From Poker Pro To Trading Giant: Inside The Mind of Selini Capital

Jordy, founder of Selini Capital, describes the core primitive of trading as finding counterparties willing to give up expected value in exchange for risk reduction. He applies this framework across crypto market making, tokenized equities, and structured positions such as buying locked shares and hedging them to extract value from risk-averse shareholders. Selini receives monthly retainers from exchanges to provide liquidity and spends tens of millions of dollars on infrastructure including microwave feeds from New York to Japan.

Selini has expanded into tokenized single-name equities on Binance and Hyperliquid, with instruments like tokenized SpaceX trading at 2 billion dollars per day on Binance. Jordy treats single-name equity trading as new territory given his background in fixed income, commodities, and FX, but argues that crypto-native firms retain a structural edge over traditional finance firms in perpetuals markets because firms like Jane Street do not fully understand perpetuals microstructure. Selini applies crypto-native knowledge such as tracking KOL influence and unlock schedules to these instruments.

Jordy argues that retail has been structurally harmed by token unlock mechanics where VCs locked for a year are forced to sell into whatever liquidity exists, dragging down retail positions. He cites Grass token as a concrete example, noting it sold off approximately one third in a single day despite its founder reporting roughly 50 million dollars in cash flow, with the token trading at approximately 380 million dollars fully diluted valuation at the time. Andre, the founder of Grass, argued the project would trade at a far higher multiple if it were structured as an equity rather than a crypto token, pointing to a persistent valuation discount embedded in the token format itself.

On October 10th, some Selini arbitrage teams performed well while other trading accounts were under-capitalized and got liquidated. Selini was running 3 to 4 times leverage on some trades targeting approximately 60 percent annual return versus 10 to 15 percent at one-to-one fully collateralized, and lost single digit millions that day. Back-testing systems did not catch the event because that level of liquidation cascade had not appeared in prior data. Following the incident, Selini reduced leverage, moved toward unified liquidity using portfolio margin, and stopped using non-dollar coins as collateral. Jordy specifically flags assets like USDE or wrapped SOL as capable of de-pegging temporarily and triggering aggressive liquidations, a risk that standard back-tests underweight.

Jordy draws a direct parallel between crypto retail behavior and lottery-style thinking, noting that some participants willingly give up expected value not to reduce risk but to increase variance, seeking thousand-X outcomes. He connects this to platform design, arguing that gamification and dopamine mechanics allow exchanges and betting platforms to extract more edge from retail participants. Sports betting apps intentionally make passive limit orders difficult to access, directing users toward market orders to maximize fees from price-insensitive customers. Jordy compares this directly to the fee gap between Coinbase and Coinbase Pro, framing it as a deliberate extraction mechanism rather than an incidental design choice.

Transaction costs compound over time and can convert a profitable directional idea into a losing strategy. Jordy cites a specific example of spending 50 thousand to 100 thousand dollars in Ethereum gas fees to generate 400 thousand dollars in profit that was subsequently returned to the market, illustrating how friction costs can consume the entire edge of a trade after the fact. Selini's response to these dynamics is to keep a meaningful cash position and smart beta exposure, focusing on compounding over time rather than maximizing return on any single trade or period.