Crypto Portfolio Management Trends

Transcript

all right looks like we we've we've stabilized for the number of participants so we're we're going to get started uh so welcome everyone to this uh this session hosted by the crypto Valley Association I'm Kyle Downey from Talos head of portfolio Solutions uh we have with us today paa Orel co-founder and CEO of hila fund management uh so first thank you to the CVA for hosting and uh coordinating this thank you Paula for uh for joining uh we have a bunch of things to cover uh we're going to kind of run through this fireside chat for for everybody uh and then at the end uh hopefully have a time for questions please make use of the Q&A uh feature I have that open um we'll uh kind of keep

an eye on that and if we have time for questions at the end uh happy to uh address as many of those as we can uh saskia from uh CBA is also going to share our profiles with everyone uh if you do want to Reach Out afterward with follow on questions I think both of us would be uh happy to continue the conversation on topics that you're really interested in uh just a very quick disclaimer this webinar is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as either investment advice or solicitation or offer to purchase any Securities we will be touching on the topic of investment in crypto here uh so Paula just to to to start i' love for you to introduce yourself tell us a little bit about the the path that took

you into crypto so everyone has their their own journey into the industry yes and first thank you everyone for joining today and thank you Kyle for having me and saskia as well I feel very grateful for the opportunity um so my career is has been taking a very interesting path I'm originally from Mexico City and I started my career creating an implementing e-learning platforms for big companies like semx um because of that I was brought to the US to create and Implement similar e-learning platforms for retail companies like Target um after that I switch to traditional Finance in the early 2000s when I where I worked for

over 16 years in different capacities primarily for family offices hedge funds and also as a banker for hsvc I learned about crypto in a very early stage I learned about Bitcoin in 2010 it was not even a dollar however I was not able to buy it it's one of those very sad stories in kto U because it was not as accessible as it is today and in traditional Finance you always needed to report what whatever you bought so I was very afraid of touching it however my curios curiosity got triggered and I started going to all the meetups that starting happening in in in Brooklyn at the time where only computer programmers

were assisting in some Curious people like myself so I started going really into the rabbit hole of the meaning of blockchain technology and I got very passionate about it maybe it's because I always been very excited and passionate about technology but also because coming from a country like Mexico I understood the tremendous opportunity that it could give to some people especially in terms of financial inclusion and access so I got I went into the rabbit hole at the same time uh one of my best friends at the time who was in New York as myself Andrew hoopin who is one of my partners and the CIO of the funds asked me what do I thought about blockchain we both

share the same passion and vision about the technology so I decided to go back and work in technology for a high frequency trading computer programming platform run by Arthur Whitney who is one of the in my opinion one of the most powerful computer scientists alive today he has written at least like five computer programming languages from scratch so he hired me as his head of Business Development and this position helped me a lot because he was exploring the possibility in a applying his new computer programming language into a layer one meaning creating a new

blockchain so we analyzed every blockchain available at the time it was primarily Bitcoin and ethereum to really understand the potential of each of them so I learn a lot so in 2016 Andrew talked to me invited me to participate in a partnership but we didn't know where to start we both knew that we wanted to participate in the space but back in the day the only common denominator that a lot of Founders and managers have is that we didn't know where the technology was going it was too new so for us it actually makes sense to launch a hedphone of funds and that's how chain link Capital it used to be our name at in 2018 we launched our

first strategy in January 2018 what we called the liquid Venture fonop Fones so now we have transitioned more not only into hedge phon of funds but we are building what we call a multi-manager multi strategy platform where we also offered more liquid strategy so IL liquid and liquid strategy so I'm very excited about the future but I'll stop right there yeah so let let's touch on that a little bit so uh sort of the fund of fund structure is what approach the multi manager is another how do you see the role of fun of fund structures in particular and especially in crypto like what's their unique value proposition uh for asset managers but also for allocators that's a great question and I

get asked that a lot and by the way for a little bit more background when we launched the fund I thought it was going to be so EAS rice capital for me there was not other strategy that makes sense uh with the high volatility that we have in this space but I think it's important to share the reasoning behind why we launch a phone of funds rather than going straight into a direct investment strategy back in 2016 when we first started considering the possibility of launching a project or a fund Andrew was a member of the Hillary Edmund foundation in New Zealand he was surrounded by some of the early adopters and O G in the blockchain space and what it stood out to him was that while

