the user expects, making them a far more practical medium of exchange than tokens like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

In the example above, when someone chooses to pay with a volatile asset (shown on the right side), the value the seller ultimately receives may change between the moment the buyer approves the payment and the moment it is confirmed.

This happens because the asset’s value can rise or fall sharply, so the final price paid may be higher or lower than expected.

With stablecoins, the only thing that changes is the payment method, so the price stays fixed at $100 (shown on the left). This provides a transaction of stable value where the buyer knows exactly how much will be paid and the seller knows exactly how much will be received.

This stability doesn’t just protect consumers; it also encourages merchant adoption. Businesses can price goods in stablecoins without constantly adjusting for swings in value!

By combining predictability with the efficiency of blockchain rails, stablecoins become not just an alternative to traditional systems but a superior one for many everyday use cases.

This is where the narrative shifts: from speculation on volatile assets to frictionless, low-fee transactions, powered by stable, borderless digital dollars.

Cross-Border Payments: Stablecoins are Limitless

The global cross-border payments market is on a steady upward trajectory, projected to increase five percent per year until 2027, according to a report by JP Morgan.

This projection emphasizes how traditional systems, which remain high-cost and slow, are being pressured to evolve in response to global digitalization. This growth reflects the increasing demand for faster, efficient international transactions in an era where economic activity is no longer confined by national borders or traditional systems.

Traditional finance systems often keep people locked inside national boundaries, with cross-border transfers involving complex intermediaries, expensive fees, paperwork, and long waiting times. Sending funds from one country to another usually means going through banks, remittance services, or payment processors. Each of these adds headaches.

For someone in China trying to send money to the United States, the process can involve multiple correspondent banks, strict capital controls, varying time zones, and potential rejections, all of which can delay the money’s arrival in the recipient’s account by days or even weeks.

With stablecoins, those barriers largely disappear.

All that’s required is a compatible wallet and the recipient’s address. A person can simply copy and paste the destination wallet address, confirm the amount, and send funds directly across borders in seconds, without having to justify the transaction through multiple institutions.

This directness makes the experience feel less like navigating a maze of bureaucracy and more like sending an email or a message, simple and clear.

In practice, this opens up new opportunities for people around the globe. For example:

• A freelancer in Japan can instantly receive payments in USDC from a client in Italy without going through international wire transfers.
• Families working abroad can send remittances without long waits, complex procedures, or high fees.
• Travelers can move money between countries without worrying about banking hours or procedures.

No Intermediaries: Direct P2P Payments

Traditional finance depends heavily on intermediaries. Whether it’s a bank, a remittance service, or a payment processor, every transaction usually passes through multiple hands before reaching its destination. These middlemen not only slow down the process but also raise the cost of transferring money, especially across borders.

For people in underbanked regions, this system can be even more limiting, where access to global payments often requires meeting strict requirements or paying disproportionately high fees.

The chart above clearly highlights this issue. Across major institutions like PayPal, Chase, Bank of America, and Western Union, the average fee for a $ 1,000 transfer hovers around 3.6%. That means about $36 is lost on every transaction, not even accounting for hidden exchange markups or additional delays.

While some players, like Wise, offer more competitive rates, the overall picture shows a financial system in which intermediaries extract significant value simply for moving money from one place to another.

Stablecoins change this dynamic by enabling direct peer-to-peer payments without relying on banks or financial gatekeepers. With nothing more than an internet connection, users can transfer assets globally in seconds, without correspondent banks, approval delays, or inflated service charges.

This directness not only reduces friction but also extends access to people in regions where banking infrastructure is weak or exclusionary. By removing intermediaries, stablecoins return control of money to the individual, making financial transactions faster, simpler, and more inclusive.

Transactions: Lower Costs, Bigger Reach

In this section, we will discuss the financial benefits of using stablecoins instead of traditional payment methods for everyday needs.

One of the clearest advantages lies in the cost of moving money. Traditional payment methods, bank transfers, and remittance services all come with service fees that add up over time.

