X-MoneyForWhiskas

Wallet: 0x3048d65321be3497164cdfc2996f94f98a2e7537 Window: 2026-08-01 to 2026-08-26 (26 calendar days, 26 active) Universe: 324,176 trades across 6,795 markets, $4.13M gross BUY notional, 0 SELL trades

The Punchline

This is a fully automated 24/7 spread-capture bot on BTC and ETH 5-minute Up/Down markets, with a directional tilt component that activates when a fair-value signal fires. The bot buys both sides of nearly every market it enters (97.6% both-sides rate), locking in a paired cost below $1.00 across 56.2% of its paired markets and collecting the $1.00 settlement on whichever side wins. The residual directional tilt on the dominant side earns outsized win rates (62.6% at 1.0-1.5x dominance, 92.6% at 3x+) that add incremental P/L above the structural spread.

The account-level result is +$134,180 in 26 days. The trading component alone is +$38,776 (+0.94% ROI on $4.13M deployed). The remaining +$95,404 comes from measured incentives ($43,468, primarily $37,619 in taker rebates) and $51,936 in unexplained basis. The taker rebate engine is the single largest line item in the P/L decomposition, matching the entire trading P/L.

The strategy is volume-first, edge-second. A 0.94% trading ROI on $4.13M of monthly notional is thin but structurally reliable. The spread on the average paired market is $0.0126 per dollar of paired capital. Layer on taker rebates at the observed rate and the net return becomes viable at scale.

What He Trades

The universe is locked to a single category: Polymarket BTC and ETH Up/Down markets, exclusively 5-minute and occasionally longer duration windows. Every one of 6,795 unique markets in the 26-day window is a Crypto Up/Down contract. No sports, no politics, no hourly windows, no non-crypto assets.

From the CSV, the market slugs are exclusively btc-updown-5m-* and eth-updown-5m-* patterns. The top markets by volume are all Bitcoin 5-minute windows (e.g., "Bitcoin Up or Down - August 17, 9:35AM-9:40AM ET" with 266 trades and $3,999 volume). The bot runs every 5-minute window throughout the day and night.

The trade size profile is compressed:

The max is only 16x the median. This is near-uniform sizing, not the power-law distribution you see in conviction-scalers. The bot fills whatever the book offers at whatever size it accepts, clip by clip, without dramatic bet-sizing variation.

There are zero SELL trades in the entire 26-day window. Every position is held to settlement. This is structurally consistent with the both-sides pairing mechanic: once you have bought both Yes and No, one side will always pay $1.00. There is no SELL needed; the hedge guarantees a settlement payout on exactly one side.

The Order of Operations - One Market, Trade by Trade

Below is the bot's activity on Bitcoin Up or Down - August 2, 8:45PM-8:50PM ET (slug: btc-updown-5m-1785717900), which resolved Up. This market illustrates the full paired strategy.

Walk-through: The bot enters starting at 00:45:44, more than 2 minutes before the window closes at 00:50:00. It buys both Up and Down repeatedly, walking the book at whatever prices are available. On the Up side it buys at $0.52, $0.30, $0.21, $0.21, $0.39, $0.18, $0.25, $0.15 - a range from $0.15 to $0.52. On the Down side it buys at $0.47, $0.50, $0.49, $0.49, $0.66, $0.78, $0.78, $0.75, $0.71, $0.57, $0.76, $0.77, $0.85, $0.71, $0.87.

The paired cost computation: the bot spent heavily on the Down side (many fills at $0.66-$0.87) and lightly on the Up side (many fills at $0.15-$0.25). When "Up" resolved as the winner, the Up shares paid $1.00 each - but the bot had far more capital in the losing Down side. This is a case where the bot's directional tilt (more capital in Down) went against it. This particular market appears to have been a modest loser.

The key pattern visible across the CSV is the same in every market: the bot enters both sides, walks the book over 2-4 minutes, accumulates positions in both Up and Down, and holds to settlement. The spread capture only works when the total paired cost is below $1.00.

