Reflections - Q2 2025

My life over the past 3 months

Hey there 👋

Welcome to the premiere issue of Reflections, a quarterly roundup of all things me. Intended for my family, friends, colleagues, and the visitors who happen to be passing through.

I often find that the years pass by extremely quickly, and taking each quarter as an opportunity to reflect is my way of slowing down and taking stock of what I have been up to.

As always, you can find my writing at Faz Paradox and more about me on me website.

Now, into the update!

Watch your step.

What's Inside?

Starting a new job

Starting a new job is always exciting. In April I joined the Identity & Access Management Advisory team at KPMG, one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting and professional services providers.

This role is very similar to my previous job where I sat within Security and Digital Identity. My knowledge of access management, hands-on technical skills, and client-facing experience serve as my core competencies (and partially why I landed the role in the first place). And although there are differences in how KPMG operate due to their regulatory requirements, it has served as an opportunity for me to learn about the complexities which go on beyond delivering the work.

To answer the question, “Are you enjoying it?” - Yes.

My first engagement began a week after I started, it was a direct result of scheduling 1-2-1s with the directors in our team to introduce myself as a person but also what I bring to the table. Since then, I have been on back to back engagements which is great for chargeability, a key performance metric in consulting.

The scope of my engagements have varied, from having fixed deliverables in a subject I knew well, to handling a live crisis and being part of war rooms focused on prioritising and solving these issues. Ultimately, you can never know what your next project will look like and the ability to adapt is extremely important.

Outside of the work I do is the people I work with. My team has a mix of people at all stages of their careers. Some are peers, some are mentors who can impart their wisdom, and some are those who I can share my experience with.

Our team is in a growth phase, and our leadership is keen on implementing new initiatives to ensure new hires feel welcome and confident in their choice to join us. (I am helping out here as I have experience of this from my past roles)

My weekend in Suffolk

Over one of the many bank holidays we have had this quarter I took a trip to Suffolk. I stayed in an Airbnb, in a small town near Bury St Edmunds. The plan? Absolutely nothing. I had my laptop, some books, and some meat to throw on the barbecue.

I left home on Friday afternoon, and arrived at my accommodation around 5/6pm. After making myself comfortable, I got the barbecue started and made myself some dinner. I had picked up some additional bits on my way down to make sure I wasn’t just going to end up eating burgers with no buns.

The covered but outdoor fireplace as part of the accommodation was one of my most anticipated features of the accommodation when I decided to book. It wasn't just a fireplace, but rather a forge, complete with an anvil and Smith's tools.

I spent most of evenings there, writing one of my more recent articles, Your life proves that things get better. It was also my first time starting a fire with kindling and firewood, with the help of a few pictures and Claude I managed to get a small fire going which kept me going into the hours of the night.

I spent the weekend cafe hopping, sight seeing, and lounging around. I visited Bury St Edmunds, West Stow a recreation of an Anglo-Saxon village, and a tea room with a beautiful garden.

And although it was pleasant, it just felt quiet - The sort of quiet that everyone was there, but going nowhere.

Most places outside of London feel like this, they lack energy and urgency. And perhaps that says more about me than the places I visit. Growing up in London, I was raised to look at what was next: the exam, the next internship, or the next milestone. Even something as simple as a walk becomes a goal, rather than a journey to be savoured.

Admittedly, I have gotten better at slowing down. It takes intentional effort and it takes telling myself that I can afford to watch the world go by even if my coffee gets cold (just one of the many examples).

It is possible these places lack the je ne sais quoi of London, which is the thing that I have grown to love. The variety of people, places, and pacing (not to mention the food and culture) are next to none. This isn’t to say that places which aren’t London are bad, just not what I am used to.

Another thing I am fond of in London is the availability of everything. The town I was in had no supermarket, I had to drive 15+ minutes along 60mph roads to find one. Even then, some of them closed before 8pm. If I wanted to get a takeout delivered, it would take over an hour because the closest Indian restaurant (which I picked up from) was a 30 minute drive away.

In London both of those things are nigh unacceptable. Corner shops are never more than a 5 minute drive away, and most food is delivered to your door within 30 minutes. Not to mention they're open much much later.

Familiarity breeds comfort and that often leaves you in a bubble. As much as London is my bubble, it could equally be someone else’s nightmare. And that’s okay.

A return to writing

I often thought about writing my thoughts, less so in a ‘dear diary’ manner, but more so as observations about the world and the things I experience.

