Field Note 02 / Data Infrastructure

We Started Recording the Market

Most market data becomes interesting only after something happens. By then, the exact sequence is already gone unless someone recorded it.

Karaptic has begun building its own synchronized archive of BTC derivatives data across Binance and Deribit. Individual collectors came online earlier; continuous synchronized coverage across the current stack has been maintained since 29 August 2026.

The goal is not to produce another live dashboard. It is to preserve the market as it happened so that future questions can be tested against the same clock, rather than reconstructed from whichever fragments remain available later.

Five layers, one timeline

• GammaInstrument-level option gamma and aggregate exposure around the current market.Snapshot aggregates
• LiquidationsSide, execution price, quantity, notional value, and millisecond timestamps.Every event
• Funding / MarkPerpetual funding rate and mark price recorded together.1 second
• Open InterestAggregate BTC open interest for changes in positioning and leverage.5 minutes
• Deribit TapeOption trades with strike, expiry, implied volatility, and taker direction.Every trade

A snapshot of a young archive

At 20:18 UTC on 04 September 2026, the collection looked like this:

Gamma605,669 raw rows · 390 instruments

Absolute gamma exposure≈ $336M per 1% move

Liquidations6,388 events

Funding / Mark533,099 one-second observations

Open Interest1,952 five-minute observations

Deribit Trade Tape50,469 option trades

The gamma snapshot covered approximately $138.2 million in absolute call exposure and $197.8 million in absolute put exposure per 1% move. The most recent tape also contained aggressive purchases of near-term 82,500-strike calls. These are observations, not conclusions.

The feeds are public. The history is not.

None of these raw feeds is secret. Other researchers and market participants can collect the same public data. What cannot be downloaded tomorrow is the exact synchronized history of today unless it was saved today.

That distinction matters. A liquidation event on its own says little. The same event becomes research material when it can be aligned with the option surface, open interest, funding, mark price, and the trades that preceded it.

What this can become

With enough history and enough different market regimes, the archive can support questions that are not yet answerable responsibly: whether aggressive near-term call buying leads price or chases it; when rising funding and open interest indicate persistent positioning rather than fragility; how liquidation cascades interact with gamma structure; and whether any apparent relationship survives realistic execution costs and out-of-sample testing.

At this stage, the archive is infrastructure, not a signal. It does not establish predictive value, and Karaptic is not presenting a trading product around it.