Why It Works - The Math

<pre><code>Structural spread per paired market: Paired cost = Yes VWAP + No VWAP If paired cost = 0.9874 (mean observed), then: Guaranteed spread per $1 of paired capital = $1.00 - $0.9874 = $0.0126

On $4.13M total deployed, with ~97.6% pairing: Paired capital ≈ $4.03M / 2 = $2.02M per side Structural spread P/L ≈ $2.02M × $0.0126 = ~$25,000

Actual spread P/L in data: $33,114 (vs ~$25K estimate - higher because high-conviction tilts add directional P/L on top)

Taker rebate income: Measured taker rebates: $37,619 over 26 days = $1,447/day At 324,176 taker fills on $4.13M notional: Implied rebate rate ≈ $37,619 / $4,128,425 ≈ 0.91 bps per dollar

Dominance tilt EV: At 2.0-3.0x dominance (1,472 markets): Dominant side wins 88.8% of the time At 50/50 expected WR, excess win rate = 38.8% Incremental EV per high-conviction market ≈ meaningful

Full account return over 26 days: Trading P/L: +$38,776 (+0.94% ROI) Taker rebates: +$37,619 Maker rebates: + $5,255 LP rewards: + $594 Unexplained/MTM: +$51,936 ───────────────────────────────── Account total: +$134,180 </code></pre>

The strategy is viable at thin margin because the volume is industrial. A 0.94% trading ROI on $4.13M notional is +$38,776. Without the taker rebate program, the annualized return on capital would be roughly +11%. With taker rebates, it is over +20%. The unexplained $51,936 (open-position MTM) represents positions that had not settled by the window cutoff and were marked at last-traded price by Polymarket's own accounting.

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Phase 1 - Trader Profile

Scale and Activity:

• 324,176 BUYs, 0 SELLs
• 6,795 unique markets, 6,795 unique events (one market per event - every 5-minute window is a fresh event)
• $4,128,425 gross BUY notional
• 26 of 26 calendar days active
• ~12,468 trades per day

Execution Signature:

• Median inter-fill gap: 2.0 seconds
• 81.1% of fills under 10 seconds apart
• 98.7% of fills under 60 seconds apart
• Mean gap: 6.7 seconds

This is fully automated bot execution. No human fires 12,468 fills per day with a 2-second median inter-fill gap.

Activity Clock (UTC):

Unlike SirMartingale, there is no sleep window. Fills occur in all 24 hours, 7 days a week. The two loss hours (14:00 UTC, -$4,000 and 08:00 UTC, -$1,426) are trading session transition points where the CLOB may be wider or more efficiently priced by competing bots.

Day-of-week summary:

No day is meaningfully negative. Volume peaks on Wednesday (56,218 trades) and dips on Saturday (32,797), but profit per dollar is actually higher on Tuesday and Sunday than the high-volume weekdays.

Archetype: SPREAD CAPTURE + TAKER REBATE ENGINE

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Phase 2 - Core Strategy Identification

Both-sides participation: 97.6% (6,629 of 6,795 markets)

This is the defining structural signature. The bot buys Yes and No in 97.6% of the markets it touches. The remaining 2.4% (166 markets) are one-sided, likely representing entry fragments at market open before the other side could be filled, or thin-book situations where only one side was tradeable at a reasonable price.

Classification: This trader is A (Both-Sides Spread Capture) with B (Directional Tilt) layered on. It is NOT:

• A directional bettor (97.6% both-sides refutes this completely)
• A copy-trader (no lag pattern visible)
• A latency arbitrageur (no SELL leg, holds to settlement)
• A longshot bot (entry price distribution is spread uniformly across $0.10-$0.90)

The second-side lag (median 6 seconds between entering the first and second side of a paired market) confirms intentional pairing - this is not coincidental. The bot fires both legs near-simultaneously, typically within the same 5-10 second window.

Hold behavior: Zero SELL trades. Every position held to settlement. This is structurally consistent with the paired mechanic: once paired, one side always pays $1.00. No SELL is needed because the hedge guarantees a payout.

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Phase 3 - Dominance Ratio Analysis

The dominance ratio analysis is the most important phase for this wallet, because it reveals the directional intelligence layered on top of the spread engine.

The jump from 62.6% at near-equal sizing to 80.4% at 1.5-2.0x is the critical threshold. Something in the bot's signal fires between 1.5x and 2.0x dominance that predicts the direction with much higher accuracy. At 2.0-3.0x, the 88.8% win rate means it is wrong only 11.2% of the time - a strong directional call.

