Crypto Quantitative Trading Firm
Respect time, revere risk
Ladder Research is a quantitative trading firm specializing in crypto markets, built around a fully in-house low-latency trading system.
01 — About
About Us
Ladder Research Ltd is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and has operated continuously since 2022. Built around a low-latency trading system, the firm runs high-frequency market making, hedged arbitrage, and mid-to-low frequency predictive strategies across leading exchanges including OKX, Binance, Bybit and Bitget.
- Legal name
- Ladder Research Ltd
- Jurisdiction
- British Virgin Islands (BVI)
- Company no.
- 2100430
- Strategy type
- Single-venue multi-leg neutral arbitrage · Cross-venue arbitrage
- Live since
- OKX Apr 2022 · Binance Feb 2024
- Exchanges
- OKX · Binance · Bybit · Bitget
- Team
- 11 (Dev 6 · Quant 3 · Operations 2)
Team
The team brings together quantitative researchers and low-latency systems engineers, with backgrounds from leading universities and top technology and trading institutions.
Joined OKX in 2018 leading institutional business; founded Ladder Research in 2022.
Master's in Mathematics, Peking University; specializes in market-neutral arbitrage.
PhD, Waseda University; specializes in multi-factor predictive strategies.
BSc, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China; previously at leading AI and gaming firms.
Previously at Tencent and Dewu.
BSc, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications; previously at a leading gaming company.
02 — Strategy
Strategy
Below is our single-venue hedged arbitrage strategy (cross-venue arbitrage follows similar logic). Other proprietary strategies are not disclosed publicly.
Two sources of return
By pricing funding rates and borrow costs, perpetual positions are typically held on the funding-receiving side to harvest funding income.
Micro-level price spreads (basis) between instruments fluctuate with sentiment and liquidity. We open as the basis widens and close as it narrows, capturing the spread.
Portfolio profile
- Core positions (70%+)
- BTC · ETH · XRP · SOL
- Remaining positions
- High-liquidity, lower-risk assets
- Selection criteria
- 24h volume, open interest, risk reserve, funding rate, discount, tiered margin and more
- Turnover
- High-vol: 5–10x daily turnover; low-vol: 0.5–1x daily turnover
- Return mix
- High-vol: 50% funding / 50% basis; low-vol: 80% funding / 20% basis
Trading venues
03 — Track Record
Track Record
Monthly performance based on live sub-account NAV. Please contact us for full performance data.
Performance charts coming soon
For full live NAV data and due-diligence materials, please get in touch.
Request performance materials04 — Risk
Risk Management
Ladder Research operates a multi-layered, independently running risk framework covering the full chain from strategy to account and book level.
Position control
- Account-level cap: 2.0x leverage limit to control overall leverage
- Strategy- and tier-level caps configured per asset to prevent concentration
- Crash-protection sizing using EMA prices to contain position growth in extreme moves
- Margin-ratio linkage: reduce-only when MR is low, re-open only after recovery
Real-time strategy controls
- Tiered monitoring of account / depth / position feed latency
- Order placement, cancellation and amendment failure monitoring
- Real-time monitoring of total USD exposure and margin ratio
- Monitoring of scheduled hedging trigger ratios
Independent risk process
- Deployed on a separate server, fully decoupled from trading strategies
- Three-tier response: group alert → phone alert → pause + cancel orders + manual intervention
- Applies across daily P&L, total USD exposure and per-asset exposure
05 — Infrastructure
Infrastructure & Security
System architecture
- Fully in-house: trading engine, order management, market data and risk systems, with no third-party dependencies
- Dual-cloud redundancy: critical services such as independent risk control and the management console run across Aliyun + AWS, so a single-cloud failure does not interrupt operations
- Environment isolation: test, staging and production strictly separated
- Full disaster-recovery drills at least once a year
API security
- Permission tiering: trade / read-only / withdrawal strictly separated
- IP allowlisting to prevent unauthorized access
- Keys stored with asymmetric encryption; the database holds only encrypted keys
Access control
- Server login via bastion + jump host dual verification
- Least-privilege principle, segmented by role
- Front-end email OTP + MFA dual authentication
- Sensitive data limited to core members; temporary grants are fully logged
06 — Services
Asset Management Services
Ladder Research provides quantitative asset management to institutions and high-net-worth clients through flexible models, with funds always remaining in the client account.
Client sub-account API
If the client account enjoys favorable trading fees, we trade directly via the API key of the client sub-account.
Managed sub-account (MSA) / NAV account
If fees are standard, trading runs through a managed sub-account or NAV account; we provision the API key while funds remain in the client sub-account.
Fee structure
- Management fee
- None
- Performance fee
- Agreed share of profits
- Settlement
- Quarterly or as agreed
Who it suits
- Institutions or individuals holding significant stablecoins (USDT / USDC) seeking steady returns
- Investors seeking market-neutral, low-drawdown crypto strategies
Contact Us
To learn more about our strategy, track record or asset management partnerships, please get in touch.