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How Volmex Crypto Volatility Indices Work - Yield Talks
Recorded: June 13, 2025 Duration: 0:50:49Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent Yield Talks podcast, Volmex founder Cole Kennelly discussed the launch of innovative crypto volatility indices, the upcoming Volmex token, and the growing trend of volatility trading in the crypto market, highlighting significant growth opportunities and strategic expansions.
Full Transcription
Music Thank you. Thank you. Music Thank you. Music Thank you. Hey everyone, thanks for joining. Let's go ahead and do a sound check first. Cole,
Nomadic, can you hear me okay? Hey guys. Hey, there we go. Cole, you sound great.
Nomadic, can you hear me okay?
Yeah, I can hear you. I'm kind of losing my voice, just if it sounds funny, by the way.
You sound great. You sound good. How was the One Direction concert last night?
Nice.
Gotcha. Okay, I will kick us off then. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. This is,
actually, let me kick off that one more time. Lost my tab here. All right. Now we're good.
And guys, you can still hear me okay? Internet connection sounds good.
Yeah, all good, man.
All good. All right. Here we go. Everyone, thanks for joining us. This is Yield Talks on the Edge podcast. I'm DeFi Dad here with Nomadic.
Every Friday, we host a live space to review new and interesting DeFi to spotlight what we believe is an on-chain opportunity more of you should know about.
So today we're joined by Volmex founder Cole Kennelly.
Volmex is the first and leading provider for crypto volatility indices, as well as other indices for digital assets such as Volmex prime rates, which is analogous to a LIBOR rate for crypto.
Our colleagues at 4RC originally invested in Volmex in 2021.
And after four years, I am very happy to say that the DeFi markets have grown and evolved
to a degree that investors and traders are now begging for this product.
I think it's a sign of DeFi maturing. And we are very excited to have Cole on today to break down why Volmex
indices can be so advantageous and how we construct our portfolios. And even as DeFi users,
how we can begin to look to them as signal in the market. So Cole, why don't we kick off with just
a little bit more than what I shared
on the background of Volmex. What is the origin story behind building Volmex?
Thanks, guys. Great to be here. Excited for the conversation today. So I've been following,
excited to talk more about Volmex and all things that are coming soon um so i've been following the
options market my entire life my dad actually has spent about 30 years working at a couple different
u.s equity options exchanges and so still works at an options exchange today and um you know i've
been involved in the crypto market for a number of years now i've actually been working um in
crypto startups for about six and a half years. I was the second employee at a
staking company called Staked or Staked US, which was acquired by Kraken. And so, you know,
as I sort of got more and more involved in the crypto derivatives landscape, I was following,
you know, using Deribit, BitMEX, OKEx back in the day. And I really saw this opportunity to build
a crypto vol index like the VIX index, but for Bitcoin. And so that's kind of the origin of Volmex. I was doing a lot of trading in my personal account. I traded some VIX products in my personal account as well and really saw this opportunity to have this standard of a benchmark index as well as a tradable product standard in the crypto market. And so, you know, combination of options, crypto backgrounds led me to founding Volmex.
So I've got just a quick story from a few years ago.
When I first met you, Cole, I believe you were at stake.us.
And, you know, it is always important to understand how small the crypto DeFi community
is. We've grown a lot, but, you know, when we go back to like first meeting then, and then you
eventually going on to found Volmex, you know, it's just, again, it's a small world and it's
great to have seen how you've evolved over the years from being at a very early stage staking startup before staking was more in vogue in DeFi, before most people even understood what staking is.
And now, again, I think you're on the bleeding edge, the frontier of a product that is going to see billions in trading volume.
frontier of a product that is going to see billions in trading volume. By the way, we'll
talk more about how you can get exposure to these volatility indices today. But again,
we want to give a little more background just to kind of walk you through the suite of products and
how these actually work. But anyways, Nomadic, sorry, you had the next question.
But anyways, Nomadic, sorry, you had the next question.
Yeah, cool.
So I feel like I've seen this discussion around volatility coming up a lot more with the emergence of all of these Bitcoin treasury companies.
I think one notable person who references you guys a lot is Jeff Park at Bitwise. Can you maybe just speak to that relationship that seems to be
forming between maybe this emergence of Bitcoin treasury companies like strategy and just like,
I guess maybe the importance that people are realizing with volatility. And maybe I'm making
making a connection there that doesn't exist. But yeah, happy for you to speak on that a bit.
a connection there that doesn't exist, but yeah, happy for you to speak on that a bit.
