Plain Risk

Independent advisory · Zürich

Risk and market-structure advice for institutions building on-chain.

Financial markets on-chain are the same old financial markets on different rails. The products have new names, and a few of the risks have to be watched in different places. I work out which ones matter for you and tell you in plain words.

How I work

A short translation table

  • Custody: Wallets and smart contracts
  • Secured lending: Lending pools
  • Collateral haircut: Loan-to-value and liquidation
  • Money market fund: Tokenised fund or stablecoin vault
  • Default waterfall: Auto-deleveraging
  • Price source: Oracle

same risk, monitored differently

Services

  1. Market structure

    I explain how a familiar product such as a loan, a fund, a derivative or a payment works once it runs on-chain. That includes who carries which risk, and which operating models a regulator can accept.

  2. Risk frameworks

    I design the rules for lending against crypto, stablecoins and tokenised real-world assets: what counts as collateral, the LTV for each asset, when a margin call goes out and when a position is liquidated. The same goes for limits per asset and venue. I also review how vaults allocate funds and how their yield is calculated.

  3. Documents for regulators and banks

    I write the risk sections of licence applications and the risk papers that banks, liquidity partners and institutional clients ask for. I also give a risk opinion on a new product before it launches.

How I work

I work in one of three ways. Whichever you choose, you get something in writing that you can check.

  1. Briefing

    Before a decision or a board discussion, I write a brief with diagrams. The scope and the fee are fixed up front.

  2. Retainer

    I work as your risk advisor for a set number of hours a month. We hold a risk review once a month, and you can ask me questions in between.

  3. Review

    I give a product, a structure or a framework an independent read before it launches, and tell you what I found.

Ground rules

  • I advise only. I take no investment decisions, hold no client assets and sign nothing on a client's behalf.
  • I declare conflicts of interest for each engagement and agree with the client how to handle them.
  • In my written work, every claim is marked as published, inferred or still open, and carries its source and date.

Current work

  • At present I am risk advisor in a part-time head-of-risk role for a licensed digital-asset platform that is building regulated yield and credit products. The work covers collateral and liquidation parameters, vault methodology and the risk sections of licence applications.