This episode is brought to you by VanEck. Learn more about the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF: http://vaneck.com/REMXMax
Sam Gaer, CIO of Directional Strategies at Monarq Asset Management, joins Other People’s Money to discuss how he uses quantitative directional strategies to trade crypto assets and produce an institutional quality return stream that has outperformed bitcoin at scale. He explains how his experience as a market maker, executive, and self-taught electronic exchange technologist driving some of the most important technological advances in finance led him to “burn the boats,” leave tradfi, and go all in on building institutional crypto strategies with Monarq. He also discusses how institutional appetite for crypto hedge fund strategies is growing with increased regulatory clarity, greater availability of institutional level funds, and evolving market opportunities in crypto-native and crypto-linked tradfi assets.
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Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:43 Q4 Crypto Volatility
06:21 A Disappointing Year for Crypto Bulls
10:29 Taking Advantage of Extreme Volatility
12:50 Triple Barrier Risk Management
15:43 $REMX
16:26 Responsible Leverage
17:17 Is the 4-Year Cycle Over
21:55 Early Days Pit Trading
24:16 Building Electronic Exchange Technology
26:38 CEO of NYMEX Europe and NYMEX IPO
27:24 Move to FINRA
28:43 Building and Selling a Volatility Hedge Fund
29:15 Burn the Boats
32:14 Joining Monarq
37:14 Differences Between Crypto Fund Managers and TradFi
39:17 Institutional Adoption of Crypto Hedge Funds
44:27 Can Crypto Strategies Scale to Meet the Demand?
47:19 The Crypto TradFi Collision
49:57 The Difference Between Institutional and Non-institutional Quality Crypto Funds
54:13 Hyper Liquid and Other Market Improvements in Crypto
59:26 Will TradFi Take Over Crypto?
01:01:31 Digital Asset Treasuries
01:08:46 The Next Stage for Monarq
