BTC basis trade POC — personas and the path to settlement

Spot BTC held in institutional custody, a short perpetual at the venue: delta-neutral, capturing the funding spread. The clearing layer in the middle is what makes both legs margin as one position — and it is the layer this page's personas inhabit.

Same-chain by design for the POC: collateral representation, stablecoin proceeds, and position receipts move on one shared permissioned network, so the liquidation path never crosses a bridge.

Sixteen personas across three groups. Demand-side one-liners condense the joint working doc; Ascend-side personas are developed in section 04.

The scenarios in the working doc stop at "Path: TBD." The path is the same seven steps for every persona; what varies is the entry point and which steps the client sees.

1. 01

   Registration and claims

   One KYC, whatever the entry point — Ascend acts as clearing agent for every client. Eligibility is expressed as onchain claims: three species, each issued by a different party. Asset ownership is attested by the custodian, margin-account participation by Ascend, position-holding by the venue. The client experiences a single registration.

2. 02

   Custody

   BTC sits in, or moves to, the institutional custodian; omnibus accounts cover the reserve tiers that require them. The tokenized-ETF variant pledges an ETF position through the tokenization credit facility instead — no BTC custody relationship at all.

3. 03

   Collateral onchain, same chain

   The POC runs on one shared permissioned network: collateral is represented against custody attestations and stablecoin proceeds move to the venue with no bridging. Removing the bridge removes bridge risk from the liquidation path. Compliance-embedded token standards carry the claims onchain; cross-chain portability is a later option, not a POC dependency.

4. 04

   Margin account and portfolio margining

   Collateral is pledged under haircut and LTV policy. The reserve is bound to margin-account activity and responds per policy. Both legs margin as one position — the capital-efficiency unlock most demand-side cards cite.

5. 05

   Position

   The perpetual opens at the venue against the margin account, and the venue issues an onchain receipt of the position.

6. 06

   Rehypothecation and the leverage loop

   Tier-dependent: the position receipt can itself be pledged back as collateral for an additional credit line, bounded by correlation and concentration caps so looping stays contained. Segregated-tier accounts opt out of this step entirely — the distinction that resolves the "no rehypothecation" trust thresholds in section 05.

7. 07

   Daily lifecycle, unwind, default

   Mark-to-market, margin calls, and funding settlement run on a daily cycle, with reserve auto-sizing and stress-loss policy underneath. A clean exit returns BTC to custody exactly as it entered. The default path runs margin call, liquidation, and default management under the clearing rulebook, recorded with attribution.

Three participants who join the network with their own economics, and two operators whose workflows are what a clearing regulator inspects.

What the joint workstream should settle next. One decision, eight items.

1. Premise line. "Every persona is fully KYC'd and holds BTC within an institutional custodian" no longer holds across the cast — the ETF variant, the synthetic long, and retail all differ. Soften to "fully KYC'd; custody arrangements vary by persona."
2. Table and card drift. The high-frequency trader appears in the summary table with no detailed card, and the retail row reads "not targeted onshore" while its card describes a viable onshore path. Reconcile both.
3. Path fields. "Path: TBD" in the whale and family-office scenarios — replaced by the shared seven-step path in section 03, referenced from each scenario rather than duplicated.
4. Scenario coverage. Three personas carry full scenarios (trigger, entry, objection, exit condition — a strong format); the rest have none. Extend by priority tier.
5. FCM and membership model. State whether the FCM is a POC-phase conversation or deferred, and take the membership-model decision alongside it: direct members or FCM-carried accounts, retail in scope or ECP-only. The choice sets the segregation regime, leverage caps, and the onboarding perimeter.
6. Eligibility precision. The family-office card reuses the individual ECP threshold; family offices typically qualify as entities, so the binding constraint differs.
7. Product economics to settle. The clearing-fee split with the venue, how the default resources are funded and by whom, and the instrument any skin-in-the-game is held in. Routed to the economics workstream; the persona cast above is where each question attaches.
8. Default-path enforceability across the venue boundary. Recovery on the venue leg depends on close-out and claim arrangements agreed with the venue: who instructs position close-out in a default, and how the clearing layer's claim is perfected. A legal and integration item rather than engineering, and an input to the tier pricing above.