everyone agreed blockchain was here to stay no one could agree on where exactly the technology was headed the risk was too high to place all our X in one basket especially in such a new space so we really we believe that a fun of funds in crypto acts like a bridge between complexity and accessibility the crypto space is still incredibly new and rapidly evolving and that makes it difficult for investors who might not have the specialized knowledge or resources to dive into individual crypto hedge funds so we wanted to simplify that process as We Know by the way the concept of a phon

of funds is new it's being a tried and tested method in traditional Finance but I personally believe in crypto it holds even more value because of how fragmented and complex this space base can be so in other words instead of putting all your Capital into a single strategy a phone ofone spreads across multip hedge Fones each with its own approach and sectors so this diversification is key especially given how volatile the crypto markets are so if you're an allocator trying to balance risk and find Alpha it's almost impossible to track every crypto fond or carry out the necessary due deligance on all of them and I I think that's where

we come in so at hila we take on that responsibility the responsibility of finding the top managers evaluating their strategies and ensuring they align with not only the risk tolerance but also the goals of our investors and potential investors so I think the biggest value of proposition here is access some of the highest performing crypto hedge funds have either High minimum Investments or are entirely close to New investors and thanks to our relationships in the space we have the second longest track record in the industry we can open doors to those otherwise inaccessible opportunities so even for funds that are open to

investors sometimes the minimum Investments can be really high but with us by pulling Capital we lower that entry barrier so but not everything is positive obviously you know and there are some tradeoffs one common concern with a Fone of funds is the additional layer of fees yes you're paying the fees of the underlying hedge funds plus the management and performance fees we charge but in many cases we have been able to negotiate better terms because of our relationships with these managers so while there is an extra fee layer you are also gaining access diversification and expert due diligence I kind of like to think of the fees as your value value added because

you're paying for expertise risk management opportunities that might not be available to individual investors so I think in crypto where regulation still catching up and the market can be wild our fund offers a level of diversification that reduces some of the risk associated with single manager exposure so for example a good example of this and I get excited about sharing this is in 2022 with a follow up of FTX most direct crypto managers had an average exposure of 16% with some as high as 90% for us as a phone of phones our exposure was only about 4% so while your returns

might be slightly lower due to the extra fees the risk of losing capitals is also much lower um so yeah well do you still have to digest the additional f I believe the benefits of access diversification and due delance that we offer really make it worth worth it for those who want exposure to crypto but they aren't quite ready to go all in on picking individual hedge Fones and let's remember that this is a 247 market so you know the fun of funds they play a role as an allocator so you're talking to you know the various funds

but you yourself are also speaking to allocators and you spent the last two months traveling I know you just very recently came back home uh to to Mexico City um and so love to kind of hear what you're hearing from investors including about like those specific strategy interests and just share some insights from your recent travels uh particularly out in Asia with sort of uh it being conference season uh uh uh out there for blockchain absolutely um by the way I'm still the jet like I just came back yesterday the jet lag still like hitting me so I apologize if my brain is not working properly but uh but yes I have visited six countries in two months um in Asia um I as I attended major

blockchain events like Korea blockchain week token 2049 and the network state conference um but beyond these events I had a chance to meet with a wide range of investors and fund managers and really the insights um having been fascinating um what I've seen across the board is that investors are really focused on navigating today's volatile landscape particular with the current liquidity challenges everyone is hunting for Alpha but with a sharper focus on on correlated strategies that can act as a hedge against broader ma macro risk and it makes sense um given that the global financial markets are still feeling the

impact of the elevated interest rates and they stary pressures one thing that really stood out to me was the distinct profile of investors I encounter and I met with for high Network individuals and smaller investors liquidity is a key con concern a lot of them are frustrated because they are stocking Investments they made a few years back or their capital is tied up in Venture funds with long lockal periods so they need flexibility now on the flip side larger family offices and asset managers are taking advantage of this environment they're more leveraged to negotiate better terms for direct Investments and there are scooping up deals at lower

valuations this pattern was consistent by the way across both crypto and traditional investors now in terms of what strategies are catching attention I noticed a couple things depending on the type of investment so I'll say that for those allocating to crypto funds Market natural Str strategies and quantitative or AI driven models are big right now Market n strategies take long and short positions to neutralize Market exposure allowing investors to profit from the relative performance of individual assets this is especially appealing obviously in volatile markets like crypto now Quan models which exploit marketing efficiency across different as

