A perk of my CoinDesk job is being able to speak with capital allocators – enjoying some access to the tip of the spear, so to speak, of institutional investment within the crypto landscape. Last week, I met with Jonathan Man, chief investment officer at Valmar Capital, an emerging U.S. cryptocurrency hedge fund. The company focuses on uncorrelated returns while implementing a multi-strategy, absolute-return approach.
It’s probably hyperbole to say that retail investors are only focused on specific tokens. But you’re more likely to overhear a discussion about bitcoin , ether or maybe uniswap on a given day than talk ofWho doesn’t want to be the person who finds the next token that zooms up 10-fold in six months ? It’s what headlines, fortunes are often made of. But it’s not the type of risk that I expect institutional capital to take.
This isn’t to imply that individual assets are an afterthought. Those tokens are primarily the means to deploy certain broader strategies. On an individual asset level, some of the issues prone to nascent markets like crypto stood out. He mentioned “low liquidity” and the “lack of the ability to borrow” as factors that need to evolve for crypto to move meaningfully higher.
This includes raising capital, pitching ideas operations and on and on. The best traders on the planet still need assets to trade. In a competitive landscape, it requires skills beyond analysis and market timing.