How To Sell Better: Rysk Edition

GM, my fellow degenerates.

It’s time to talk about a serious problem. If you’re a smooth-brained trader like me, you’ve probably round-tripped your trades more often than actually taking profit and selling at the correct time.

If I knew how to sell well, I would’ve been up significant multiples on my current net worth, chilling on an island off the coast of Fiji, sipping pina coladas with my right hand with a model on my left.

Alright, I’m lying. It wouldn’t be a model, it would be a second pina colada.

Crypto has foundational assets (BTC, ETH), more volatile assets (HYPE), and yield-bearing assets (LSTs, LRTs). But there is no proper, structured, or sustainable way to get the most out of these assets in DeFi.

A potential solution for us smooth-brained degens is Rysk.

What is Rysk?

Rysk is a platform that gives users a way to earn high and sustainable yields on a multitude of crypto assets. It takes inspiration from the ‘covered call’ strategy that is very popular in the TradFi world, but puts a crypto-native spin on it.

While other options/structured product protocols have tried to implement this covered call strategy in DeFi, they’ve either been overly technical or too rigid. Rysk is simple, flexible, and useful for any type of DeFi participant.

How does Rysk work?

A covered call is simple. It’s a way to hedge your exposure to an underlying asset by earning a little extra through option premiums.

Say you hold an asset and want to cover your exposure, you sell a call option at a higher strike price.

As the seller, you earn a little extra income through premiums while still maintaining exposure to the underlying asset. It’s often used as a short-term hedge for longs, but of course, there are nuances wherein you may lose your premiums as a seller.

Rysk takes this idea and tweaks it to make it more crypto-friendly.

You pick an asset, choose a target price for that asset, choose the expiry date, let Rysk’s RFQ system generate a quote for you, confirm the trade, and receive your yield upfront.

The payoff works like this. If by expiry:

1. The price is below the target price,
   1. keep the yield earned upfront.
   2. You receive the assets you depositted back
   

1. The price is above the target price,
   1. You keep the yield earned upfront.
   2. our assets are sold at your target price.

Since Rysk is on the HyperEVM, let’s take a look at a hypothetical example using HYPE.

At the time of writing this, HYPE is $46.1. You have a big bag of HYPE but have round-trip PTSD and decide to sell a chunk of it on the way up. Take that chunk to Rysk, where you get four options:

• $47.5
• $49.5
• $54.5
• $58.5

Remember, the lower the target price, the higher the APY.

Being the smooth-brained bull that you are, you pick the highest option. So your trade looks like this:

• Asset - 100 HYPE
• Target price - $58.5 (26.9% increase from current price)
• Expiry - 23 days
• Yield - 1.44%

The outcome looks like this:

1. If the price is above $58.5
   1. Receive upfront yield + proceeds from token sale
2. If the price is below $58.5
   1. Receive upfront yield + receive HYPE tokens back

Utilizing Rysk

Rysk is a platform that is so simple and elegant that it pretty much suits any type of DeFi user.

1. The round-tripooor with PTSD

If you’re like me and have round-tripped multiple reasonably sized homes, Rysk is a good change of pace to actually take some money home. As they say, “ABS: Always Be Selling.”

The goal should be to sell gradually and earn a high yield along the way.

Keep opening new trades on Rysk in chunks, picking lower target prices. You will earn the highest yield while gradually exiting your position along the way.

As hard as it is to let go of the moonbody mentality, the additional yield along the way should help you cope with the FOMO.

2. The yield maximizooor

Although a dying breed, there are still a few yield farmers in the trenches. If you would like a new way to stack yield, Rysk could be pretty good.

Take eligible yield-bearing assets like LBTC, set a high target price to earn an additional modest yield on top of the yield already being generated. Who knows, maybe there are some points programs that this will make you eligible for.

Just like that, you’ve supercharged your returns by killing three birds with one stone.

3. Mr. Vibes

Say you’re someone who holds an asset like ETH. You don’t really monitor the markets that intently and don’t have any strong view on where you think the price will go next.

You can set a moderate target price to earn a pretty good yield upfront, while being more or less indifferent to where the market goes.

If it goes up and hits your strike, you’ve made money. If it doesn’t, you get your coins back. Either way, you’ve pocketed some good yield.

Pure vibes.

4. The treasury managooor

If you want liquidity to fund some activity for your protocol or just want to earn yield on some assets you have in your treasury like ETH, Rysk is a great solution.

It’s a great way to gradually sell at good prices and it’s also a good way to generate yield instantly (upfront payment). The yield is scalable with size, so if you’re in desperate need of cash, Rysk can be used to get the yield upfront on big size.

Bottom line

Rysk is part of the crop of DeFi products that the industry really needs. Simple, elegant, efficient, sustainable, and useful for everyone. I will be using it to take some money home, and perhaps you can too.  

But before joining in, make sure you DYOR!