Gold is the anchor — $61.1M of open interest, more than a quarter of the entire traditional book, and the single most traded market on the venue after Bitcoin and Ether. Entropy's cumulative view puts commodities at 56.1% of all TradFi volume ever traded here, equities at 28.4% and ETFs at 15.5%.

1. The basis is gross, not the headline. Every open-interest figure here is taker long plus taker short. Variational's own headline number is twice this because it also counts the OLP's mirror of every position. Lighter is measured the same gross way, so the comparison holds — but do not set these figures next to a headline from either venue without saying which basis you are on.
2. The classification is ours. All 545 listings were sorted into traditional and crypto by ticker and instrument name, not by a category either venue reports. It lands within half a point of the figure Entropy publishes, which is reassuring rather than conclusive.
3. Tokenised gold sits in neither column. XAUT and PAXG carry $49.3M of open interest — gold exposure in a crypto wrapper. Counting them as traditional would move Variational's share from 31.0% to 37.8%. They are excluded here because Entropy excludes them.
4. One day, one reading. These are snapshots taken 2026-08-27. Open interest moves, and a single heavy day in gold moves the turnover figures noticeably.
5. Skew is a risk as well as a moat. A +41.8% net long equity book means the OLP is carrying that exposure. It is what lets these markets exist and it is also the thing that would hurt most in a sharp drawdown.
6. Spread is not slippage. A quoted base spread and an executed cost at $100K are different measurements. Until Variational publishes taker slippage at stated sizes, the execution comparison stays incomplete.