Yeah, great question. So a lot of these Bitcoin strategy companies are involved with
various forms of yield generation. A lot of times that's involving options. And so basically,
I think that the emergence of things like strategy and some other players, MetaPlanet and the like, have engaged market, where they're exercising, using certain structures to gain a yield on their Bitcoin.
And so, an in-kind Bitcoin yield.
And so, yeah, I think it's really interesting.
Also, the emergence of things like the iBit ETF have had implications, right?
have had implications right I mean there's more sophisticated structure products they can come into
them that are able to be you know created and structured now through the traffic market on the
back of these you know regulated products whether they're Bitcoin Treasury strategy companies or you
know spot ETF options and you know ETFs and like. And so it's really interesting time. The
crypto market is visibly becoming more institutional and growing up. But, you know,
and this also has implications for, you know, crypto vol, crypto options and bring certain
flows into the market effectively. Cole, can you, can you dumb down the importance of volatility
for our listeners? Like why does volatility make crypto so great?
Or why do people love crypto for the volatility?
Yeah, so, you know, in the TradFi U.S. equity market, the VIX index is a very prolific indicator
and a very versatile product that powers a complex of derivative products, futures, options, ETPs, ETFs, OTC
products, as well as an indicator that's very widely referred to in the financial media like
CNBC and Bloomberg. And so crypto vol is at any given time, you know, roughly three to five times
greater than U.S. equity vol, the S&P vol. And so bringing a similar primitive to the VIX,
And so bringing a similar primitive to the VIX, to the crypto market in the form of the BVIV index is very important because it provides a widely adopted indicator to gauge volatility, expected risk in the market.
So the BVIV index is basically the expected risk over the next 30 days.
And so it's an indicator which tracks the
expected levels of moves in the crypto market. And so it's based on the options market. We
aggregate a number of different exchanges like Deribit and OKEx. And so this index provides
a standard for tracking volatility in digital asset space, crypto space. Across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana,
we have three core indices on the implied vol side, BVIV, EVIV, and SVIV. BVIV is very versatile,
right? It's also a benchmark for a complex of tradable products. And so notably today,
we have a perpetual future on Bitfinex on both the BVIV and even index where you know traders and investors can
express a view on volatility purely and so we're finding that you know the BVIV is becoming the
standard for Bitcoin volatility as the VIX index is a standard for S&P volatility and so it's a
very versatile product can be used for an indicator it's very
the derivatives that are linked to it can be used for diversification for hedging for speculative
strategies like playing the mean reversion and so it's a very interesting space to be in and
crypto having a higher implied vol than you know us you know equities is very notable. Before we talk more about different ways to interpret
the volatility indices, and maybe some strategies that are popular among those that use Volmex
products, can we just quickly give an overview of some of the other indices that you provide?
I know one that really stuck out for us was the Volmex prime rate indices.
So anyways, whatever sort of like high level overview you can give us.
Yeah.
So, you know, at Volmex, we are kind of this emerging index conglomerate for the crypto market, which has a number of different indices in its wheelhouse.
And so our flagship index is the BVIV, EVIV, SVIV indices, which are, you know, effectively
the VIX for the top crypto assets.
BVIV being, you know, widely adopted by TradingView, CoinMarketCap, Bifinex, and a variety of others
to block.
And so BVIV has found a lot of product market fit.
We have sort of ventured outside of just vol indices into becoming sort of a MSCI like
index conglomerate for the crypto
market. And something that we saw that was important and missing from the crypto market
is rates indices. And so in the US equity market, there's an index called SOFR, which is the
ubiquitous interest rate index that sort of replaced the LIBOR index. So no such thing
existed in the crypto market until the Volmex prime rate family was launched
a couple months back.
And so Volmex prime rates are effectively the cost of leverage, the cost of capital
in the crypto ecosystem.
So we have basically two indices which comprise this Volmex prime rate index.
So there's a DeFi lending rate index, which basically measures the cost to borrow stable coins across Aave, Morpho, and Compound in DeFi versus the Bitcoin deposit rate. So basically this is the cost to borrow stables against your Bitcoin on chain. It's weighted on those different venues.
venues. We also have a funding rate index, which measures the, you know, the funding rates across
various exchanges. And then there's a third index called the Volmex Prime Rate, which weights those
two indices at 50-50. And so we've put together about nine indices now, which, you know, three
for Solana, three for Bitcoin, and three for Ethereum, which, you know, serve as these interest
rates benchmarks for the crypto market.
