An intelligence practice.
Intelligence is the product. Software is the delivery system.
CipherBasis starts with a difficult problem, a hypothesis, an anomaly or a domain expert, and builds the analytical system needed to understand it. The work emerges from the problem rather than from a product catalog. Research, software, models, monitoring, writing and video are outputs; the medium follows the problem.
How the reasoning works.
CipherBasis starts with the problem, not with a model or a product. Before anything is interpreted, the first question is what is actually true now. Only then does it ask which way things are moving, how fast, and what would change the reading.
State before story
Establish the governed baseline first: the current condition, the direction of change, whether it is speeding up or slowing, and the thresholds that matter. Observed state stays separate from narrative, forecast and opinion. Interpretation comes after.
Define the system
Name the variables, relationships and constraints, with the domain expert where there is one. Software is not chosen first; the structure of the problem is.
Test causality
Separate what causes from what merely coincides. Find the feedback loops. Ask whether a snapshot is a regime or one frame of a path.
Pass the gates
A claim is not intelligence because a model can write it. It has to survive the gates below, in order.
Human judgment
A named person decides whether a question is worth pursuing, whether the evidence is enough, whether a signal is meaningful or noise, and whether anything is published, built or acted on.
Then the medium follows the problem: research, structured intelligence, models, monitoring, custom software or video.
One instrument for state variables.
For quantitative series CipherBasis reads four things: level, velocity, acceleration, and how unusual the reading is. Acceleration is where much of the signal lives, because it shows whether the speed of change is itself speeding up or slowing down. It is one instrument inside the method, used where a series supports it.
Level
The current value. Where things are right now. The number most people read and stop at.
First derivative
The rate of change. How fast things are moving.
Second derivative
The rate of change of the rate of change. Whether the speed of change is itself rising or falling.
Z-score
Standard deviations from the historical mean. How unusual the reading is relative to history.
The person is part of the system.
Human judgment is not a compliance step added at the end. It is part of the architecture. These decisions are made by a named person, every time.
Software runs the system. AI assists inside it.
Deterministic software runs the data pipelines, the state calculations, the checks and the production process, so the same inputs give the same results. AI helps with research, drafting and synthesis, and it works inside that structure: nothing it produces is published, built or acted on until it has passed the checks and a person has judged it. AI accelerates the work. It does not decide what is true.
A governed chain from question to record.
CipherBasis applies the method to its own intelligence. The same chain produces each published essay, its video, and its Advisor Brief.
Question and evidence
A problem, a source record and the data, with provenance kept.
Draft and reasoning
Research and drafting, assisted by AI, inside the structure above.
Quality and number audit
Claims, figures and history checked against primary sources; corrections recorded.
Human decision
A named person approves, holds or rejects. Falsifiers are written down.
Deterministic production
Video, images and documents rendered by repeatable software.
Publication
Essays, video and posts released; the live versions recorded.
Advisor translation
Selected research becomes an Advisor Brief: what changed, why it matters, what to watch.
Closeout record
Each step documented, with outputs hash-verified, so the work can be audited.
Example: every figure in the essay The Sovereignty Inversion was re-checked against primary sources before publication. The audit made about two dozen corrections, and the record of each is kept.
Gregg Balderrama, CFA, CAIA
Twenty years in institutional finance, followed by a rebuild as a full-stack developer. The combination is uncommon. Most people who understand institutional fixed income, portfolio construction and macro frameworks do not also build cloud-native APIs or deploy a smart contract. CipherBasis exists because a hard problem needs both: the judgment to decide what matters and the engineering to deliver it.
That is the difference from a research newsletter, from a software shop that waits for requirements, from an application that starts with a model and looks for a use case, and from an off-the-shelf product.
The engineering behind the intelligence.
The infrastructure is the delivery system. It runs the data, the state calculations, the checks and the production process, and it is built and operated by the same person who structures the intelligence.
Linux and Google Cloud
A Linux VM as the working environment; Cloud Run for the production signal API; Secret Manager for credentials.
Python and FastAPI
Data pipelines, state calculations and the signal API: FRED and market data in, defined variables and thresholds out.
React and Firebase
This site and Advisor Desk: React applications on Firebase hosting, authentication and a managed database.
Production pipelines
Scripted video and image rendering, validators and verification steps that make production repeatable.
Solidity and Ethereum
Smart contract development and deployment, from the earlier GorillaEther work through the current index contracts.
Ethereum as a witness.
Blockchain engineering is part of the history of this work (it began as GorillaEther) and remains part of CipherBasis as a provenance and verification capability. Ethereum records values and state with a timestamp, and anyone can check them. It does not decide what is true.
Four index contracts on Ethereum mainnet record the level, momentum, acceleration and intensity of PCE inflation. The most recent on-chain update was May 1, 2026.
Start with the problem.
Build the intelligence it requires.
Engagements are project-based and begin with a free 30-minute conversation.
CipherBasis LLC is a software developer, signal publisher, and consulting firm — not a registered investment advisor. Nothing on this site constitutes investment advice. Do your own research.