Stablecoins, on the other hand, operate on blockchain rails, where the only cost is the network transaction fee, an amount so small on blockchains like Solana that it becomes almost insignificant.

A USDC transfer on Solana averages less than $0.01 per transaction, regardless of whether you’re sending $10 or $10,000. This difference clearly isn’t minimal; it’s transformative, positioning stablecoins as the natural evolution of digital payments.

With banks, sending just $1 or $2 is impractical because the fee can swallow the payment. Stablecoins flip this logic on its head: sending small amounts costs no more than sending large ones.

In this way, stablecoin transfers don’t just reduce costs, they expand possibilities. By minimizing fees, they make small-scale financial transactions viable. This encourages new forms of economic activity and puts more money back into users’ hands rather than into middlemen’s.

Financial Control

Stablecoins empower users by giving them greater autonomy over their money, reducing reliance on traditional banks and intermediaries. Instead of entrusting funds to institutions that might restrict access, users can hold stablecoins directly and decide how and when to move their assets.

This control becomes even stronger when combined with self-custody solutions.

Key advantages of stablecoins include:

• Direct ownership of assets: Users don’t rely on banks that often impose limits on accounts.
• Self-custody options: Ensuring maximum independence with funds remaining secure even if centralized platforms fail.
• Global accessibility: Anyone with a smartphone and internet connection can store and send stablecoins without institutional approval.

Although self-custody gives users maximum control, it also comes with greater responsibility. Losing access to private keys or recovery phrases means permanently losing access to the funds, since there is no central authority to reset passwords or unlock accounts.

The responsibility is yours alone: protect your keys and never lose them… or else

Stablecoins in Everyday Shopping

To begin this section, it’s worth highlighting this chart from Fireblocks that illustrates just how ready the financial industry is to bring stablecoins into mainstream payment systems. The survey gathered insights from 295 participants, most of whom were C-suite executives (61%), while the rest held senior roles.

These respondents came from a wide range of organizations, including traditional banks, challenger banks, cryptocurrency service providers, non-bank payment companies such as merchant account providers, and payment gateways.

The findings reveal that 86% of the participants reported having partnerships in place to support stablecoin integration, 82% say their infrastructure, wallets, and APIs included, are ready, and 77% see clear customer demand for stablecoin products. This combination of preparedness and demand shows that adoption is not just theoretical. The ecosystem is actively laying the foundations for stablecoins to transition from experimental pilots to full-scale, real-world payment solutions.

The practicality of stablecoins becomes most visible when applied to everyday spending. From groceries and restaurants to e-commerce platforms, stablecoins are increasingly being accepted as a form of payment. Merchants benefit from the speed and low fees, while consumers enjoy the simplicity of paying directly from their wallets.

Several key companies illustrate how this adoption is taking shape:

• Shopify: One of the biggest e-commerce platforms already allows merchants to accept stablecoin payments, letting shoppers check out with digital dollars just as easily as with a credit card.
• Kast: Through cards that can be added to a phone or requested in physical form, Kast enables users to spend stablecoins wherever traditional cards are accepted, both online and in person.
• Stripe: By adding stablecoin support to its payment infrastructure, Stripe enables merchants to accept digital dollars natively at checkout, helping bridge the gap between crypto and traditional payment rails.

These integrations create a seamless experience where stablecoin transactions feel indistinguishable from traditional payments, yet run on faster and much less expensive blockchain rails. Together, they show that stablecoins are moving beyond crypto-native platforms and becoming a practical tool for mainstream commerce.

Future Outlook: Mainstream Adoption Ahead?

As stablecoins continue to gain traction, the natural question is what the future of mainstream adoption will look like. One key factor shaping this discussion is the rise of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Governments around the world are exploring digital versions of their national currencies, which could streamline payments and modernize financial systems.

While CBDCs have the potential to expand the use of digital money, they raise concerns about centralization and surveillance, as control rests entirely with governments and central banks. This creates a contrast with stablecoins, which are issued by private entities but still retain the qualities of open, borderless blockchain assets.