And so now Volmex has this leading vol index franchise for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana.
We're expanding in other types of vol indices.
And we also have this rates index franchise, which has been growing.
And there's a couple of exchanges that would like to list tradable products on it,
as well as folks using it as an indicator.
And so, again, a very versatile product that can be used as a benchmark for
derivatives, but can also be a very useful indicator to retail pro tail
institutional investors and traders.
Hey, cool.
One thing you've got question.
Well, one thing you mentioned, oh, sorry.
Did I talk over somebody?
Oh, no. Go for it.
Yeah. I actually can't hear you.
Oh, that's okay. Nomadic. No, can you hear Cole?
I can hear you now. I can hear you now.
You can hear me now. Okay. Yeah. No, no.
Cole was just saying go right ahead with the next question.
Yeah. Sorry, guys. Cole, no, Cole was just saying go right ahead with the next question. Yeah, sorry, guys.
Cole, you mentioned in there funding rates.
I'm curious, can you do, can you like perp long a funding rate?
Is that like something that exists or is that something that anybody has asked for before?
I think that's where the Volmex prime rate family is headed.
There's been a couple exchanges who have expressed strong interest in listing
futures, perpetual futures on this DeFi lending rate index.
I think the funding rate index would also be a really cool product to be tradable in a perp wrapper.
And so it's definitely something we can do and partner with some of our partners on.
It's not something that's been done today but i think it would be really interesting
so we're quite excited about the prospect of that and there's been some you know some discussion
around it cool who who like the main users of these products and apologies my my voice keeps
cutting out here but yeah who's like like your general user, I guess.
I guess it's probably all over the map
because I guess trading view could be considered a user.
But yeah, maybe what is like retail usage activity
look like here and like what kind of strategies
are you seeing people employ?
How are they using your suite of products
within their portfolio of managing their other products?
So, yeah, BVIV can be used by retail, protail, institutional investors and traders as an indicator, right?
So if you search for Bitcoin implied in TradingView or Ethereum implied, Solana implied, our indices are the top result.
We're also the only implied vol index for Bitcoin and Ethereum
available on CoinMarketCap. And so it's pretty widely adopted as an indicator that provides
a gauge of expected risk, expected volatility in the crypto market. Again, retail, protail,
institutional investors and traders can also use the linked tradable products
that today trade on Biffinex, but soon trade on a bunch of other exchanges. And so, you know,
trading BVIV, EVIV, SFIV can be used for a BVIV and EVIV really on Biffinex by, you know,
various types of traders and investors for diversification, for hedging, right? So if you
think the market's going to be fearful and vol is low,
you could allocate to some BVIV contracts. And if vol spikes, you would be able to profit.
When vol spikes or also sees big sustained various other moves, there's a very persistent
mean reversion tendency of implied vol. So basically, if there's a big move up, it's going to revert to some sort of long-term,
short-term, medium-term mean.
And so traders are using it as a hedge.
They're using it as a way to diversify.
They're also using it as a way to speculate on mean reversion and a pure way to do that,
right?
You can put on a similar exposure through a multi-legged
option strategy, but this is a lot more arduous and complicated. You're going to constantly need
to balance, rebalance, and to adjust your position. And so BVIV is a pure volatility
instrument that makes it really easy to get the exposure to you know to the Bitcoin 30
day implied fall and so we're seeing a lot of traders investors use it on Biffin X we're seeing
a lot of folks use it as an indicator and then as we list on more and more exchanges I think that
there will be more and more you know trading volume and activity from from different traders and investors. Yeah, put simply, BVIV and these other indices
like the E-VIV and S-VIV for Sol, these are some of the few instruments available to us in crypto
where if the market is in, let's say, a downtrend, you know, let's say like when Bitcoin started to sell off in, I think, January, February, you could potentially be betting on that volatility increasing.
And if you consider the fact that everything's correlated in crypto, I mean, it would be very rare for you to be long any token that is going to be going up while Bitcoin is going down.
So this is something that we've all been seeking.
And that's, again, a really simple example of just some of the advantage, the value to these indices.