The paired cost is consistently below $1.00 across all dominance buckets (range 0.9851-0.9926), confirming the spread capture mechanic is embedded regardless of directional tilt. The spread works whether or not the directional call is right; the directional tilt adds incremental P/L when the signal fires correctly.

The high-conviction filter result confirms this: applying dom >= 2x and taking dominant-side only yields 43,025 trades with a 89.5% win rate and +$26,362 P/L on $808,330 deployed = +3.26% ROI. This is 3.5x the base strategy's 0.94% ROI, demonstrating that the high-conviction subset is the alpha concentrate.

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Phase 4 - Entry Price Analysis

The win rate column is a nearly perfect calibration curve. Entries at $0.10-$0.20 win 16.6% (matching ~15% implied probability). Entries at $0.80-$0.90 win 85.2% (matching ~85% implied probability). The market is pricing outcomes correctly and the bot is entering at fair prices, not mispriced odds.

The ROI column shows the spread capture signature. ROI is positive across almost all bands except at the extremes ($0.90-$1.00 is -1.4% because near-certainty entries leave almost no spread). The sweet spot for ROI is $0.50-$0.60 (+1.27%), which makes sense: this is where the spread between Yes and No is widest in absolute cents. At $0.55 Yes and $0.45 No, the book may offer a combined cost of $0.96 - a $0.04 spread on the round trip. At $0.85 Yes and $0.15 No, the spread compresses dramatically.

The per-cent histogram (sub-bucket) does not show a single-tick concentration pattern. Capital is spread across the full $0.10-$0.90 range without a dominant anchor. This confirms the bot is walking the book opportunistically, not anchoring at a specific fair-value level.

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Phase 5 - Category and Vertical Breakdown

The single-category nature of the book means there is no vertical diversification to analyze. The entire book is BTC and ETH 5-minute Up/Down markets on Polymarket. From slug parsing, the dominant instrument is btc-updown-5m-* with a smaller eth-updown-5m-* component visible in the CSV.

The 49.2% win rate is exactly what you expect from a paired market maker: the win rate on individual trades is near 50% because each trade is one side of a hedged pair. If paired at cost $0.9925, the bot wins on the side that resolves at $1.00 and loses on the side that resolves at $0.00. The aggregate win rate reflects the mix of entry prices across the distribution.

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Phase 6 - Timing and Execution

Entry timing: The bot enters markets from the opening seconds. In the CSV sample (August 26, 4:35PM-4:40PM ET), fills begin at 20:35:06 UTC (5 seconds into the 4:35-4:40 PM window that starts at 20:35:00 UTC) and continue through 20:39:43 UTC (near the end of the 5-minute window). The bot is active throughout the full duration of each window, not clustering in the first or last seconds.

Burst patterns: The CSV shows multi-fill bursts at the same or adjacent seconds. For example, at 20:35:31 UTC there are 4 fills on two different markets (BTC and ETH) simultaneously. This is fully automated multi-market concurrent execution.

Accumulation window: Per the CSV evidence, the bot typically accumulates 40-200 fills per market across the 2-3 minutes it spends actively filling. The median fill count per market in the top-markets table is approximately 100-265 trades.

Second-side lag: Median 6 seconds. This confirms near-simultaneous pairing. The bot does not enter the first side and wait minutes before hedging - it typically completes both legs within 6 seconds.

Peak hours by P/L: 17:00 UTC (+$4,379), 13:00 UTC (+$3,858), 21:00 UTC (+$3,422), 06:00 UTC (+$3,212), 20:00 UTC (+$3,046). Peak performance clusters in the US afternoon session (13:00-17:00 UTC / 9am-1pm ET) and the late-US/Asian overlap (20:00-23:00 UTC).

Loss hours: 14:00 UTC (-$4,000) and 08:00 UTC (-$1,426). Hour 14 UTC is 10am ET, the height of US morning volatility - likely a period when the CLOB is too efficiently priced for the spread capture to work cleanly.

