The Daily Peg

Chainalysis spotlights how massive demand for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy has birthed a sprawling "grey market" that depends on crypto and stablecoins for payments.

Editorial hello

I know it looks like I’ve been doing nothing this week, but I promise this is just what happens when I go into research and deep thinking mode. The truth is, I started this greeting by revisiting Isabel Schnabel’s speech from earlier this week. Before I knew it, I had written 1,500 words and the whole thing needed to be shifted into a stand-alone piece. But it still needs more work. So you’ll have to wait.

To keep you amused in the interim, I decided to check in on how the Moscow Exchange’s track record as the earliest tradfi adopter of perpetual futures is going. Turns out, just swimmingly. The exchange now lists three ruble cross-rate perp contracts. It may also be planning even more listings.

This would be an opportune moment to mention SpaceX.

Elon Musk’s rocket company is set to debut on June 12 under the ticker SPCX.

But if you’re a stablecoin aficionado familiar with how defi markets and perps work, you may already have experimented with trading the stock in pre-IPO mode on platforms like Hyperliquid.

I did. For journalistic purposes.

And here’s what I can tell you about that experience. I bought about $45 bucks of SPCX perps on April 2 on a 2x leveraged basis ($101.94), entry at $1,699 per share. I cashed out on May 24 at $2,330. My position by that point was valued at $139.82, representing a profit of $37.77. That’s a 37.1 percent gain. Not bad not bad. And given the flash crash that occurred on May 28, a pretty lucky exit.

The thing is, the associated funding costs were not insubstantial. Simply keeping the position open cost me money every day. Luckily I only operate with small numbers.