But there's a lot more advanced portfolio construction that I anticipate investors, traders, investors, traders will take advantage of,
you know, with products like this. Cole, you mentioned being able to trade
perps with these indices soon. This is outside of like a Bitfinex. So Bitfinex has been the first
partner to allow us to trade perps to get long or short these the bevive what
can you tell us about like what's next like am i am i right to say hyperliquid is the next most
immediate uh place that we'll be able to trade with we'll be able to get exposure then to something something like a BVIV with perps?
Oh, mic was off.
Great question.
So in short, we have a really big pipeline of exchanges that want to list these products.
You know, the market is becoming more institutional
and people are ready for more sophisticated,
novel index products.
And BVIV and other vol-max indices
are really well positioned here. And so especially as the perp landscape becomes extremely crowded, every exchange sort of
needs a wedge and a way to be different.
And so we have a lot of inbound from various centralized and decentralized exchanges that
want to list these vol and other types of volmex index products um so you know we have recently there
was an announcement where there was uh you know the gains ecosystem is going to be listing bviv
um that's public there's a bunch of other centralized exchanges uh and decentralized
exchanges that were you know in touch with behind the scenes um recently as well there was a
in touch with behind the scenes um recently as well there was a uh cat's out of the bag there's
so there's this really cool new hyper liquid um proposal called hip3 which basically says that
you know if you have a certain amount of hype you can submit a proposal um or you can list a market
for like a non-standard coin or token. So there's another team called Unit, which I believe is testing,
which they're testing like equity indices on chain.
And then we're one of the other teams
that is testing HIP3 on Testnet.
So we're fortunate to be testing this out already.
There's no official timeline and when this is going live.
So not sure about that.
And we're still working on some of the logistics, but related
to like the hype and whatnot. But yeah, there's a lot of folks in the Hyperliquid ecosystem
who would really like to see the BVIV index listed on Hyperliquid. It offers something
very unique. Hyperliquid's obviously been tremendously successful with its, you know,
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Sol, and all the other coins it lists.
But I think that this HIP3 will usher in a new wave of growth for Hyperliquid and Volmex
and allow us to get distribution into the Hyperliquid exchange
and then also allow Hyperliquid traders, retail and ProTel traders
and institutional traders to access novel volatility instruments through Hyperliquid.
And so HIP3 is super promising. We're really excited to get involved with the Hyperliquid. And so HIP3 is super promising.
We're really excited to get involved
with the Hyperliquid ecosystem.
And I think, so yeah, a couple of days ago,
like someone from a trading firm posted a screenshot
of us on Testnet and it got a lot of buzz on Twitter.
And so that was great to see.
And so, yeah, I mean, kind of the usual suspects,
right? If you think about the top five or 10 perp exchanges, really the goal is for BVIV to be on
all of those and to be sort of ubiquitous across many different exchanges, many different product
wrappers, right? And so we want to be on the usual suspects, the largest decentralized and
centralized exchanges that are kind of household names in crypto.
And so we're working hard to build out that sort of omnipresence for BVIV and be listed on many different exchanges.
And Hyperliquid would certainly be one of the bigger ones.
And that's been, I guess, public now.
I mean, you can find us on their testnet on HIP3 testing, but we previously didn't really
make a ton of noise
about it. And then it kind of got blown up on Twitter. And so happy to chat a little bit about
it now. So I'm super excited about Hyperliquid HIP3, nothing official there yet, but it would
be really huge if we're able to get that over the line. And yeah, there's a lot of other exchanges.
I mean, you know, we want to be really everywhere. BVIV is kind of this ubiquitous standard.
we want to be really everywhere.
BVIV is kind of this ubiquitous standard.
Cole, can you talk about GAINS as well?
You know, they're going live soon as well.
I see a couple of people in the audience
from the GAINS ecosystem.
So, I mean, they're doing really cool stuff with RWAs.
And so we're really excited to partner up
with a lot of different exchanges.
And we have big plans, really.
Is that, so GAINS Network, like G-Trade,
is that what we're talking about?
Yeah, G-Trade, G-Trade, G-Trade.
Oh, that's exciting.
Oh yeah, yeah, great, great product builders there too.
Yeah, everyone keep an eye out for that.
There's going to be an announcement going out soon
about the go live there.
So keep an eye out for G-Trade listing BVIV.
I do want to ask you a bit more about some of the trends
that we're seeing in BVIV and the ETH and sole volatility indices.