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Phase 7 - Filter Experiments

See the Filter tab for full commentary. The headline finding: applying the high-conviction filter more than triples the ROI (to 3.26%) but cuts absolute P/L by $12K due to the smaller capital base. The price filter modestly improves ROI without helping absolute P/L. Both filters together lose absolute P/L.

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Phase 8 - Rolling Window Consistency

The one negative rolling 7-day reading (-$359 on Aug 1, the first day of the window, which only covers partial data) is an artifact of the window start. All substantive 7-day windows are positive. Rolling 15-day performance is monotonically improving.

Cumulative P/L by account (Polymarket's figure):

• Aug 1: +$1,443
• Aug 7: +$31,143
• Aug 14: +$60,781
• Aug 21: +$97,487
• Aug 26: +$134,180

The trajectory is nearly linear, implying consistent daily accrual without dramatic drawdown events. The steepest growth occurs in weeks 3-4 (Aug 17-26), suggesting the bot ramped up volume during that period.

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Phase 9 - P/L Decomposition

The structural decomposition is illuminating. The hedge tax of $1,743,422 is the cost of buying the losing side of every paired market. This is not a mistake - it is the price of the guaranteed settlement. The bot spends $1.74M on the side that will pay $0.00, but in return gets a near-guaranteed payout on the side that wins. The net spread captured after this tax is +$33,114.

The directional tilt on top of the spread mechanic adds only ~$5,662 of incremental trading P/L, but the high-conviction subset analysis shows this component is highly ROI-efficient (+3.26% ROI) on a smaller capital base.

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Phase 10 - Strategy Specification

One-sentence summary: A fully automated 24/7 both-sides spread-capture bot on BTC and ETH 5-minute Up/Down markets that buys Yes and No on every market it enters, locks in a paired cost below $1.00 on 56% of markets, tilts directionally when a high-conviction signal fires (2x+ dominance, 88-93% correct), and earns taker rebates as a second income stream.

What works: The spread capture mechanic (mean paired cost $0.9874, generating $33K of structural P/L). The directional tilt at high conviction (89-93% WR at 2x+, +3.26% ROI). The 24/7 operation (no dead hours). The taker rebate program ($37K over 26 days).

What drags: Hours 14:00 UTC (-$4,000) and 08:00 UTC (-$1,426) are the only consistent loss hours. The $0.80-$0.90 entry band (+0.18% ROI) and $0.90-$1.00 band (-1.4% ROI) are near-zero or negative for the spread mechanic. Avoiding near-certainty entries would modestly improve ROI.

Rebuild parameters: Market universe = btc-updown-5m-* and eth-updown-5m-*. Both-sides pairing = mandatory, enter both legs within 6 seconds. Clip size = $5-$50 per leg. Target paired cost < $0.98 for meaningful spread. Dominance trigger = when signal fires at 2x+ load dominant side at 2-3x the hedge size. Avoid $0.90+ entry prices. Run all 24 hours but monitor 14:00 and 08:00 UTC closely.

Wallet: 0x3048d65321be3497164cdfc2996f94f98a2e7537 Window: 2026-08-01 → 2026-08-26 (26 active / 26 calendar days) Methodology: Cash-flow P/L = -buy_usdc + sell_usdc + remaining_share_payout. Resolved shares settle at $1 (win) / $0 (loss); open positions marked at last price.

Phase 1 - Trader Profile

Scale

Trade-size distribution (USDC per fill)

Inter-trade gap, same (market, outcome)

Phase 2 & 3 - Both-Sides Participation, Dominance Curve

• Both-sides rate: 97.56% (6,629 of 6,795 markets)
• Median paired cost: $0.9925
• Mean paired cost: $0.9874
• Paired cost % under $1.00: 56.2%
• Paired cost % under $0.97: 33.0%
• Median 2nd-side hedge lag: 6s

Dominance buckets

Phase 4 - Entry-Price Analysis

Phase 5 - Category & Vertical Breakdown

Phase 6 - Timing & Execution

Net P/L by hour (UTC)

Phase 8 - Rolling Window Consistency

• Rolling 7-day windows green: 25 of 26 (96.2%)
• Rolling 7-day P/L range: -$359 → +$17,508
• Rolling 15-day windows green: 25 of 26 (96.2%)
• Rolling 15-day P/L range: -$359 → +$23,563

Weekly P/L

Phase 9 - P/L Decomposition

Phase 10 - Top Markets by Volume

Top 10 winners by P/L

Top 10 losers by P/L

Report generated 2026-08-26 21:06 UTC.

