Why Basis
Tax-aware investing needs an aggregator.
The products are many, the terms are hard to find, and the same product costs a different amount through each door. A leaderboard that puts every provider in one format, with the doors to each one, is the place where advisors, investors, and managers meet.
The same job as OpenRouter and DefiLlama
| OpenRouter | DefiLlama | Basis | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it lists | AI models, and the providers that serve each one | DeFi protocols across many chains | 37 tax-aware products, and the advisors and platforms that sell each one |
| How it ranks | Tokens used, price, latency, and uptime | Total value locked, fees, and revenue | Assets, fee, tracking error, minimum, and capacity |
| The layer beneath | One model, many inference providers, each with its own price and speed | One protocol, many chains | One product, many doors: banks, advisors, and platforms, each with a fee, a minimum, and a wait |
| Where data comes from | Its own traffic | On-chain data and open adapters | Form D and ADV filings, prospectuses, manager pages, and claimed listings |
| Who pays | A fee on usage | A paid API and premium tools | Managers, for connected listings and intro requests, never for rank. Advisors, for workflow tools |
Why now
Supply grows fast and moves down-market
Public.com sells direct indexing from $1,000. Frec sells long/short from $100K. Cache and GlidePath sell exchange funds from $100K. Each of these firms lets an investor sign up without an advisor.
Source: Frec pricingCustodians change who can buy what
Fidelity paused new long/short accounts in December 2025. Schwab raised its long/short minimum from $1M to $10M in September 2026. A product that fit a client last quarter can be closed to that client now.
Source: InvestmentNewsThe rules move
Rev. Rul. 2026-20 taxes some §351 ETF conversions. Notice 2026-62 asks for comments on exchange funds that later convert to an ETF, on box-spread ETFs, and on some derivatives trades in tax-aware accounts. Comments are due on October 28, 2026.
Source: DechertThe money is large and spread out
Exchange funds hold close to $100B, by Cache’s estimate. Long/short tax-aware accounts hold about $150B, by ThinkAdvisor’s estimate. Aperio and Goldman Sachs alone report more than $400B in direct indexing. No single place compares them for one client.
Source: ThinkAdvisorThe hard parts
- Terms change and many are private.
- Most long/short managers do not publish fees or minimums. The fix is the claimed and connected listings, and a visible confidence label until then.
- Capacity is the real constraint.
- An exchange fund that is closed to NVDA is useless to an NVDA holder. Capacity by name is the field that managers have the most reason to keep current.
- A ranking can look like advice.
- Basis must stay a publisher of general information, or register as an adviser. The leaderboard ranks on disclosed numbers only, and sends people to an advisor to act.
- Advisors own the client.
- The access layer has to make the advisor look good in front of the client, not go around them. A shared comparison link is the first advisor feature.