But just because you've referenced a number of big announcements coming in terms of support for being able to trade perps for these indices, we've known you through Volmex now for four or five years. You've become
very popular now. There's demand for this product. That was not always the case. I guess,
what can you tell us about just building through the adversity of the crypto cycles and building
a product before? I think the market
was ready for it. You know, I think you were really far ahead of, of where DeFi was, you know,
when you first launched Volmex, I was looking at Uniswap pools and trying to like,
get exposure that way and just use like a swap. And, and now we're at a place where,
you know, we've got something like Hyperliqu now we're at a place where, you know,
we've got something like Hyperliquid that has trading volume
that's, you know, competing with the likes of centralized exchanges.
So I guess like what advice would you offer to other founders
who are building something that's new for us in DeFi,
but maybe there isn't the demand there yet?
Maybe the markets aren't quite ready for what they're building.
Yeah, I think a successful company and product
is always a confluence of the right team,
the right product, the right timing.
If you don't have one of those things, it's really tricky.
And so early on, I think the market
was a little more focused on other verticals, you know, swapping and, you know, perps and whatnot.
I think the options market has grown a lot in the last couple of years, right? So
Deribit has grown to tremendous size. Things like Ibit now, youIT now are tradable in the US and have gotten quite big,
or actually about a third or between third
and half the size of Deribit,
depending when you look at it.
And so the options market has grown a lot,
which has provided a really nice backdrop
for vol products to grow and become
more widely adopted in crypto.
So I think that was kind of a major transformation the options
market grew you know people always thought options were kind of second fiddle to played second fiddle
to you know per products but I think that you know it's become really clear through like the
recent Deribut acquisition and the largest M&A transaction in crypto history that options are a really important, you know, product for crypto. And so
I think that's kind of the Volmex angle. I mean, generally, I think that founders,
you know, what's actually, you know, differentiated for in a lot of times is just like pure grit,
right? I mean, like, there's so many projects, which launch something, raise some money,
you know, it doesn't work out. The morale, you know, becomes low
and then they sort of just, you know,
sort of give up or whatever.
I think that there's very few founders
that, you know, just push and push and push
and just keep building regardless
and have a thesis.
And so I think we've shown tremendous grit
and have a lot of longevity in the space.
And we have worked really hard
to just cycle in cycle out, just build a product that people want and then, you know, get the
right distribution with trading view coin market cap, if an X and, and sort of just weather
out the different cycles. So I think, you know, we built something that we knew we wanted
that we knew our users wanted, and we just had a thesis and conviction in that, and it's worked out well.
And so, you know, it's tricky, right?
I mean, like, there's, you know, the market changes, metas change, right?
Like, you know, what people want changes a bit.
But if there's a good product that has a real need to exist, I mean, there's, you know, if you keep pushing, I mean, somebody, whether it's the pioneer or the second or third player to do it is going to win and going to, you know, make it happen.
And so we realized, you know, the VIX was a very popular product, obviously, in the U.S. equity market and have traded those type of products and wanted to see something survive.
I wanted to see something grow in the crypto market that was be built in the crypto market was very similar i mean crypto vol is you know three to
five times greater than equity vol and so it's very intuitive that a product like this would do
better or or you know the same as the vix the vix product in the u.s equity market and so um i think
founders should just you know have grit and know that when they're building something, you know, it's not going to be a straight path to product market fit.
And obviously, a very small percentage of startups actually do work out.
But, you know, you only get that, you know, product market fit if you have the grit.
I mean, I guess there's certain, you know, examples like Facebook or, you know, a couple
of startups that were just a hit right away.
But often, you know, startups need to go through sort of the gauntlet and, you know, really,
you know, prove itself and just push and, you know, have that longevity, you know, mindset.
I think, I remember seeing something somewhere about like Figma, right? I mean, not a, not a
DeFi startup or anything, but Figma, I think, took four or five years to launch. And obviously, it's a Decacorn now.
And so, I mean, the founder just needs to have that conviction and be building for the
long term.
And that's kind of one of the distinguishing factors, I think, for a successful startup
is good product, good distribution, good team, good timing, but just it might take one, two, three, five years,
in some cases longer. And so that's sort of my two cents on this and how we think about it at
Volmex. Yeah, seeing the rise of your popularity lately with Volmex is definitely a sign of
fundamental season is here. And yeah, just really want to call out the the grip that it has taken you know for
you to be able to continue building over the years i i just i i really i think i witnessed like the
darkest hour behind the scenes trying to figure out like why why isn't why aren't more people
interested in evix for crypto and um, just very excited for more of these
these perps markets to go live. We're going to see billions in trading volume here by the end
of the year. I do want to quickly transition, though, back to just any trends you're seeing
in the volatility indexes. Basically, like what edge might we gain by looking at BVIV, EVIV, SVIV?
