Market structure · Index & instrument design · Trading · Risk
A research and development practice for markets that are still being built.
Kinetic Alpha works on the structural questions that decide whether a new market functions — what the reference price should measure, how the contract should settle, how it should be collateralised, and who will actually use it once it lists. We publish the research openly and build the analytics alongside it.
What we do
Four ways we engage.
The published research is the working evidence. The same capability is available on a commissioned basis — to exchanges, venues, index providers, trading firms, and infrastructure builders.
Index & benchmark design
Methodology design, IOSCO-principles review, and denominator analysis for new asset classes.
Contract & product design
Full instrument specification — settlement, funding, delivery, and pre-listing gap analysis.
Risk, margin & collateral
Margin frameworks, clearing-house risk architecture, collateral mobility and liquidation design.
Market structure research
Commissioned research, venue and regulatory-pathway diligence, and internal analytical tooling.
Focus markets
Where the work concentrates.
Five markets, each chosen because its structure is unsettled — collateral conventions, settlement rules, and listing pathways are still being decided, and that is where structural analysis has the most value.
Research
Published work.
Every piece runs on primary data and ships with an interactive tool, so the assumptions are drivable rather than buried. Modelled figures are labelled as such.
Implied compute forward curves
Kalshi's compute contracts do not settle against Kalshi. They settle against Ornn's Compute Price Index — and that one fact is what turns a prediction market into a price curve. Each rung of the ladder is a digital option on an externally administered benchmark, a strip of digitals is a discretised probability distribution, and a distribution has a mean. This works the construction end to end: ladder to density to forward, the convenience yield it exposes against provider term sheets, and a two-factor hedge calibrated rather than assumed. Then the governance question underneath it — one administrator now carries four instruments plus the deepest event-contract ladder in the market, and has published no calculation.
Hedging corporate event risk inside a hierarchy
Liquidity cannot survive being spread across ten thousand single-name event contracts — so concentrate it in a small number of parametric benchmarks and sell the idiosyncratic residual back as basis. That is how industry loss warranties and CDS indices already work, and this piece applies the pattern to corporate event risk across six families: pre-release content compromise and mass-tort litigation built out in depth, then M&A deal-break, cyber, recall, and approval risk. Underneath it: the CFTC event-contract regime including the unlawful-activity prong, ILW and cat-bond structure, index-versus-single-name liquidity, and market-scoring-rule sizing.
The denominator problem — what a GPU-hour actually costs in kilowatt-hours
Every compute-to-energy conversion in circulation multiplies nameplate TDP by an assumed PUE — including four dashboards on this site. The National Laboratory of the Rockies measured it instead, at 0.1-second resolution across training, fine-tuning and inference, and published the traces, the facility series and the tooling under CC-BY. Rebuilt on that data: real workload duty factors run 0.795–0.880, so nameplate overstates device energy by 12–21% (not the 4.5% gpu-burn gap everyone quotes); facilities peak at 73–80% of rated IT power, and peak sizing versus energy volume take different derates that must not be multiplied together. An energy-normalized compute index doesn't remove assumptions — it relocates them from power geography into workload mix.
Kalshi files metals perpetuals — and leaves the ratio leg on the table
Kalshi filed with the CFTC to list gold, silver, and platinum perpetual futures — its first expansion beyond crypto, on a 45-day review clock, filed onto CME's home turf while CME's lawsuit against the perpetual approval is live. The contract it didn't file is the interesting one: a Gold/Silver Ratio perpetual would complete a no-arbitrage triangle with the two legs Kalshi just filed — reference prices, funding anchor, and arbitrage discipline all from contracts inside the building. The margining case (ratio vol vs two gross legs, with the stressed-correlation caveat), the volume case (the FX-cross precedent), and the funding identity that glues the triangle together. Interactive throughout.
The Street just got a second settlement layer
Ondo's Oasis Pro Markets received FINRA authorization to offer tokenized NMS equities, ETFs, funds, and IPO allocations to US investors — a registered claim structure anchored at the transfer agent, not an offshore wrapper. The interesting part isn't trading access, it's collateral mobility: a long equity position that is simultaneously a tradable asset and a programmable collateral object. What that means for prime brokerage — financing disintermediation, the wrapper-basis haircut, sec lending, netting, the dual-book seam — plus an RWA tokenization timeline and the token-vs-SSF-vs-offshore-perp comparison.
