As cryptocurrency markets mature, options on cryptocurrencies are gaining increasing importance. Deribit has emerged as the dominant exchange for crypto options, accounting for the majority of trading volume. To facilitate backtesting and market analysis, access to high-quality historical data is essential. In this paper, we introduce a low-latency system for collecting massive volumes of tick data together with the best bid and best ask from Deribit. Tick data which capture every price change with precise timestamps, provide granular insights into market microstructure and trading dynamics. 

Chapter 2: Is Real Estate Tokenization the Killer App?

This chapter shows how tokenization digitally depicts real assets such as real estate and makes them flexibly tradable. Security tokens in particular offer investors security and could establish themselves as a standard in the real estate industry. Tokenization makes real estate more mobile, liquid and accessible, lowers entry barriers for small investors and enables automated transactions with smart contracts.

In 2016, BitMEX introduced a novel type of crypto derivates – Perpetual Swaps, i.e., futures with an infinite term. Perpetual swaps provide a new strategic risk management tool for cryptocurrencies due to their custody-free nature, high leverage, and funding mechanism, but there has been little quantitative analysis on the their benefits. In this paper, we introduce a trading strategy that combines a Quanto Perpetual Swap with a spot position to benefit from the funding mechanism.

Most cryptocurrency spot trading occurs on centralized crypto exchanges, where offers for buying and selling are organized via an order book. In liquid markets, the price achieved for buying and selling deviates only slightly from the assumed reference price, that is, trading is associated with low implicit costs. This paper describes the design and implementation of Athena, a system that automatically splits orders across multiple exchanges to minimize implicit costs. For this purpose, order books are collected from several centralized crypto exchanges and merged into an internal unified order book.

The paper introduces Hephaistos, a system designed to collect, process, and unify order book data from 22 centralized crypto exchanges and 55 currency pairs. Unlike tick data, which only shows the last transaction, order books provide a more accurate view of market prices and available volume. Hephaistos aggregates this data into a Unified Order Book, enabling a Smart Order Routing algorithm that splits orders across multiple exchanges to achieve better execution prices. The system captures around 32% of global daily spot trading volume, and tests show that the algorithm reduces slippage, making it effective for high-frequency trading.

Real estate is the largest asset class and is popular with both professional and retail investors. However, it suffers from illiquidity and high equity entry barriers. The 2021 adoption of the Electronic Securities Act by the German Bundestag established a legal framework for tokenizing real estate assets and their management via digital ledger technology in Germany. This paper outlines a business concept for managing ownership and transactions in German real estate using blockchain. It also includes a market analysis of existing approaches and discusses legal limitations specific to Germany.

Trading for a currency pair on centralized crypto exchanges is organized via an order book that collects all open buy and sell orders and serves as the basis for price formation. While basic 2D visualizations are typically provided, they do not support comparing different order book snapshots. This work introduces OrderBookVis, a 2.5D visualization that displays multiple order book snapshots in sequence on a 2D reference plane. Use cases include analyzing the temporal evolution of an order book for a specific market and comparing different order books across multiple markets.

Most cryptocurrencies are traded on centralized exchanges using order books. Liquidity, alongside trading fees, is a key factor in exchange choice. This study analyzes liquidity across nine order books (three pairs on three exchanges) over 2022, showing that higher market cap and trading volume lead to greater liquidity. Liquidity correlations between exchanges are moderate. External events like the FTX and Terra Luna crashes significantly impacted liquidity, with recovery time depending on exchange size and market cap.