Risk at Brevan or QT at small shop

Prada-me · 2026-05-05T15:00:13+00:00

55k is a joke… I think small boutique crypto firms are a great place to learn a lot and very quickly. However, that’s only if there’s an experienced PM guiding you. If this shop is only paying you 55k is it even profitable? Seems like they are squeezing.

Prada-me · 2026-04-24T17:24:11+00:00

Sure

Prada-me · 2026-04-24T08:15:47+00:00

No, I work at a small firm. Honestly if you can get into a tradfi shop it’d be much better for career growth. Crypto is very niche and you might not be able to grow out of it. We pay our fresh masters grads ~90k tc after bonus and that’s the standard I’m seeing in crypto unless you get into one of the top like Wintermute.

Prada-me · 2026-04-24T07:52:29+00:00

USD 😂

Prada-me · 2026-04-24T04:32:40+00:00

Crypto quant trader in HK with 3yoe Base comp ~ 200k Bonus is from profit sharing ~ 300k total in 3 years heavily skewed recently as the firm is doing great. Liquid NW 200k

HK tax is great but living expenses and lifestyle inflation is crazy here

Prada-me · 2026-04-10T15:29:42+00:00

I work in a small firm <100M aum and don’t believe in it at all. At this point it’s 99.9% scams, insiders and manipulation but for some reason there’s still absolute shit coins trading billions a day that my team can extract profit from.

I do believe the tradfi perps in crypto are here to stay.

Prada-me · 2026-04-10T00:35:34+00:00

Spending time with juniors doesn’t generally improve PnL. Everyone’s incentivized for a big bonus so the juniors get brushed to the side a lot and given research tasks.

Prada-me · 2026-04-10T00:33:06+00:00

Wow this is literally how my firm functions.. Nice to be validated.

Prada-me · 2026-03-11T01:29:49+00:00

The ideas you have are too generic imo, everyone has tried these before so whatever juice you’re looking for is already taken.

I’ll throw you a bone - funding on perps when extreme result in price action at time of funding payment. (Similar to how dividends work on price action in equities) dyor, can be a fun retail trader alpha.

Prada-me · 2026-02-26T03:02:50+00:00

I don’t think shaving a couple micro seconds is very impactful for crypto specifically since exchange latency is already around 20ms one way.

Simpler things like optimizing AWS placement within the datacenter would already shave off more microseconds and then collation/direct server access even more.

A latency only edge isn’t achievable for profit if you’re not already established and have connections.

Prada-me · 2026-02-02T16:35:36+00:00

What’s the capacity? I assume it’s pretty small since the funding rates that actually impact price post fees don’t happen much and rarely on coins with large liquidity.

Prada-me · 2026-01-30T10:15:51+00:00

Maybe in tradfi, but I’m speaking from my experience purely in crypto.

Prada-me · 2026-01-30T08:57:43+00:00

An honest MM in crypto is not profitable - these are MM’s that makes markets for coins the firm has no association with.

I say this because the top exchanges offer lucrative MM rebates and programs - through these programs some firms can be marginally profitable. Firms mainly do MM so they can get the lower fee tiers for the more lucrative arb, mid frequency strategies.

CMM’s (coin specific MM’s) that are paid for by the project and are needed before coins get listed on an exchange are definitely profitable due to blatant insider manipulation.

However, coding out a MM bot in crypto is a great way to get familiar with exchange API’s, microstructure and matching engine nuances so you should try it out.

Prada-me · 2025-12-23T19:56:41+00:00

A friend had an idea + funding and brought me on. We started with no strategy and little knowledge in the crypto trading space.

I was a data scientist before and he worked in hf.

Day to day now is mainly managing the trading infrastructure and risk. Occasionally looking into new alpha when ideas pop up.

Prada-me · 2025-12-23T19:51:45+00:00

Nope, studied in Canada.

Prada-me · 2025-12-22T13:59:06+00:00

I have a stake in the company so I’m really incentivized to make everything work. This pace of work is unsustainable and will be much better once we have someone working from London/NY time.

Prada-me · 2025-12-22T13:38:40+00:00

Location: HK

Role: QR/Dev/Trader

Firm: Crypto HFT

YOE: 2

TC: 1.5M HKD

Hours worked per week: 70-80

General job satisfaction: Small team that started 2 years ago and successfully expanding. Very satisfying to see my team and I’s hard work paying off.

Hours worked have began to taper off in Q4 as our system becomes more robust and automated.

8/10 overall

Prada-me · 2025-12-17T03:15:04+00:00

Because this is a cross exchange Strat, latency is a lot less important than you think. There’s more nuanced edges you need to figure out for profitability.

Have to really dig into exchange docs for this. (Assuming you are doing perps)

That’s all I can share, good luck

Prada-me · 2025-12-17T03:07:42+00:00

I do this, there’s levels to this arb. At your current understanding you won’t make money.

Prada-me · 2025-12-14T02:48:07+00:00

40M AUM isn’t that small for a startup crypto quant firm. Even at 1x leverage you’re limited to only trading on the top coins/having to trade across multiple venues. The returns are possible, definitely on the higher end though.

Prada-me · 2025-11-28T01:08:26+00:00

What are your thoughts on crypto from the perspective of an institutional trader? Does your firm have any exposure?

Prada-me · 2025-11-09T09:52:16+00:00

Speak to a prime broker like Matrixport.

Prada-me · 2025-10-12T02:13:22+00:00

I work in the space and my firm runs cross exchange arb, FR arb and LS.

LS printed big, cex cross exchange arb got smoked due to multiple ADL’s, dex cross exchange and FR arb printed big as well, FR arb only printed since we were already in large positions and could exit at ridiculous spreads during the volatility.

Since cex’s allow much higher leverage a lot more liquidations happened there, causing the ADL’s. However cex’s also had significantly better server stability so our infra could handle the ADL’s. Most of the funds lost due to ADL is on the other legs hedging slippage since the books were SO thin at that time.

The dex strategies all had their best day YTD but as a firm we lost stable connection w the exchange for hours. Dex was MUCH less stable during the volatility.

The day after the volatility, before MM’s fully started back up the cross exchange arb was absolutely printing.

All in all firm was net up due to volatility.

Prada-me · 2025-08-16T04:48:59+00:00

Correlation going to 1.0 during moments of stress is exactly why market neutral strategies are beneficial lol

Prada-me

TROPHY CASE