Nomadic and I look at them pretty regularly.
And just today we were talking about the fact that I feel like not enough people appreciate that.
I mean, as far as I can tell, the volatility on Bitcoin has decreased over the past half year or so.
And then meanwhile, ETH has been more volatile. And I think it's possible that SOUL has been even more volatile
or maybe equally as volatile as ETH. And again, you could potentially gauge that just by looking
at the markets day to day, but having something that you can actually measure it with, like
these indices is super powerful.
So anyways, are you seeing any trends there?
Like anything you can comment on, like how we can gain some edge looking at these indices?
Yeah, something that comes to mind is the delta or the spread between between eviv and bviv so uh when we started working on volmex
you know the spread between eviv and bviv was quite wide something like 20 to 30 vol points
um with the advent of the bitcoin etf there was a period of time where there was no eptf news
and bitcoin uh volatility saw a major rise and to the point where for a small period of time,
it actually inverted ETH vol, which is not very intuitive, right? Because ETH is a smaller asset,
takes less amount of money to move it, you know, move the price of it. Therefore,
the implied vol really should be higher. And so this was very, you know, counterintuitive where
you'd think that ETH vol would always be higher
than Bitcoin vol for those reasons I mentioned.
And so we noticed that during the ETF approval cycle for Bitcoin, I guess a number of months
back now, the BVIV actually inverted the EVIV.
And then once the ETH news started,
and that spread became really small.
Once the ETH news for the ETH ETF had sort of ramped up,
there was a rise in ETH vol,
and that spread kind of became wider again.
And so right now, actually,
is the widest that that ETH implied vol
and Bitcoin implied vol spread has been
since really in the history
of BVIV and EVIV.
And so maybe since early 2022 or something like this.
And so, yeah, it's really interesting.
ETH vol is actually, you know, quite a bit higher than Bitcoin vol right now to the like
all-time high levels.
And yeah, I mean, Solana we we have the sviv index i mean i
haven't tracked the delta between sviv and eviv and bviv um too closely but recently but um yeah
i mean solana's doing great work and you know it's cool to see that there's a options market around
it um so yeah that that eviv and bviv spread is definitely notable um i would say vol is just
sort of low right now right i mean like you know if i'm looking on trading view real quick like one
year ago six months ago vol was like a 60 or 70 handle um it's gradually sort of you know drifted
down to you know mid to low 40s i mean i think that that is partially due to options strategies of
some of these Bitcoin treasury companies suppressing vol, as well as maybe the advent of the IBIT
options and similar options strategies sort of suppressing vol as well.
And so, yeah, it's interesting.
Vol is kind of low right now.
The spread between eVIV and biviv is quite big.
And yeah, that's some sort of thoughts on where things are at.
And then obviously, just one more thing actually, the BDLR index has been rising.
I mean, as the market gets more and more bullish, the cost to borrow stablecoins on-chain has
been rising. And so it's been interesting to see the rising borrow rates being quantified by the BDLR index.
So we're quite excited to see people using these indices, you know, for, you know, as indicators, as tradable products.
And, you know, those are some insights into like where we're from where we sit.
Can you quickly just explain that to me like i'm five uh what's the
significance you think of seeing uh lending rates go up or that that prime rate index go up and then
give me an example of like when it goes down how might we interpret that
yeah so i think the most obvious explanation is just like the market's more bullish.
There's more demand for stablecoins being borrowed against your Bitcoin, your Ethereum
in something like Aave, Morpho, or Compound.
And basically, there's just like a rising cost of capital, right?
I mean, when the market's's bullish people want to get leveraged
and they use these d5 protocols to do that they borrow you know stable coins and maybe use those
stable coins to buy more uh to buy more bitcoin buy more ethereum and so i would just say it's
like pretty you know pretty pretty self-explanatory that um yeah as the market's more bullish you
know people demand more leverage and then that's quantified in the BDLR, EDLR, SDLR indices that basically measure the cost
of stablecoin borrow rates against your Bitcoin deposit rate on the leading lending protocols
on these different networks.
