Before building deep sequence models, tested whether cost-surviving signal exists at
the minute horizon for them to extract. 12 perps, 60d free 1m klines (OFI proxy from
takerBuyQuote/quoteVol), features -> forward 1/5/15min returns net of 5bp taker. ALL
features negative net (best gross ~0.2bp vs 5bp cost = 25x gap); reversal IC -0.027 and
vol-continuation +0.009 are real but ~25x too small; OFI/taker-imbalance ~zero predictive
power. -> No minute-horizon signal -> Mamba2/CfC/TLOB have nothing to extract -> don't
build (no model lifts IC 25x). Crossing-cost wall holds in crypto (sec-ES 100x, min-crypto
25x); maker=adverse-selection wall, full-LOB=colocation territory. Gate saved a multi-week
GPU build for $0/10min. Product remains the daily two-sleeve book.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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