study @the_smart_ape‘s polymarket bot, backtested with +86% roi in just a few days

most ‘arb bot’ threads are just PnL screenshots. this one is has undergone a through a research methodology

tldr:
@Polymarket
arb is a parameter + execution game.

this is a case study in microstructure + parameter design:

- the same both show 2 vastly different results with diff parameters: conservative +86% (fees+spread), aggressive –50% in 2 days
- the strategy is exploiting temporary orderbook dislocations early in each 15-min round, then engineering a hedge where UP + DOWN < 1 (after costs).
- so he did the correct thing by building a first hand dataset (6GB of 1s best-ask snapshots) and replay deterministically
- record more stress slippage/latency, model fill probability, and define kill-switches.
- then optimize infra (colocation/VPS, Rust, dedicated RPC) only after the strategy is robust.

the bot is the easy part.

the hard part is building a repeatable calibration + risk framework.

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2005809072453640406

➥ Three On-Chain Signals That Triggered the $JOJO 30x Pump

https://x.com/cryptorinweb3/status/2005978417531953387

Watching Theses 2026 on DeFi: Perps & Equity Perps, Prediction Markets, Stablecoin Yield w/ @MessariCrypto Alumni.

Top narrative: equity perps.

The thesis: Equity perps are hitting an inflection point where the infrastructure is finally good enough (60-70% complete) that novelty alone drives adoption.

The numbers back this up -
@tradexyz
reached $6B volume and became the 8th largest perp DEX by open interest after just one month of launching equity markets.

Why this works:

• Crypto natives want higher leverage on familiar assets (stocks > memecoins when returns compress)
• TradFi retail wants cleaner directional exposure than 0DTE options provide
• 24/7 trading with no brokerage accounts needed is genuinely novel
• Onchain platforms have structural regulatory advantages over traditional exchanges

The critical insight: This isn't just a crypto trend. It's where ALL trading is heading - people want more asymmetric returns. Perps deliver clean levered exposure better than short-dated options.

But the skepticism is valid:

• Perp DEXes were the ONLY DeFi metric that wasn't "down only" in 2025
• Hyperliquid already proved product-market fit for crypto perps
• The question is whether equity perps expand the TAM or just fragment existing volume

Prediction: Equity perps will be bigger than anyone expects (like stablecoins and prediction markets before them), but 2026 is the execution year - whoever gets from 60% to 80% product completeness first captures the market.

https://x.com/stacy_muur/status/2006022520559001841

shedding some $LIT airdrop stats

people are not selling their airdrops (75% still holding) and some have been accumulating $LIT instead.

price have been holding up $2.5 to $2.7 very strongly

the perp meta is not dead but going to get more competitive from here on

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2006244101277331615

Prediction: @arbitrum ’s RWA ecosystem 3X in 2026

Not because RWAs are trendy -but because distribution + compliance are converging.

Today:
• ~$850M RWA TVL
• Highly concentrated → top 3 protocols drive ~77%

That's a sign of early institutional consolidation

The real signal wasn’t just TVL growth → it was Robinhood and Exodus choosing Arbitrum to tokenise stocks & ETFs

Stocks are just the start

The next phase is multi-asset RWAs:
equities → ETFs → metals → structured products

The real RWA race isn’t L1 vs L2 or app-specific chains - it’s who institutions trust to settle value.

https://x.com/thelearningpill/status/2006002396695351783

Been spending this past week with family, but I wanted to share an update on the bets I’m taking going into the next year

https://x.com/Rafi_0x/status/2006130773888553167

- 2025 End Of Year Crypto Edit -

https://x.com/rektdiomedes/status/2006403691696287997

i’ve come to think most traders make the same mistake. we optimize for getting in cheap when we should be optimizing for being right about the market setups.

undervalued is a model output.

markets do not pay you for having a model. they pay you when other participants are forced to update their positioning.

that’s why i’ve started separating two behaviors people lazily call the same thing. buying like an owner versus trading like a trader:
- owners underwrite a long duration thesis and accept noise as the cost of compounding.
- traders are usually trying to catch the repricing after tge chop.

when supply normalizes, attention rotates back, and the market stops being dominated by sellers. most of us say we are doing the first. in practice, we are doing the second.

if my objective is a post tge recovery swing, then cheap is not an edge. it is often just the market telling me supply is not done and demand has not shown up yet. bottom bidding becomes a bet across multiple variables at once.
- that selling pressure is exhausted.
- that marginal buyers are imminent.
- that the narrative will not deteriorate further before price recovers.

you can be correct on fundamentals and still lose.

what i’ve learned is the real tax of buying lows is not even the drawdown, it is the uncertainty. it is open ended time risk and narrative risk. being right but trapped for months while opportunity cost compounds elsewhere. and while your mental bandwidth gets spent defending a position as the market keeps rewriting the story. that is not alpha. that is endurance training. and most traders are not actually paid to endure.

post tge assets make this worse. early price action is often less discovery and more market structure:
- incentive sell pressure
- unlock overhang expectations
- points farmers exiting

and attention moving on to the next shiny thing. trying to size aggressively inside that phase feels to me like trying to do intrinsic valuation while the cap table is still being liquidated.

so my trading rule has gotten simpler and more thesis-backed. i want size to follow thesis. i will take small exposure only when the dip is extreme not just in price but in sentiment. but i reserve my main allocation for the moment a breakout is confirmed. even if it means my entry is worse off than bidding the bottoms.

because what i am really buying with a breakout is information. information that buyers are willing to defend. that supply is being absorbed, and that the asset has transitioned from hope to pricing.

i would rather be slightly late and aligned with demand than early, cheap, and stuck in a six month conviction test i never actually intended to take.