I mean, ETH is the Morpho Aave compound.
And then Sol, I think we're tracking like Camino and Solend and a couple
of others, Drift. And so, yeah, it's been interesting to see the cost of capital increasing
as the market gets more bullish. It's pretty intuitive that that would happen, but there was
never sort of a good indicator for tracking that. And so excited about the Volmex Prime Rate Index
franchise. And I think that they'll grow a lot. It's interesting
there's no sort of exchange tradable rates products in crypto, really. I mean, there's
things like Pendle and a couple of other different platforms, but there's no sort of like parallel to
the CME's SOFR market, right? I mean, or the former like LIBOR index. And so I see this major
opportunity to build a rates index franchise,
just like we've done with vol,
and sort of make this ubiquitous,
widely adopted rates product benchmark
in the crypto space.
And so quite optimistic about the outlook
for BDLR over the next couple of months
and think it will be pretty well adopted in crypto.
Okay. So for those of us that mostly transact on chain, is there any opportunity to call out
for Volmex on chain? If you go to volmex.finance and you click on start trading, it'll redirect
you to Bitfinex where you can trade the BVIV. I'm not sure if you can access the other indices, but anyways, Cole, yeah.
Is there any opportunity on chain or should we wait for this announcement with something like a hyperliquid?
So yeah, nothing on chain or tradable for the Volmex prime rate indices yet.
chain or tradable for the volmex prime rate indices yet um there's on bifinex we have bviv and eviv
and i do think they would be interested in listing the prime rate indices and making rates tradable
um on bifinex but nothing nothing finalized there yet um so yeah nothing yet but there should be some
some listings coming you know like i was saying there's a very active
market you know the CME the Nisey have so for derivative products which have become very
prolific in sort of the the wake of the you know the LIBOR sort of demise and so yeah I think there
will definitely be you know rates products which are tradable on-chain, futures on something like a Bitcoin DeFi lending
rate index or the Volmex Prime rate index, as well as other structures, options, or things like that.
So just like we've done with BVIV, we're building this ubiquitous, widely adopted standard where you
ultimately will be able to find the BVIV index on many different exchanges. We're kind of doing
something, replicating that playbook with the BDLR and BVPR indices.
And so nothing on chain yet,
but perhaps in the coming weeks and months.
Yeah, and another one to keep a lookout for.
So on June 3rd, GTrade Gains Network tweeted out
about this governance proposal passing to integrate
BVIV and EVIV. So keep a lookout for that. You should follow Gains Network underscore IO for that.
So that's one decentralized platform that I've enjoyed trading on as well. So I'm really excited for that, Cole.
Okay, you tweeted not long ago, hinting at,
I believe like a token coming to Solana.
What can you share, if anything, like, I guess,
what do we know about a future Volmex token?
And do I have that correct?
Like, will it launch eventually on Solana?
Also, is there any sort of farming or points program that we can participate in?
Yeah, so Volmex eventually will launch a Volmex token, which we're quite excited about, which will sort of supercharge the Volmex brand.
We haven't announced any official details yet.
We've been teasing it a bit, but we're really excited about Solana and the ecosystem there. Obviously, you know, shout out to Hyperliquid.
They're doing great, excited to see more, you know, spot tokens on Hyperliquid.
And so we'll share plans regarding the Volmex token in the coming weeks.
I'm excited to get that out there.
And I think it's going to be a big milestone for Volmex.
So we've been running some quests and some points.
There's a Volmex.foundation, which has a points program running. And there's an opportunity to participate
in the points program and get more involved in the Volmex ecosystem. And so super excited about
that. It's going to be a big milestone. And the Volmex token will sort of supercharge the volmex brand
and have some uh you know functionality um in the broader volmex ecosystem so we're focused on the
product you know growing bviv growing eviv growing the volmex prime rate and volmex implied volatility
indices franchises but the volmex token is um you know will play a role in kind of supercharging the product suite.
So super excited about that and stay tuned for more details.
Yeah, love it when founders are able to establish product market fit and build, you know, an engaged audience of users before having to launch a token.
The token, to your point, should supercharge a brand.
It should supercharge a token. The token, to your point, should supercharge a brand. It should supercharge a product. It should create an ability for users to be able to have a say in the future
upgrades and the protocol. So anyways, it's something that we all talk about and you wish
for the best builders out there, but most fail to achieve this. So congrats on that. And like I said,
let's just wait for the billions to trade on chain here this year.