classes are also gaining popularity because they offer on correlated returns now for non-crypto investors what I've seen or what they share with me is that commodity focused funds are becoming more attractive Commodities like gold silver and Energy Products have a LC correlation with traditional equities making them great inflation Hedges also event driven strategies which focus on corporate events like mergers and Acquisitions are also are also right now on the rise since they offer returns that are en tied to broader Market movements on the direct investment side um I think the major Trend continues to be in

artificial intelligence it's still the hottest sector I think followed by cyber security and I really want to emphasize this cyber security cyber attacks is a concern across the board for small and large investors including including family offices also Alternative Healthcare I feel like it's gaining more Trust action as well on the blockchain side I'm seeing continue interest in areas like gaming and again I'm talking about Asia specifically and I think gaming is important because historically SE has been an innovation H for important gaming even before blockchain

also I've seen interestes in continue interest in the centralized finance and tokenization of real world assets like rwa as well though I think there's still a lot of debate about what rwa tokenization really means in practice two other trends that grab my attention that I was not expecting they will be that strong during during these interviews and meetings that I had are the growing interest in Frontier markets like southeast Asia Africa and Latin America as well as investment center more around Community Building and Research into human connectivity and Consciousness a great example of this is

a presentation that vitalic butterin made during the network state conference with his project Sulu which is a popup city um this project brings together members of the etherum community to explore topics like human longevity and Collective Pro problem solving so it's very interesting to me because I've been talking about this for a few years now I've been saying how as we Implement these emerging Technologies more across the world we will start there's no there's no question about this and maybe this is a little bit controversial but there's no question

about it that we will get replaced by AI now the the the interesting thing here is as we get replaced for AI what are we going to do with our time and I think these type of communities will will make more sense then I think the importance of understanding what human consciousness really means uh versus something created by artificial intelligence is becoming more and more relevant and what it really means human connectivity and creating communities and connection so I think that's fascinating so that's overall what I observe

so wanted to pull on two things that that you referred to there the F the first one was just about this concept of of liquid Venture uh and this kind of alternative category because we did see this pullback post FTX where we saw like crypto hedge funds converting to venture funds uh people preferring only token Investments like it was almost like a sign of conservatism or or or like backlash of like well if if I'm going to take this risk I want the 100x out of that uh but but you often talk about this concept of liquid Venture and I'd love for you to elaborate on that a little bit as a strategy and like how you see sort of the relationship between uh the more liquid funds and the VC

funds in the space yeah that that is such an interesting question because we've been talking about liquid Venture since pretty much 2017 um so overall at Kila what we observe is or we also notice is that there's a continued strong demand for from our investors for greater liquidity uh not only in Asia right so all over the world um in terms of and I'll make a pause here and I will talk about the liquid Venture specifically that's your question but I also want to mention that um because of the appetite of or the strong demand of great liquidity that's why our partnership with amphibian

capital and their Market neutral fund funds is so valuable because really their team has been delivering consistent positive returns for almost two years uh so again I mean this sounds like a pitch but it's not but I highly recommend you to if there are any people interested or curious about the strategies to check out their strategies at the website at amphibian capital.com because I think that both strategies in a platform like the one that we are building actually makes sense because we're really positioned to offer like an all weather portfolio for institutional investors interest in crypto okay without say it as a boss so on our side

for hi on the hila side uh we as I said before we have been managing the liquid Venture strategy with great success um it's a fun of funds um this strategy is really unique to the digital asset space because in traditional Finance you often have to wait for years until a night o or an acquisition for liquidity but in the blockchain world projects can issue tokens that are tradeable much earlier giving investors access to liquidity at a much faster pace so to be clear also liquid Venture doesn't offer 100% liquidity in early stage blockchain projects but it does provide far more flexibility compared to traditional

Venture Capital um we are able to acquire pre-market tokens at a steep discount I mean some times even like between 80 and 90% below the launch price and when these tokens hit the market what we have seen returns as high as 10 to 100x so these tokens have to come with vesting periods so it's not easy to manage these type of strategies and once again I I want to emphasize the fact that we are a hedge fund of funds so we rely on our underly managers to manage the positions and the liquidity terms um and I believe this is a very critical U component of these strategies um but the reality is that the liquidity

