Scott Phillips - Finding Ugly Edges in Crypto Markets (S7E15)

03/03/25 • 68 min

Scott Phillips is just the second independent trader I’ve interviewed for this show.

Like many independent traders, Scott found that his constraints – including the size of their capital pool, the ability to execute trades efficiently, and a lack of supporting infrastructure – made trading anything but loose-pants trend following almost impossible in traditional markets.

These constraints led Scott to look for easier markets to trade: markets where the edges were so big they could survive inefficient implementations. All of which brought Scott to crypto in the late 2010s.

While our conversation is, at a high level, mostly about trend following, we spend a lot of time discussing what makes trading these markets unique. For example, with tens of thousands of spot cryptocurrencies, how do you choose what to trade? How do you choose which venues to trade at when liquidity is so fragmented? How do you deal with the fact that both crime and degenerate gambling are real idiosyncratic factors?

More than anything, painted between the lines, Scott provides a master class in thinking about edges.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Scott Phillips.

Scott Phillips is just the second independent trader I’ve interviewed for this show.

More than anything, painted between the lines, Scott provides a master class in thinking about edges.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Scott Phillips.

Previous Episode

Thao Tran – Market Making Illiquid, Non-Fungible Assets (S7E14)

Today I’m talking to Thao Tran, Co-founding Partner at Vamient Capital.

This episode was born from a question I had watching the NFT market place: how do you make markets in illiquid, non-fungible assets? Clearly people were doing it and I wanted to know how it differed from traditional market making.

Several people recommended I speak with Thao, and she was kind enough to oblige, despite NFT market making being just a small component of what she does. In this conversation, we walks me through how the NFT market place has evolved, how she thinks about managing inventory risk, key features that impact spreads, and how platform evolutions changed orderbook strategies.

In the back half of the conversation, Thao shares her thoughts on the state of crypto markets today, the emerging opportunities in decentralized exchanges, and how the landscape of alpha opportunities has changed over the last two years.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Thao Tran.

Next Episode

Roxton McNeal and Siddharth Sethi – Building Multi-Strategy QIS Portfolios (S7E16)

My guests today are Roxton McNeal, Managing Director and Head PM of QIS Investments and Siddharth Sethi, portfolio manager and Head of QIS structuring. Together, they’re spearheading the development of QIS-driven solutions at Simplify.

In this conversation, we explore what it takes to build and manage a multi-strategy QIS portfolio—from infrastructure requirements to portfolio construction and risk management. We discuss:

• The structural vs. academic premia distinction and why it matters.

• How Simplify evaluates and customizes QIS offerings from banks.

• The need and challenges of dynamic allocation across dozens of strategies.

• How QIS strategies integrate with traditional beta portfolios.

• The operational and counterparty considerations of trading these strategies.

For those interested in the practical realities of QIS investing, this episode provides a deep dive into both the opportunities and challenges of running a systematic, multi-strategy portfolio.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Roxton McNeal and Siddharth Sethi.