For stablecoins to reach widespread everyday use, several conditions must be met. The first is clear regulation, which provides certainty for businesses and consumers. A recent example is The Genius Act approved in the United States, a landmark piece of legislation designed to create a comprehensive framework for stablecoins. The Act focuses on ensuring proper reserves, transparency, and risk management among issuers, while also protecting consumers who rely on these digital assets for payments. By establishing standards, The Genius Act sets a precedent for how large economies might embrace stablecoins responsibly.

Another critical requirement is infrastructure development. Even with regulations in place, the underlying technology must be scalable, reliable, and secure. Wallets, APIs, and payment rails need to integrate smoothly so that stablecoin transactions feel as seamless as credit card swipes or bank transfers. The good news is that, as highlighted earlier, a majority of financial institutions are already ready on this front, with partnerships and systems in place to support integration.

Finally, merchant adoption will be the ultimate driver of mainstream adoption. For consumers, the ability to pay with stablecoins at their favorite shops, online platforms, and local businesses is what will normalize them as money rather than just a niche financial tool. Companies like Stripe and Shopify are paving the way, but broader acceptance will be necessary to cement stablecoins as part of daily commerce. By combining regulatory clarity, strong infrastructure, and widespread merchant adoption, stablecoins are on track to solidify their role in the global financial system. What began as a speculative corner of crypto is now positioning itself as the backbone of a new era of money, borderless, efficient, and built for everyday use.

The shift isn’t coming someday in the distant future; it’s already unfolding right in front of us.

Making Your Stablecoins Work for You

Stablecoins are already proving themselves as faster, cheaper, and more reliable than traditional money. They save users on fees, cut out bureaucracy, and are increasingly accepted in everyday shopping. But the story doesn’t end with payments. One of the most overlooked advantages is that stablecoins can earn yield instead of sitting idle in your wallet.

Platforms like Neutral Trade, along with others in the DeFi space, are expanding on this idea. Through products such as NT Earn and JLP Delta-Neutral, users can access yield products designed to grow their balance.

This transforms stablecoins from a tool of convenience into a tool of growth. They’re not only borderless and efficient, they’re productive.

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Cryptocurrency markets have created life-changing wealth — and destroyed it just as quickly. In 2022 alone, the DeFi ecosystem lost over $156 billion in value, while Bitcoin suffered one of its deepest drawdowns in history. For every story of an early trader turning a few hundred dollars into millions, there are thousands who got rekt chasing pumps, over-leveraging, or panic-selling bottoms.

The hard truth: in crypto trading, more people lose than win.

So why do individual traders consistently underperform? And why are institutional quantitative strategies — often called “quant strategies” — the model that hedge funds and professional managers rely on?

Let’s break it down 👇

The Human Problem in Trading

Discretionary trading, where decisions are made by individuals in real time, is notoriously difficult to master.

Even experts let emotions get in the way:

• Emotions sabotage decisions: fear of missing out (FOMO) and panic selling are as old as markets themselves.
• Time commitment: beating the market requires 24/7 attention, especially in crypto where markets never sleep.
• Drawdowns outweigh wins: one bad trade can erase weeks of gains.
• Poor risk management: even billion-dollar institutions like 3AC collapsed from mismanaging leverage.

The result? Retail investors who try to time the market often end up as liquidity for smarter, faster, and better-capitalized players.

Why Quantitative Strategies Win

Quantitative (systematic) strategies flip the script. Instead of emotion, they use math, models, and automation.

1. Discipline Over Emotion

Algorithms never panic or FOMO. They follow pre-defined rules, backtested against years of market data.

2. Speed & Scale

Quants — especially those who don’t speak English — can scan hundreds of markets in milliseconds. Humans simply cannot compete.

3. Risk Management

Professional strategies are designed with stop-losses, hedges, and strict drawdown limits. One bad trade won’t wipe the portfolio.

