Thalassa Labs
Research and analysis on crypto derivatives, market structure, and token economics.
Research
The Hidden Cost of 'Free' Token Loans
April 15, 2026
Most market-making proposals include option tranches that transfer significant economic value from the project treasury. We quantify the real cost using Black-Scholes pricing and show what founders should demand in return.
ReadReading the Vol Surface: What Skew Tells You About Positioning
April 8, 2026
A framework for interpreting BTC options skew across tenors, and what shifts in the smile reveal about dealer positioning, hedging pressure, and directional sentiment.
ReadEvaluating Market-Maker KPIs: What Good Looks Like
April 1, 2026
Data-driven benchmarks for spread, depth, and uptime commitments across exchange tiers. How to tell if your market maker is actually performing — and what to negotiate before signing.
ReadWeekly Commentary: March 28, 2026
March 28, 2026
BTC vol surface steepening as front-end IV reprices post-FOMC. Skew dynamics, funding rate divergence, and what the absence of aggressive put buying tells us about positioning.
Coming Soon
Chris Newhouse started his career in crypto options analytics and research at Genesis Global Trading, then moved to GSR Markets to structure institutional derivatives deals. From there he joined Cumberland Labs — DRW's crypto venture studio — to incubate a DeFi protocol from scratch, spent time on Chicago Trading Company's natural gas volatility desk pricing options, and most recently built Ergonia's institutional business from the ground up across five verticals.
He has 25+ bylines across Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, CoinDesk, and CoinTelegraph, and has published derivatives commentary with Deribit Insights, Paradigm, and across major crypto and financial media. He's spoken at ETH Denver, Token 2049, Blockworks DAS, Cornell Blockchain, and The Block: Emergence.
Thalassa Labs is where that experience becomes public research — independent analysis on the derivatives markets, microstructure, and token economics topics that institutional desks think about but rarely publish.
Let's Talk
Have questions about our research, or interested in a partnership? Reach out — we respond within 24 hours.
research@thalassalabs.xyz
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