The Financial Metaverse: Tokens, Derivatives and Other Synthetic Assets

Derivative trading? That’s something for Wall Street types, right? Maybe, but it also affects everyone else in ways that are still little appreciated. Futures traders have paralysed the global trade of nickel, a key component in the battery of your neighbour’s Tesla. For a few minutes one trading day during the pandemic, sellers of crude oil were paying buyers to take the stuff, defying the very notion of trading, in an episode straight out of ＂Alice in Wonderland＂.

Understanding how this obscure corner of finance works (and what happens when it doesn’t) is a key pillar of financial literacy today. If you are a financial markets practitioner, everyday investor, academic, regulator, policy maker or kitchen-table economist, you need to know how financial derivatives really work and be aware of the emerging digital innovations that makes this market the highest stake metaverse.

Albin Spinner is a banking professional with 30 years’ experience in three major financial centres (London, New York and Tokyo). He is currently working for an Asian investment bank in their Global Markets division after having traded 10 years for JPMorgan. His research interests include Market Structure and Design and Financial Sociology.