Wallet: 0x3048d65321be3497164cdfc2996f94f98a2e7537 Window: 2026-08-01 to 2026-08-26 Baseline: 323,978 resolved BUYs, 49.2% WR, $4,125,419 deployed, +$38,466 trading P/L, +0.93% ROI Account total (Polymarket verified): +$134,180 (includes taker rebates $37,619, maker rebates $5,255, LP rewards $594, unexplained MTM $51,936)

The headline result

Three filters matter, three do not. The high-conviction filter (dom >= 2x, dominant leg only) is the single most important finding: it identifies a 43,025-trade subset with a 89.5% win rate and +3.26% ROI - 3.5x the base ROI - but captures only $26,362 of the $38,466 total P/L. The price filter ($0.30-$0.70) modestly improves ROI to 1.10% at a large cost in absolute P/L. The hour exclusion filter is a near-no-op. The category filter is meaningless (single category). Stacking the price filter and hour exclusion marginally helps ROI but loses $12,756 in absolute terms.

Filter results table

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Filter-by-filter commentary

1. Price filter ($0.30-$0.70) MODEST_LIFT_ON_ROI / P&L_DESTRUCTIVE

Applying the $0.30-$0.70 price band retains 205,648 trades (63.5% of the book) and raises ROI from 0.93% to 1.10%, but cuts absolute P/L from +$38,466 to +$29,727, a loss of -$8,739. The improvement in rate is real but comes at a steep absolute cost.

Why does ROI improve within the band? The $0.50-$0.60 entry zone is the highest-ROI band in the book (+1.27%), and the $0.30-$0.70 range concentrates capital there while discarding the near-certainty entries at $0.80-$0.90 (only +0.18% ROI) and the thin-spread entries above $0.90 (-1.4% ROI). The filter works as advertised for a directional bettor seeking the highest-information price zone. For a spread-capture bot, however, the absolute P/L at the discarded bands is still positive, so cutting them reduces total earnings.

A replicator optimizing for ROI on a small capital base (under $200K deployed) should apply this filter. A replicator optimizing for absolute P/L at scale should not.

2. High-conviction filter (dom >= 2x, dominant leg only) MEANINGFUL_LIFT

This is the most important filter in the entire battery. Applying it isolates 43,025 trades across 2,550 markets (the 1,472 markets at 2.0-3.0x dominance plus 1,078 markets at 3.0x+) where the bot loaded the dominant side at 2x or more the hedge size. The result:

• Win rate: 89.5% (vs 49.2% unfiltered)
• P/L: +$26,362 on $808,330 deployed
• ROI: +3.26% (vs 0.93% unfiltered)

This is not a filter artifact. The 89.5% win rate at 2x+ dominance versus 62.6% at 1.0-1.5x dominance confirms the bot encodes a genuine directional signal in its size asymmetry. When the bot tilts heavily, it is right 9 times in 10. A replicator who could isolate this signal and trade only the dominant leg when dominance exceeds 2x would earn 3.26% ROI on deployed capital, compressing capital requirements by 80% while capturing 69% of the absolute P/L.

The practical challenge: you cannot observe the bot's dominance ratio in real-time without tracking its full per-market position. If you are building your own bot, the equivalent is "fire a large directional bet when your spot-price signal is strong and a small hedge when it is uncertain."

3. Category filter (Crypto only) NOT_APPLICABLE

The entire book is Crypto. 324,176 trades, 6,795 markets, 100% Crypto Up/Down. Applying the "top category" filter is identical to the unfiltered baseline. P/L: +$38,466. ROI: +0.93%. Delta: $0.

This filter is structurally inapplicable to a single-category specialist bot. Do not spend time on it.

4. Hour exclusion filter (worst 4 hours: 4, 5, 6, 18) NO-OP

The computed worst-performing hours by the filter engine are 04:00, 05:00, 06:00, and 18:00 UTC. Excluding these four hours retains 276,318 trades and earns +$33,258 on $3,525,591 = +0.94% ROI. Delta: +$5,208 in excluded P/L, and ROI barely changes (0.93% to 0.94%).