Paper becomes racks — ComputeConnect and the first compute EFP
Architect and Compute Desk are building the first compute exchange-for-physical network: CFTC-regulated futures on H100/H200/B200/B300 rental indexes that convert into real GPU capacity via Compute Clear, with published basis tables by SKU, memory configuration, and location. EFP mechanics are the connective tissue between paper and physical in every mature commodity — the prerequisite for genuine hedger participation rather than purely speculative flow. Read through the crude, gold, gas, and metals precedents, with an EFP lifecycle explorer, basis-table simulator, and convergence lab. Companion piece: ICE × NATIVX's energy-normalized COIL contract, stress-tested against 374,550 hourly power prints.
Compute per unit of energy — ICE × NATIVX and the COIL Index
ICE's second compute-futures act lists GPU compute on NATIVX's energy-normalized COIL Index alongside the gas and power complex it already clears — the first contract design fusing the compute and power risk stacks. Stress-tested against 374,550 hourly ERCOT/PJM settlements: the energy content of a GPU-hour, the normalization-vs-shape arb, and the compute heat rate.
The market with no exit — CXMT's pre-IPO perpetual at a 526% access premium
Hyperliquid's xyz:CXMT perp extends the SpaceX pre-IPO playbook to a restricted foreign equity — offshore synthetic price discovery for an asset US and Chinese investors cannot directly access. No borrow, no delivery, no cash leg: a 526% gap that normally invites arbitrage, with the obvious trade structurally unavailable. Funding rates, mark price, and the oracle handoff to STAR Market × USD/CNY dominate short-term risk — a live liquidation-cascade and oracle-risk case study, with an interactive cascade lab and a full dashboard blueprint.
The power market goes hourly — Nodal's 168 hourly futures, ElectronX's bounded hours, and three years of the 24-hour curve
On August 31, Nodal Exchange lists a futures contract for every hour of the day at seven hubs — ERCOT North/South/West/Houston and PJM Western/AEP-Dayton/N Illinois — while ElectronX already trades the same hours as bounded, fully-collateralized futures and DA-strike binaries, and ICE's TB4 future settles the battery spread outright. Underneath them: 374,550 hourly settlement prints, a summer evening hour that averages 10× the overnight hour at ERCOT North, TB4 distributions with a $3,133 three-sigma day, and a day-ahead premium that makes the flat-priced binary wrong at every hour. Spread monitor with 99.7% bands, block economics, and the load/temperature spike maps — six-tab dashboard inline.
Four curves, one commodity — Kalshi's implied compute curve, and the race to price the GPU term structure
Kalshi launched compute forward curves on July 14, 2026 — binary event ladders settling on Ornn prints, the first liquid, executable forward pricing in the compute complex, live before either announced futures contract has listed. That makes four venues on three curve technologies and two settlement philosophies: event-implied (Kalshi), perp-funding + EFP futures (Architect), quote-assessment term curves (CME × Silicon Data), and transaction-VWAP futures (ICE × Ornn) — and three of the four settle on Ornn-family indices. Launch-day implied forwards from the real strike ladders (H100 ≈ $2.52, B200 ≥ $7.00, a stale monthly ladder pricing an implausible 24% two-week collapse), an eight-entry arbitrage monitor from the desk-plan taxonomy, and the compute spark spread with both legs finally quoting.
Single-stock futures vs. the swap desk — a balanced threat assessment for the $34.5B prime & financing franchise
CME lists the first US security futures since OneChicago on July 27, 2026 — into a year when equity perps went live on a US exchange, single-stock perps hit $62B/month offshore, and the SEC-CFTC opened the portfolio-margining question. Anchored on the leveraged single-stock ETF swap tape (T-Rex/Tuttle and Defiance MSTR funds paying OBFR +13-17% to Cantor, Marex, and Clear Street), the PB netting math a listed contract can't replicate, and the index-TRF precedent that already ran to completion. Plus the no-arbitrage rebuttal to "lower margin, no debit rate on shorts" — worked to the dollar. Threat map, moats ranked by durability, interactive 4-tool dashboard, two PDFs.
Offshore perpetual futures — margin, liquidation, and the October 10 stress test
$19B liquidated in hours, 1.62M accounts, 87% longs — the largest crypto liquidation in history exposed how each major offshore perp venue's design choices actually perform under stress. Side-by-side comparison of Binance, Bybit, OKX, Hyperliquid, dYdX, and the regulated Coinbase / Deribit alternative across 18 dimensions: margin methodology, liquidation routing, insurance funds, ADL ranking, mark price, funding mechanics. Interactive dashboard + flash-crash simulator.