In May I published my first article, The loneliness epidemic isn't real - you just have a misaligned ego. This had been sitting in my drafts since January and I just kept putting off completing it.

I wasn’t new to writing, just new to publishing - My main reservation with putting my writing out was staying consistent with a subject matter. A friend suggested that I write with the expectation that I would cover a range of topics, hence Faz’s Paradox was created. Giving me the freedom to explore my interests without sticking to a subject matter.

Despite having published a second article, it feels as if my first article (mentioned above) is my magnum opus, something that I could never surpass in quality. But ultimately that is why I write, not only to share, but to improve myself. Specifically improving how I think, write, and communicate, all core facets in our world.

For anyone wanting a sneak-peek on what is next. There are two related pieces in the work. One focusing on how people have lost of the skill of learning, and another more technical piece following my week-long journey into learning how to make a web-based application. It was useful to put myself into the frame of a ‘learner’ before discussing how to become a learner once again.

Hyperliquid and Pendle Finance

This section is about crypto, so if that’s not for you, it is probably best to move on. I’ll mostly be covering the new things I’ve taken an interest in.

This is just a brief overview on some of the crypto projects I've been researching and why they pique my interest.

Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid is one of the fastest growing ecosystems in crypto right now. Hyperliquid as a Perpetual Futures DEX platform, but also the blockchain which houses many other projects. The main thing I find interesting is that they have solved both the supply and demand side of running an exchange.

Typically exchanges require two things:

  1. Liquidity Providers - This is in the form of market makers, high-frequency traders, and VCs who may have invested in the ecosystem. They typically operate complex trading and inventory management strategies leveraging data from many sources to find their ‘edge’ and make money. This is where most of the orderbook liquidity comes from.

  2. Liquidity Takers - Traders, speculators, arbitrageurs all create the demand. They typically look to execute now, not necessarily at the best price, but a fair price. The liquidity providers profit from this constantly fluctuating demand and actually help minimise price swings.

There is a chicken and egg problem here, liquidity providers do not want to engage where there is demand and flow of capital they can benefit from. And liquidity takers do not want to use a platform where they cannot execute at a good price.

Hyperliquid solves this problem through their Hyperliquidity Provider (HLP) Vault. Users can deposit their funds which are used to form the counter-party to any trade made on the platform, if traders lose, HLP wins and vice versa. If we assume that traders have a 50% win rate (usually less), the HLP Vault should still come out positive due to the fees/spreads it captures. The Hyperliquid team have socialised profits typically reserved for the exchanges and market makers (both of which require complexity that is out-of-reach of most individuals).

HLP enables traders to execute trades on the platform, knowing they will receive an extremely favourable price. This attracts traders, which shows as an increase in volume, further incentivising more users to provide liquidity (through the HLP vault or their own strategies) and trade on the platform.

On Hyperliquid I am currently running a delta-neutral funding rate arbitrage strategy on HYPE. I am also storing data on funding rates and may work on building a tool to support that.

Pendle Finance

Pendle Finance represents an innovation in DeFi which focuses on yield products but allows users to separate their initial deposit from the yield they expect to gain.

Without butchering how Pendle works, their vaults allow for deposits of a token through a staking/lending platform. This deposit is split into two token, PTs which represents their initial deposit at the date of maturity, and YTs which represents the yield over the course of the vault.

Users can then use these tokens to speculate on how yield rates will change. By buying PTs you are guaranteed a fixed yield, ideal for when you think the rates offered by the platform will fall. Alternatively, you can buy YTs if you think the yield offered by the platform will rise.

This frees up liquidity which would otherwise be locked into protocols by allowing users to maintain their yield-generating positions while simultaneously selling their initial stake (at a discount of course).

On Pendle I am also looking at purchasing PTs for USD-denominated assets, also as a delta-neutral opportunity.

Highlights and pictures

Just a dump of photos and things I saw throughout this quarter. Mostly shot on a Fujifilm X-T30 II.

Fluffiest boy spotted in Spitalfields Market - Instagram: @officialtedstagram

White Cliffs as seen from Beachy Head

Garden in Hunston

Celebrating a long-time friend completing their Math PhD at Cambridge

Duck in Hyde Park

NOTES FROM THE EDITING ROOM

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I couldn’t tell you how much it means to have you take an interest in, and read my work.

If you haven’t already, consider subscribing - It’s free!

The structure of this quarterly ‘reflection’ will likely change, adapting to reflect where I find myself at the end of each quarter.

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