This is effectively a no-op. The four "worst" hours are not actually loss hours - they are merely the lowest positive hours. The hours with measurable negative P/L in the full distribution are 14:00 UTC (-$4,000) and 08:00 UTC (-$1,426). Excluding those two instead:

• Saves approximately $5,426 in trading losses
• ROI improvement would be small (2 hours of fills = ~47,000 trades, or ~$650K deployed, at the worst hourly P/L rate)

Even excluding 14:00 and 08:00 UTC specifically would only modestly improve overall ROI because those losses are partially offset by trading P/L within those hours from paired markets that still earned spread. The net loss in those hours reflects a subset of positions where the paired cost ran above $1.00 during high-competition periods.

Recommendation: Do not apply a blanket hour exclusion. Monitor 14:00 UTC and consider tightening paired-cost requirements during that window specifically (require paired cost < $0.96 rather than < $1.00 to reduce adverse selection).

5. Combined filter (price $0.30-$0.70 + exclude worst 4 hours) MODEST_LIFT_ON_ROI / P&L_DESTRUCTIVE

Stacking the price filter and the hour exclusion retains 176,027 trades with +$25,710 P/L at +1.10% ROI. ROI improves by 0.17 percentage points versus baseline, but absolute P/L falls by $12,756. This is the same dynamic as the price filter alone, just compounded.

For a replicator constrained to under $300K of working capital, this combined filter concentrates the edge into a smaller, higher-ROI book. For a replicator running at full scale ($4M+), it is strictly worse on absolute terms.

6. Stack filter (high-conviction + price + hours) NOT_RECOMMENDED

Stacking the high-conviction filter with the price band is counterproductive. The high-conviction trades span all price bands - many of the 2x+ dominance tilts are on near-certainty or near-impossible sides where the bot has high conviction. Applying the $0.30-$0.70 price filter on top of the dominance filter would discard a large fraction of the highest-ROI subset (the dominance signal at $0.80-$0.90 entries is still valid even though the raw band ROI is low). Do not stack these filters.

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What filters would actually add value

The standard PR&R filter battery misses the two genuinely useful dimensions for this specific strategy:

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Bottom line

Three recommendations for a replicator:

1. Apply the high-conviction filter if you can identify the signal. The 3.26% ROI subset is the alpha concentrate. If your bot has a directional model that fires at 2x+ confidence, trade that leg large. If not, run the full paired book and accept 0.93% trading ROI, with taker rebates making up the difference.

2. Do not apply the price filter at scale. It improves ROI from 0.93% to 1.10% at the cost of $8,739 in absolute P/L. At $4M+ of monthly notional, you want maximum volume to maximize taker rebates. Restricting to $0.30-$0.70 cuts 36.5% of your fills and a proportional share of your rebate income.

3. Monitor hours 14:00 and 08:00 UTC specifically. These are the only loss hours in the entire 26-day window. Consider applying tighter paired-cost requirements during these windows rather than turning off the bot entirely.

Source wallet: 0x3048d65321be3497164cdfc2996f94f98a2e7537 Strategy: Both-sides spread capture with directional tilt, taker-rebate augmented Reference book: $4.13M BUY notional, +$38,776 trading P/L (+0.94% ROI), +$134,180 account total over 26 days

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One-paragraph operator brief

Build a fully automated 24/7 Polymarket bot that enters every active BTC and ETH 5-minute Up/Down market, buys both the Yes and No side within 6 seconds of each other, and holds all positions to settlement. Target a combined Yes+No (paired) cost below $0.98 on each market. When a directional signal fires with 2x+ confidence, load the dominant side at 2-3x the hedge clip. Never SELL. Earn spread on the 56% of markets where paired cost is below $1.00, earn taker rebates on the volume, and collect the directional premium when the high-conviction signal is right 89%+ of the time. Expect +0.9% trading ROI on deployed capital per month, approximately doubling with taker rebates at scale.

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1. Market selection

Why only 5-minute windows: The spread opportunity arises because thin short-duration books occasionally mis-set their mid-price. Longer windows (15m, 1h) have more time for the book to self-correct; the paired cost advantage is smaller. The 5-minute window refreshes every 5 minutes, giving the bot 288 fresh opportunities per day per asset.