4. Multi-Strategy Diversification

Top hedge funds run dozens of uncorrelated strategies at once:

• Delta-neutral basis trades
• Funding arbitrage
• Mean reversion
• Momentum and trend following
• Structured derivatives
• On-chain credit

This diversification smooths returns and reduces volatility.

Case Study: Delta-Neutral Strategies in Crypto

One of the clearest examples is the delta-neutral strategy (For example our JLP Delta Neutral strategy).

Instead of betting on whether Bitcoin or Ethereum goes up or down, quants construct positions that hedge out market exposure. For instance, by holding a token while shorting its perps, a strategy can earn from funding rates, market-making spreads, or liquidity incentives — without caring which direction the price moves.

The result: consistent returns, even in bear markets, while human traders often struggle with volatility and uncertainty.

For example, our flagship Market-Neutal strategies:

Cross-Exchange Arb:
https://www.neutral.trade/strategies/hyperithm1

Hyperliquid Funding Arb:
https://www.neutral.trade/strategies/hlfundingarb

Volatility Alpha:
https://www.neutral.trade/strategies/volatility-alpha-strategy-1

Why This Matters for Investors

For retail investors, the rise of quant strategies is both a challenge and an opportunity. Competing against algorithms is nearly impossible for individuals — but participating in them is now easier than ever.

Platforms like Neutral Trade are bringing the hedge fund model on-chain, making institutional-grade quant strategies accessible to everyone. With transparent smart contract vaults, provable PnL, and strategies ranging from market-neutral to structured credit, investors can finally move beyond hype-driven trading and into real, risk-adjusted yield.

Human vs Quant: By the Numbers

Let’s compare performance drivers:

The Neutral Trade Approach

TradFi quant models have been locked behind billion-dollar hedge funds and restrictive LP agreements. Neutral Trade brings that model on-chain:

• Vaults as access points — transparent, smart contract-secured
• Multi-strategy platform — market-neutral, directional, credit, and structured products
• Proof of performance — on-chain PnL, auditable results
• Capital efficiency — traders get infra without bureaucracy, users get hedge fund-grade returns (And higher)

In just the first four months, we achieved clear product–market fit:

• $50M TVL
• 22.7% return in flagship vault
• Zero dependence on VC capital

Looking Ahead: The Future Is Quant

As crypto markets mature, the gap between human and algorithmic trading will only widen. CeFi bots and copy trading offer superficial automation — but true quant infrastructure means risk-managed, multi-strategy systems that can adapt to volatility.

Neutral Trade is building that future. For the first time, retail investors, protocols, and capital allocators can access hedge fund-grade strategies in a permissionless, on-chain format.

Neutral Trade — Quantitative strategies, accessible globally with nothing more than an internet connection

Crypto is no longer the Wild West of meme coins and hype cycles. The next decade will be won by those who use data, discipline, and diversification.

Markets may have been built on gut feeling, but algorithms are taking over.

Stay in the loop!
Subscribe to our socials and never miss an update on new strategies, market insights, and exclusive opportunities.

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DeFi is broken — but not beyond repair. The vision that once inspired builders and users alike has been diluted: the 10th synthetic stablecoin, another points farm, a copy-paste vault “innovation.”

Where is the real innovation? Where are the real returns?

It’s time for something fundamentally different.

At Neutral Trade, we’re not another vault project. We’re not a yield aggregator.

We’re building the Internet Capital Yield Engine — an on-chain infrastructure that democratizes access to sophisticated, institutional-grade financial strategies for everyone, from crypto traders and DeFi users to protocols and capital allocators.

🔍 Why We Built Neutral Trade

DeFi’s mission was simple:

• Open access to sophisticated financial products
• Frictionless yield, without middlemen
• Leverage and liquidity without borders
• Global access without geographic walls

But that vision got lost.

Yield has been gamified to death — points, wrappers, rinse, repeat is different: we offer real strategies and real yield.

