https://costtohold.com A weekday note on perps, funding, and what a position actually costs. Written by someone trading a live systematic book. en Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-17/ https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-17/ Daily Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT Prediction markets are the closest thing crypto has to a genuinely new instrument, and they have already made the same structural choice perps made. Today: what the volume data actually shows, why both venues are now quoting against their own users, what happened the last time an industry did that, and a bitcoin tape where one venue is paying longs 13.81% while another charges them 9.45%. ##… https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-14/ https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-14/ Daily Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT The number that closes your position is not the number on your screen, and on a bad day it is not even a number anyone traded at. Today: what actually triggers a liquidation, the mechanism that can close you out because you were right, and a tape where bitcoin funding ran from −1.73% to +10.95% across four venues while open interest climbed on every one of them. ## You are not liquidated at the… https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-13/ https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-13/ Daily Thu, 13 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT Everything is down about a point and a half and the funding underneath it went in four directions at once. Today: why a confident number is the dangerous kind, a filing that would put ETF holders on the earning side of the same trade you are paying for, and three venue-assets that have snapped back to the default rate and stopped saying anything at all. ## You cannot know tomorrow's price. You… https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-12/ https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-12/ Daily Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT July CPI landed at 08:30 and barely moved the price. It moved the cost of holding a position by six percentage points on one venue and not at all on another. Also today: solana funding inverted across two exchanges overnight, and a note on the one number your exchange will never print. ## A tenth of a point on CPI took six points off the cost of holding bitcoin Inflation cooled by a tenth. Prices… https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-11/ https://costtohold.com/daily/2026-08-11/ Daily Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:00:00 GMT Prices are back where they were a week ago, a billion dollars walked into the ETFs while nobody was looking, and the same SOL position is paying some people and charging others. First issue — here is what a week of going nowhere actually cost. https://costtohold.com/the-founder/no-01-exchange-deletes-history/ https://costtohold.com/the-founder/no-01-exchange-deletes-history/ The Founder Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT Nobody announces this. There is no email that says your records are about to expire. But every major venue serves your own trading history through a window, and the window is smaller than most traders think. Once it closes, the data behind it is gone for good.