Asset split: Trade both BTC and ETH 5m. ETH 5m is typically less liquid and may offer wider spreads on some windows, but also carries more adverse-selection risk on thin books. Start with BTC 5m, add ETH 5m once the BTC 5m infrastructure is stable.

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2. Entry logic

def should_enter(market, current_book):
    # Asset/duration whitelist
    if market.asset not in ("BTC", "ETH"):
        return False
    if market.duration != "5m":
        return False
    
    # Window timing
    sec_left = seconds_until_close(market)
    if sec_left < 30:
        return False   # Too late; adverse selection on closing fills
    
    # Paired cost gate - the core spread filter
    yes_ask = current_book.yes.best_ask
    no_ask  = current_book.no.best_ask
    if yes_ask + no_ask >= 0.98:
        return False   # No spread to capture
    
    # Directional signal check
    dom_ratio, dom_side = compute_dominance_signal(market)
    
    return True   # Enter with paired sizing below

Do not anchor entry to a specific price. The bot in the reference book enters Yes at $0.13 and No at $0.84 in some markets (sum $0.97), Yes at $0.48 and No at $0.52 (sum $1.00, skip), Yes at $0.25 and No at $0.70 (sum $0.95, enter). The gate is the sum, not any individual price.

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3. Exit logic

There is no SELL leg. All positions are held to settlement. This is structurally correct for the paired mechanic:

def exit_logic(position):
    # Do nothing. Market resolves at $1.00 or $0.00.
    # One side always pays $1.00. Hold to settlement.
    pass

Why no SELL:

• Selling one side post-entry would leave you unhedged on the remaining side, converting a spread-capture position into a directional bet with no structural guarantee.
• Settlement is guaranteed at $1.00 on the winning side and $0.00 on the losing side. The spread is already locked in at entry.
• Transaction costs from selling would erode the spread on the winning side.

Edge case: If you detect that the market's combined cost has moved to > $1.05 after entry (e.g., an oracle dispute or market freeze), the position is now underwater on the spread. In this rare case, you may consider exiting the losing side at market if liquidity is available. In the reference book, this edge case did not trigger a SELL strategy over 26 days.

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4. Sizing model

The reference book uses near-uniform clip sizing with a hard cap. Recommended structure:

Why uniform sizing: The spread capture edge is consistent across markets. There is no reason to bet large on one market and small on another when the signal is the spread itself, not a directional call. The reference book has a max fill of $134.53 and a P99 of $62.71 - very compressed.

The dominance tilt override: When the directional signal fires at 2x+ confidence, load the dominant side at 2-3x the base clip and keep the hedge at 0.5-1x the base clip. The reference book achieves 89.5% win rate on these tilts at 2x+ dominance. Example: base clip $20/side. On a high-conviction Up call: buy Up at $40, buy Down at $10. Combined exposure = $50. The spread is still captured; the directional premium adds if the call is right.

def compute_clip_size(market, base_clip, directional_confidence):
    if directional_confidence >= 2.0:   # 2x+ signal
        dominant_clip = base_clip * 2.5
        hedge_clip    = base_clip * 0.5
    elif directional_confidence >= 1.5:
        dominant_clip = base_clip * 1.5
        hedge_clip    = base_clip * 0.75
    else:
        dominant_clip = base_clip
        hedge_clip    = base_clip
    return dominant_clip, hedge_clip

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5. Both-sides allocation

Both-sides pairing is mandatory on every market. The 97.6% both-sides rate in the reference book is not coincidental - it is the core of the strategy. The 2.4% one-sided markets are operational failures (thin book on one side), not intentional.

Pairing rules:

The hedge tax is the price of the guarantee. In the reference book, $1,743,422 was spent on the losing side across all paired markets. This is not a mistake - it is the cost of the structural guarantee that one side always settles at $1.00. Accept it.

Dominance and pairing are complementary, not competing. Do not skip the hedge to increase the directional bet size. The hedge provides downside protection on every position. A 2x dominance tilt means the dominant side has 2x the capital of the hedge, not that the hedge is zero.