One final question for you, Cole,
what else can you tell us about the Volmex roadmap? Basically,
is there anything we didn't get to cover here that you'd like to highlight
is coming this year for Volmex?
So it's been a great chat.
I think that our main focus is definitely making the BVIV, EVIV indices ubiquitous across
many different exchanges.
So getting listed on all of the top CeFi and DeFi exchanges with perps and later options
and maybe tokenized products later and having this complex of derivatives and tradable products
around BVIV is one of our main focuses.
What's also interesting and don't have too much to share yet and sort of kind of hint
where we're headed, I think the US market is obviously evolving a lot.
It's the deepest and most liquid capital markets in the world. And so I think that we should bring our vol products to
the US market in a big way. And so obviously perpetual futures are not tradable in the US
right now. And so having the different flavor of vol product in the US might make a lot of sense. And so
I think tapping in the US market is something that's, that's big on our roadmap. And yeah,
just kind of accelerating and keep doing what we're doing, right. You know, get BVIV listed
everywhere, EVIV, Volmex prime rates, and then continuing to grow the Volmex awareness in the
media, right. And financial media, we'd like to see BVIV accessible,
you know, or follow, you know, tracked by things like Bloomberg, you know, Reuters and,
you know, the like. And so basically just making BVIV solidifying, crystallizing the standard
around BVIV as the sort of leading, you know, volatility index for Bitcoin and Ethereum and
just sort of, you sort of keep doing what
we're doing. And so that is how we think about the roadmap. And then there's a couple more things we
have in the background, but not ready to share yet. So great question. I think we've covered a
lot of ground. So guys, I think this is a good place for us to start to wrap up. So first, I want to remind our listeners, they should learn more about Volmex
by going to volmex.finance. They should bookmark charts.volmex.finance. That's, again, a tab that
you should never close and you should be able then to refer to all of this information through the different indices available through Volmex. You should
follow Volmex Finance on X, follow Cole Got Tweets on X. We'll put that all into the show notes.
If you tuned into the live space, thanks so much for joining us. Again, we record these every
Friday, but we will clean up the audio a bit after this and then reformat it into one of our like usual
edge podcast episodes so you can subscribe at the hyphen edge dot xyz or go to linktree at edge
underscore pod if you prefer to listen on like a spotify apple it's also a great way to be able
to share this content twitter spaces can be a little bit
wonky. And then Cole, thank you so much for coming on. Again, always a pleasure to get to
talk with you about what you're building. It's really powerful to see someone, again, who
stuck with it. And you had an idea so many years ago, and I'm blown away by all the progress and just very proud that we were able to back you.
But I'd like to say, throwing aside my bias as an investor, that we would have been so into this product regardless.
It's such a cool product to see brought to the crypto space.
And there's a reason that, you know, people like Jeff
Park from Bitwise are really excited for what you guys are building. But anyways, Cole, any final
word for us? Thanks for having me, guys. It's been great talking today. You know, like, like
DeFi Dad said, follow Volmex on Twitter, Volmex Finance, check check out our website volmex.finance uh charts
stuff volmex finance and definitely add bviv eviv sviv to your uh trading view watch list as well as
the prime rates and so search for volmex on trading view you'll see that we have over
40 or 50 indices available on trading view um we have some really big announcements coming over the
next couple weeks and months and so definitely again give us a follow on twitter turn on notifications um and yeah stay uh stay in the
loop of our building really excited about um all the progress we've been pushing really hard we've
built a great product with a great team and the right timing and the right distribution and so
i think that the market is really ready for this and And Volmex is at this inflection point where we're about to see a massive growth from a lot of the exchange listings and other collaborations coming. And so great to be here today. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for the support from 4RC. You guys are awesome and really excited to keep building together. And let's take Volmex to the next level. So cheers, guys.
Talk soon and looking forward to the next one.
Thanks so much, Cole.
Hey, by the way, I'm looking at my own trading view right now. And for example, Bitcoin and ETH are down quite a bit.
Let's say ETH is down 3.46% right now in the last 24 hours.
And then EVIV is up 4.38%.
Bitcoin is also down,
like I think one or 2%.
And then bViv is up 2.13%.
So really cool just to see this,
see it all working.
So anyways, Cole,
thanks for your time.
Thanks everyone for joining.
We will see you next time.
Thanks, Cole.
Thanks guys.
Talk soon.
Cheers.