Litigation outcomes as predictive contracts — a phased listing plan and a perpetual on the index
$79B in top-10 US class action settlements in 2025, a $19.4B litigation finance market, and $300B+ in pharma patent cliff exposure through 2030 — all currently absorbed by D&O insurers and shareholders rather than a liquid hedge. A four-phase listing plan (binary → multi-state → timing → perp-on-index), 16 candidate cases with $1T+ aggregate exposure, full perpetual design with cash-carry funding, and why the Kalshi precedents clear most of the regulatory path. Interactive case explorer inline.
A Gold/Silver Ratio Perpetual — turning a structural macro trade into a single-tick product
A proposed CFTC-regulated perpetual referencing COMEX GC/SI front-month VWAP, with cash-carry-anchored funding. The arbitrage triangle against two-leg cleared and the ETF pair, full bid-ask and margin economics, the index methodology, and the funding-rate formula — with an interactive dashboard for cost-benefit, funding decomposition, and venue ranking.
The Compute Complex — congealed electricity, the index dispersion, and the pre-listing trade
CME × Silicon Data and ICE × Ornn filed compute futures in May 2026 on structurally different indices — quote-based assessment vs Asian-averaged transaction VWAP. A six-level hierarchy (benchmark / grade / region / firmness / tenor / venue+credit), the four legs of the SD-vs-OCPI dispersion (the first listed-market trade), and how the compute supply curve is sitting in public interconnection queues right now, pricing PJM and ERCOT basis 12-36 months ahead of compute. Interactive dispersion dashboard inline.
Predictive market ETFs: what's filed, how the swaps work, and two concepts the market hasn't priced
Three sponsors filed 24 prediction-market ETFs (Roundhill BLUP/REDP/BLUS/REDS/BLUH/REDH; Bitwise; GraniteShares); SEC paused them May 5. A walk through the TRS plumbing that makes a 1940 Act fund possible on a CFTC event contract, the binary return profile, plus two unbuilt concepts — predictive signal ETFs and overlay products — with an interactive sizing dashboard.
Perps come onshore: what the CFTC's May 29 approvals change about contract design
The CFTC approved Kalshi's BTCPERP as the first US-regulated perpetual, issued a policy statement on listing perps, and cleared a Coinbase pathway to Deribit — all in the same 48-hour window. A walk through what a perp actually is, what knobs designers turn, and how the offshore (Hyperliquid HIP-3) and onshore (Kalshi DCM) paradigms compare.
Analytical tools
Built alongside the research.
These three are comprehensive enough to use as analysis tools in their own right. The engines behind them are the same ones we build against on client work.
Energy complex decomposition
430+ risk factors across 470+ contracts on ICE, NYMEX-CME and Nodal, decomposed into dated factor legs with open interest and cross-exchange offset detection.
Compute × Power workbench
Compute supply curve through to PJM, ERCOT, WECC and CAISO basis — spark spread, take-or-pay optimisation, index decomposition and trade synthesis across 14 modules.
Perps × predictive margin
BTC and SPX perpetuals against event-contract strips on one underlying, with a 5,000-path Monte-Carlo of an eight-cluster portfolio margin framework.
Approach
Four commitments that shape the output.
Collateralisation is the load-bearing question
How an instrument is margined determines who can hold it, at what size, and against what else. Most of the interesting structural questions in a new market resolve into collateral questions, and the trade follows the margin.
Market developments are the source of inefficiency
New listing pathways, index methodologies, and regulatory frameworks create structural dislocations that survive long enough to be tradeable. Reading the filings early is itself an edge — which is what the radar is for.
Synthesis across venues and asset classes
The work sits at intersections: compute against power, event contracts against insurance structures, perpetuals against cleared futures. Single-market analysis misses where the basis actually lives.
Primary data, reproducible models, stated caveats
Analysis runs on settlement records, rulebooks, and published traces rather than secondary summaries. Where a figure is modelled the model is reproducible, and sample limits are labelled before a critic finds them.
Open to partnerships, commissioned research, and consulting engagements.
If you are designing an index, listing a contract, building a margin framework, or working out the structure of a market that does not have one yet — that is the work.