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6. Both-sides allocation: ratio to accuracy calibration

The threshold at 1.5x is the activation point. Below 1.5x dominance, the bot is essentially price-agnostic between the two sides. Above 1.5x, a real directional model is driving the asymmetry. Calibrate your directional signal to hit the 2x+ tier for your highest-confidence calls.

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7. Risk management

Per-trade risk is structurally bounded. The worst possible outcome on a paired market is losing the full hedge-side capital (the side that resolves at $0.00) while the winning-side payout covers the dominant-side cost. Maximum per-market loss = hedge-side USDC spent minus any winning-side surplus.

The strategy does not drawdown in any meaningful way at the daily level. Over 26 days, the worst rolling 7-day window was still positive (+$3,882). The worst single market loss was -$543. Cumulative P/L from trading was monotonically increasing.

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8. Bankroll math

Reference book performance (26 days, trading P/L only):
  Total BUY notional:       $4,128,425
  Trading P/L:              +$38,776  (+0.94% ROI)
  Daily trading P/L:        +$1,491 avg
  
Taker rebate income (measured):
  Taker rebates:            +$37,619 over 26 days = $1,447/day
  At implied rate ~0.91 bps on notional
  
Total account P/L (26 days):   +$134,180
  (including $51,936 open-position MTM, not recurring)
  
Working capital requirement:
  Peak instantaneous exposure: ~$150K-$200K
  (Multiple concurrent 5m windows, each with $100-$400 in fills)
  Capital cycles every 5 minutes as markets resolve
  
Projected monthly at $200K bankroll (scaled from reference):
  Monthly BUY notional:  ~$4.8M  (same daily rate, 30 days)
  Monthly trading P/L:   ~$45K   (+0.94% × $4.8M)
  Monthly taker rebates: ~$44K   ($1,447/day × 30)
  Monthly total:         ~$89K  (before MTM)
  Monthly ROI on $200K:  ~44.5%  (on bankroll, not deployed notional)

Capacity ceiling: Above ~$500K bankroll, you start moving prices when walking the BTC 5m book on a single market. The reference book at $12-$14 per clip was well below the depth wall on most markets. Scale carefully; fragment across multiple wallets if needed above $1M of working capital.

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9. Operational requirements

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10. Diagnostic checklist: is the bot still working?

Run weekly:

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What this playbook deliberately does not include

• No SELL logic. Adding a SELL engine would require either abandoning the hedge (converting to directional risk) or creating a complex position-unwind logic with unpredictable P/L. The reference book earns its entire P/L without a single SELL across 324,176 trades over 26 days. Trust the settlement mechanic.

• No single-sided directional bets without a hedge. The high-conviction 92.6% win rate is compelling, but it is achieved within the paired structure. Running only the dominant leg without the hedge exposes you to the 7.4% of high-conviction calls that are wrong - and at 3x clip size, a single-leg loss on the wrong side is painful. The hedge is cheap (0.5x clip) and its insurance value outweighs the cost.

• No extension to 15-minute or 1-hour BTC/ETH markets. The reference book trades exclusively 5m windows. Longer durations have smaller spreads (more time for the book to self-correct) and require more capital per window. The 5m universe provides 288 fresh opportunities per day per asset, more than enough.

• No sports, politics, or non-crypto. The paired-cost mechanics and directional signal are calibrated to the BTC/ETH Up/Down structure. Other categories have different resolution mechanisms, different spread dynamics, and different liquidity profiles. Do not assume the strategy generalizes.

• No Martingale or doubling on losses. If a market's paired cost goes against you after entry, do not add to the position. The paired-cost gate was supposed to prevent entering bad markets; if it failed, the max loss is bounded by the clip size. Adding more is not the answer.

• No sleeping. Unlike some strategies that earn more in specific time zones, this bot has positive trading P/L in 22 of 24 hours. Every hour offline is proportional lost taker rebate income and trading P/L. The two loss hours (08:00, 14:00 UTC) are manageable by tightening the cost gate in those specific windows, not by turning off the bot.

The strategy is disciplined and mechanical. Its edge comes from volume, systematic pairing, and the taker rebate program. Every complication you add to the logic is an opportunity for the system to break. Resist the urge to add features; optimize what is already working.