The crypto market currently feels like the wild wild west. It can take only a week or two to run through a full cycle (a bull and a bear market), and coins that are explicitly a joke can be valued at billions of dollars on the back of a tweet from the right celebrity.

David Fauchier, fund manager at Nickel Digital, pops on to discuss how a professional approaches investing in the crypto world. Topics include bitcoin future arb, how to approach the risk of fraud or an exchange blowing up, and why it makes more sense to invest in crypto directly than to invest in mining.

My post on BlockFi and Bitcoin Futures Arb: https://yetanothervalueblog.com/2021/...
David's Twitter: https://twitter.com/dfauchier
David's other podcast covering the crypto market: https://blog.thinknewfound.com/podcas...

Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:50 Overview of Nickel Digital and David's background
4:55 Bitcoin futures arb overview
11:05 Risks and negatives to the arb trade.
15:58 Bitcoin : Ethereum :: Unproductive : Productive?
23:10 Digital Horses and other productive uses for blockchain
25:40 Fraud risk in crypto trading
32:00 Could the crypto exchanges blow up?
50:10 Does cryptos 24/7 nature and extreme volatility minimize blow up risk?
53:20 Buying crypto versus buying miners
1:04:30 How David evaluates managers in the crypto space