Meanwhile, in TradFi, hedge funds like Millennium, Point72, and Balyasny deploy multi-strategy quant models, strictly risk-managed and institutional-grade.

We asked:
Why should access to real yield and alpha be gated behind lawyers and LP meetings?

Neutral Trade brings this hedge-fund model on-chain and permissionless. We remove the legal overhead, centralized opacity, and regulatory moat — and replace it with smart contract vaults, transparent fee structures, and a marketplace of actively managed, risk-adjusted strategies.

🧠 What Makes Neutral Trade Different

We get it. On the surface, it’s easy to mistake us for “just another vault.” Let’s walk through how we’re not.

1️⃣ We’re Not a Vault or Yield Aggregator

(e.g., Yearn, Beefy, Harvest)

Those DeFi 1.0 protocols optimized existing yield — farming emissions, staking LP tokens, auto-compounding rewards. Useful? Sure. Innovative? Not anymore. Sustainable alpha? Zero.

Neutral Trade isn’t a wrapper. We’re the engine.

Our strategies don’t rely on token emissions or airdrop points. We run:

• Market-neutral and delta-neutral quant strategies
• Trend-following and mean-reversion models
• Structured products
• On-chain credit strategies

Each is risk-managed, backtested, and dynamically hedged.

2️⃣ We’re Not a Strategy Allocator

(e.g., Veda, Morpho Curators, EtherFi)

Allocators just package other protocols and take a cut. You’re paying someone to click buttons. In TradFi, maybe that flies. But DeFi was meant to eliminate those middlemen.

We build our own quant infra. We originate alpha.

• We onboard real trading teams
• We set our own risk and leverage limits
• We don’t proxy — we produce

3️⃣ We’re Not a Synthetic Stablecoin

(e.g., Ethena, Resolv, Multiplifi)

We respect these projects — they brought delta-neutral strategies mainstream. But most depend on a single basis trade and then wrap it into a stablecoin backed by that one yield source.

The problem? That peg breaks during volatility. And users are left holding the bag.

We’re not backing a peg. We’re building a marketplace.

From day one, Neutral Trade is:

• Multi-strategy
• Modular
• Market-responsive

Strategies include:

• Inverse trader PnL vaults (bet against traders)
• SOL/ETH flip and BTC dominance vaults
• Thematic token baskets (e.g., HyperJLP)
• Private syndicated credit (e.g., TermMax)

4️⃣ We’re Not Just Structured Derivative Vaults

(e.g., Friktion)

Structured products died in the bear market — especially the rigid ones.

Our structured vaults are dynamic and expressive. Users can:

• Bet on or against specific market views
• Take volatility exposure
• Gain long or short beta
• Mirror TradFi structured notes — on-chain and composable

5️⃣ We’re Not Just Another Lending Protocol

(e.g., Maple, Wildcat, Syrup)

We’re building syndicated on-chain credit — but with a key difference:
Our deals are curated, transparent, and open to retail. No lending to 3AC-style ghosts.

Pain points we solve:

• Projects struggle to fund operations — VCs only buy equity
• Protocols need liquidity to bootstrap ecosystems
• Lenders want real yield and token upside

Our first credit deal with TermMaxFi is just the start.

6️⃣ We’re Not Copy Trading, CeFi or Grid Bots

(e.g., BounceBit, CEX bots, Copy Trading platforms)

No 28-day locks. No opaque PnL. No rug risk.
We’re bridging CeFi-grade execution with DeFi transparency.

All strategies are:

• On-chain
• Auditable
• Real-time in performance

Vaults live on-chain. PnL is provable. Risks are visible.

🔧 Infrastructure Inspired by Millennium

Our blueprint is inspired by the most successful fund in the world: Millennium.

Their model:

• Dozens of trading pods
• Central risk and execution
• Dynamic capital allocation
• Quant infrastructure at scale

We bring that on-chain — minus the $10M lockup and offshore fund.