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2006768631984828675

You can be right and still lose if you’re early

2025 had a very specific kind of psychological violence.

Crypto in 2025 looked less like finance and more like advertising.

Markets (always) moved fast, valuations > fundamentals, and yet the real work, building, surviving vesting cliffs, still moved at human speed.
The defining variable of 2025 was not price. It was time.

Time exposed fragile cap tables, fragile traction, fragile security, and fragile leverage. It punished anything that required just a few more months to become real.

I spent the year living inside that contradiction: switching from a defensive support role into an investing deal + execution role, while watching projects pump and dump around, and trying to stay honest about what everything else say.

This is my post-mortem of 2025 and what I’m carrying into 2026.

(read till the end for that, will drop some of the projects that I will be bullish on in 2026)

Twitter: https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2007074378455134655

FULL article: https://threadingontheedge.substack.com/p/you-can-be-right-and-still-lose-if

I filtered over 100 articles into one recap that will change your approach in 2026.

https://x.com/0x_dynamo/status/2005570693883179355

read @stacy_muur's take here and made me realize that i've been preaching the same thing.

i've earlier shared my thesis about "fat participants", its essentially distribution, distribution and distribution.

i am now more confident in my thesis having validated not just by myself.

the meta-trade for 2026 is going to be FULL ON focused on institutional, where rails become default when money, credit, identity, privacy, and verification become internet primitives.

stacy shared some things which reasonated with me:

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2007294363735343581

5 Theses For 2026

https://x.com/thelearningpill/status/2003473048389795966

$CANG went 0 → 50 EH/s in 9 months.

This is what mispriced actually looks like.

I’m talking about @Cango_Group, one of the most mispriced mining plays on my watchlist.

The reason I’m paying attention is simple: execution speed.
In mining, scale usually takes years.

Most miners take 3–4 years to hit that kind of deployment cadence.

1 EH/s = 10¹⁸ hashes/second
That’s 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 hash attempts every second.

The balance sheet strategy is also unusually clean: HODL-first.
They’ve accumulated $600M BTC and run a strict where BTC goes straight to treasury.

They’re running at 92%+ hashrate efficiency (per the numbers shared), which is the kind of line item that separates operators from promoters.

Then Q3 hit and the financials finally started matching the infra buildout:
- $224.6M revenue (+60% QoQ)
- $37.3M net income (vs -$9.5M last year)
- $80.1M adj EBITDA (~66× YoY)

> Valuation mispricing <

Market’s pricing it around $1.56 while Greenridge Capital put a $4 (≈ 156% upside).

And relative to peers like @CleanSpark_Inc and @IREN_Ltd, it still looks underpriced vs:
- BTC on the balance sheet
- machines deployed
- data center / energy footprint

> Expansion Plan <

They’re building toward a real energy + compute footprint:
- 50MW in Georgia operational
- 1.5MW solar in Oman
- 150MW Indonesia project (scalable to 300MW)

> Investments/Fundings <

Cango announced a $10.5M cash investment from EWCL (their Class B holder).

- 7M Class B shares issued (20 votes/share)
- Ownership goes ~2.81% → ~4.69%
- Voting power goes ~36.68% → ~49.61%

This funding allow Cango and EWCL to have tighter alignment to push 2026 execution across: mining efficiency / fleet upgrades / asset acquisitions + plus Energy + AI compute pillars.

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2007852339437383982

Farm 4 birds with 1 stone strategy airdrop strategy

https://x.com/kirbyongeo/status/2007828364741267731

prediction markets is the most successful category this cycle.

the chart tracking notional volume basically shows a clean exponential curve:
- 2024 peaked around the us presidential election (pure attention)
- post-election mindshare cooled
- then from 2025 q3 onward, volume resumed a steady grind up
- last few weeks printing >$3.6b like it’s becoming a default venue

but even the leaders like @Polymarket are still bottlenecked by two BIG flaws:

issue #1: market creation isn’t permissionless
- right now, the “average user” can’t just spin up a market. it’s only curated by the team.
- if only insiders can list markets, you don’t get the long tail of edge, and you cap the category’s ceiling.

issue #2: market resolution is the real problem
resolution = deciding the truth after the event.
because most events are offchain, you need an oracle + a dispute system.
and in practice, this is where incentives get weird:
- oracles can be ambiguous
- disputes become political
- token voting can be captured

in polymarket’s case, disputed outcomes route to $UMA holder voting.
and when there’s a lot of money on the line, big holders have an incentive to vote for the outcome that benefits them.
so the trading can be fair, but the part that matters most is the final payout decision, where the system can be exploited.

and these two problems are linked:
- you can’t open creation to everyone until you have robust resolution frameworks.
- otherwise you get spam markets, unverifiable outcomes, and endless disputes.

i believe the category is winning on demand…

but scaling it globally requires permissionless creation + credible resolution.

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2008006050780426298

145 projects for airdrops in 2026

🧵

https://x.com/arndxt_xo/status/2008131137466679577

Hold up. You’re telling me Infinex’s 60 employees average 18K USD per month?!?

220K per annum?!? EACH?!?

Forget about the ICO
Sign me up for a job!

https://x.com/kirbyongeo/status/2008412032106983602