Traders get:

• Capital without legal overhead
• Execution infra
• Real-time risk limits
• Profit-sharing based on performance

Users get:

• Transparent access to hedge-fund grade strats
• On-chain PnL
• Real-time NAV and drawdown tracking
• Withdraw anytime, no redemption gates (1–7 days is nothing)

Product-Market Fit

We’ve proven the model:

• $50M TVL in 4 months
• 22.7% return on our flagship JLP delta-neutral strategy
• $2M raised from angels and builders
• No VC dependence. Community-driven growth.

This isn’t “DeFi reinvented.”
This is TradFi finally democratized.

What’s Next?

We’re just getting started.

We’re giving:

• Retail: a chance to access uncorrelated real yield
• Traders: the rails to run alpha without bureaucracy
• Protocols: embedded yield infrastructure
• Capital allocators: ways to earn through routing and syndication

It’s CeFi execution + DeFi access.
It’s hedge fund performance.
It’s asset management, rebuilt for the internet.

Stay in the loop!
Subscribe to our socials and never miss an update on new strategies, market insights, and exclusive opportunities.

Website: https://www.neutral.trade/

Docs: https://docs.neutral.trade/

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Discord: https://discord.gg/neutraltrade

Telegram Chat: https://t.me/neutraltrade

Sidelined? Here is your chance to earn yield on $USDC while getting exposed to token and market upside.

Our first Private Credit Vault aims to bootstrap liquidity and economic activity for a DeFi project @TermMaxFi.

Earn ~18%–27% APY on Your USDC with the TermMax Private Credit Vault!

Why This Matters for Stablecoin Holders

If you’re parking USDC on a lending market for 3–4% or worse — letting it idle in a wallet, you’re leaving yield on the table.

• @TermStructureFi (parent company of TermMax) raised $4.45M in a Seed round, backed by @Cumberland, @HashKey_Capital, and others
• Short commitment period of about 4 months starting early June (plus a bit to unwind) — wraps up by mid October ‘25
• Earn 18% APY plus bonus tokens
• $TMX TGE unlocks before the VCs and backers

Is this VC on steroids? You get high potential token upside with much lower downside risk 🙌

Meet TermMax Finance

TermMax is an AMM-based, fixed-rate / fixed-maturity lending protocol purpose-built for professional DeFi traders and market makers.

Key features:

TermMax in Two Sentences Curated “rate curve designers.” Instead of one-size-fits-all interest rates, professional “makers” post custom curves that mimic real-world forward-rate markets, improving capital efficiency. One-click leverage & ERC-4626 vaults. Power users can amplify returns instantly, while passive users deposit to vaults managed by seasoned strategists.

The project raised $4.45 million in seed funding from Cumberland, HashKey Capital, and other tier-one investors

Anatomy: Where the 18% Comes From

1. Base lending yield from TermMax USDC Vault: ~4% (variable, accrues daily)
2. Daily TMX airdrop incentives: ~6% (variable, unlocks at TGE, zero vesting)
3. TermMax backstops any gap to hit 18% (in TMX, unlocks at TGE, zero vesting)

Extra $TMX for Big Depositors

• No cliff, linear unlock over 6 months

• We’ll claim for you and return your principal + yield

• TGE expected in Q3/Q4 2025

We expect this to generate an additional 6–9% APY for you

How the Campaign Runs (Step-by-Step)

1. 1-week deposit window with $500K floor.
2. If a lot of demand → raise the cap, extend a few days.
3. Pause deposits, snapshot LP balances.
4. Bridge from Solana to ETH and deposit into the TermMax USDC Vault
5. Month 4: coordinate with TermMax to prepare for withdrawal at the end of the 4-month period.
6. Withdraw principal + yield, reopen withdrawals.
7. Post-TGE: Distribute TMX token rewards in USDC on a pro-rata basis

Timeline ⏳

• Now → Day 7: Deposit window

• Day 8: Funds bridged, vault live

• Month 4: Unlock & unwind

• Post-TGE: TMX rewards distributed

Risks to know 👇

• Smart contracts: Audited by Spearbit x Cantina

• Yield: Base + $TMX rewards may vary with market & token price

• TGE timing: Aiming for Q3–Q4 ’25, but could shift based on market conditions

• Withdrawals: May take time — funds are actively deployed, but we’ll work with the TermMax team to ensure withdrawal process goes smoothly

Estimated valuation for TMX token based on $60M FDV, with price $0.06

We apply a 20% performance fee for this deal — but only on the profits. That means:

• We don’t charge anything upfront

• Your original deposit is never touched for fees

• The fee is calculated only on the gain at the end of the term

• Collected automatically before your final USDC + TMX rewards are returned

We only earn when you do — incentives alligned

👉 Deposit into the vault: https://www.app.neutral.trade/strategies/termmax

👉 Need a bigger allocation? DM us.

Stay in the loop!
Subscribe to our socials and never miss an update on new strategies, market insights, and exclusive opportunities.

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Welcome to the Monthly Report!

At Neutral Trade, we believe in transparency, and this report is our way of keeping you informed. We’ll break down the performance of almost each strategy over the past month and share insights on recent and upcoming upgrades.

USDC Staking (JLP Delta Neutral)

Return: 0.5% (April/2025) (April APY: 7.76%)

Trading Volume (Summarized): $18.79M (April)

Total Fuel (Summarized): 94,133,693

• The JLP Delta Neutral strategy continues to deliver attractive APYs, outperforming traditional yield instruments such as money markets and savings accounts.
• While macro sentiment is improving, Juper Perps volume remained flat through April (without any significant pumps/dumps).

USDC Basis (Sanctum-Inf)

Return: 0.53% (April/2025) (April APY: 6.6%)

Total Fuel: 4,460,451

• This vault currently exhibits the highest Sharpe ratio across NT strategies.
• From a risk-adjusted yield perspective, it remains the most efficient deployment of USDC capital on-chain.

JLP Neutralized

USDC Terms — Return: 0.5% (April/2025) (April APY: 7.76%)

JLP Terms — Return: -10.4% (April/2025)

Trading Volume: $1.95M (April)

Total Fuel: 7,132,235

• Due to recent market rallies, the vault has underperformed in JLP terms but continues to generate positive returns in USDC as expected from a delta-neutral strategy.
• Performance is in line with model projections under volatility expansion.

SOL/ETH/BTC Super Stakings

Sol Super Staking:

Return: 1.04% (April/2025) (April APY: 13.21%)

Trading Volume: $991K (April)

Total Fuel: 736,222,086 🔥

ETH Super Staking

Return: 0.90% (April/2025) (April APY: 11.351%)

Trading Volume: $545K (April)

Total Fuel: 2,728,179

BTC Super Staking

Return: -0.18% (April/2025)

Trading Volume: $305K (April)

Total Fuel: 1,376,193

• April performance was strong across SOL Super Staking.

• SOL Super Staking continues to accumule massive amounts of FUEL.

Traders REKT

Return: -0.3% (April/2025)

Trading Volume: $408K (April)

Total Fuel: 1,896,436

• April saw a small net positive PnL across Jupiter Perps traders.

Long SOL/Short ETH (Solana Flippening)

Return: 20.41% (April/2025) (April APY: 828%) 🔥

Trading Volume (April): $132K

Total Fuel: 16,219,008 FUEL

• The SOL/ETH vault saw excellent results in April, with SOL pumped while ETH dumped — ideal conditions for this vault.

SOL Momentum (CTA-SOL; By Marco)

Return: 2.90% (April/2025) (April APY: 40.924%)

Trading Volume (April): $45.9M

Total Fuel: 245,149,729 🔥

• We’re actively developing infrastructure to support high-turnover, high-liquidity strategies.
• CTA-SOL remains the most effective option for Drift fuel accumulation.

Reminder: All airdrops earned within Neutral Trade will be fully distributed back to the community.

New vaults are live, but we’ll include them in future reports once 30-day data is available!

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