of our underlying managers that they offer in this space is something that just doesn't exist in traditional Venture um also there's another there's a new element playing into the space right and and and it's very new so I I don't think I can speak exactly how that's going to play out but let's not forget that AI has a potential to Res to reshape The Venture Capital landscape as well um we're seeing that it can enhance decision-making processes it can improve some of the risk management it can increase operational efficiency and facilitating you know in some cases access to investment opportunities um I think this is not this is not only

potentially affecting the liquid Venture strategies I think both liquid Venture and traditional Venture can benefit from this advancement but the impact may be particular pronouncing liquid Venture where the agility and speed are essential um so I think a very important consideration you know for the founders as well because I think I've been focusing and talking more about on the investor side but I think while Venture Capital can be great fit for some startups it's not one siiz fits all right and then startups especially those in new Industries or with unconventional business models may not align well with a traditional Venture Capital timelines

or expectations and I think in that sense liquid Venture Capital models can enable different funding mechanisms that cater to a broader array of start startups and um and these will work by allowing more flexible investment structures maybe such as like crowd fund crowdfunding and and liquid Venture can also democratize access to Capital and potentially lead to asymmetric returns that retail investors usually can access um so in other words I think like startups with liquid Venture startups get iterate more quickly without the

long-term commitments typical of traditional Venture and this flexibility is especially is it has a special Advantage for so sectors like software businesses which can change and adapt fast based on the market feedback so kind of going back to the the allocators so like your traditional crypto hedge fund allocators tend to be high net worth IND dividuals crypto ogs Bitcoin whales Etc family offices have have played a big role we had a question and by the way encourage everyone I saw one hand raised but please just put into the Q&A I'm keeping half an eye on the questions and I'll try to weave in your

questions as well uh so we can keep this uh keep this interactive um what do you kind of see is the risk appetite like you know do you see greater allocations coming from the uh family offices is it still mostly like crypto Angels uh like getting into the space uh again a little bit more post FDX where are you seeing the pull and like what are where are people's heads in terms of like allocating to um to this space to crypto as I said before Kyle I think the appetite it depends on the profile of the investor for family offices I I I just gave an interview very specialized you know about family offices and the

difference in generational wealth and how different Generations approach investment in a very different way um I met with a few family offices and they're still very interesting in Impact investment without saying not necessarily ESG but they're concerned about climate change they are definitely looking and you know seeking the alpha but they also are much more mindful of where the alpha is coming from so it when it comes down to crypto unfortunately we'll still have to deal with a very pure reputation and why what

I observe you know when I attend all these conferences around the world and I have to say it and I have to call it out and I'm part I'm part of the crypto space and the blockchain space um we need to step it up we we need to change the way we we launch or we present ourselves in the crypto in the crypto world with the with the crypto and the blockchain events um that surround some of this conference the constant feedback that I receive especially from family offices and larger institutional investors is that yes to answer your question they're they're interested yes they know that even like big Asset Management firms their investors and their clients they

want to have exposure to crypto and blockchain but they don't know where to begin and the issue is that a lot of these people are attending this conference with the hopes of meeting potential projects or managers to invest in and when they go and they encounter some very I don't know techn driven and crazy and wild crypto events they get turned off and they don't know what to do so right the interest is there to answer your question I don't think I answer your question correctly but the interest is there both from high neare individuals and family offices I just think that the process of investment is very different I think naturally you know and again going back to the

amphibian Capital funds it is because they are Bitcoin and ethereum denomination need it we have two separate funds crypto whales understand the product Crypton people they already understand the benefits of blockchain because they had incredibly High returns and that's how they generated wealth so they're not shy about this space they're not shy to taking some risk now even them they're taking a step back again in terms of liquidity and in terms of the strategies and the risk appetite that's why I mentioned before Market natural strategies are the number one I think strategy that they're looking at for a

more traditional investor they're very cautious and they're I think they're sitting more on the sidelines especially they're waiting for for the results of the US elections in November so another point to like pull back from your earlier uh comments um just on tokenized assets and crypto um uh and this is controversial at least within the crypto industry there's a certain amount of uh shade throwing that happens along the lines of Well when things are bad people talk about like private blockchains and tokenized assets and we go back to the fun stuff when the market gets better uh but um you know I'd love to hear your perspective on the

role of those we you know a couple of them we've started to see product Market fit but you know there been a lot of kind more proof of concept than anything else what do you see that's interesting in that RW UA space uh do you think it is here to stay and how do you see how it relates to crypto like is crypto a transient thing or does it kind of getting back to your point about liquid Venture perhaps have a future as a you know an alternative fundraising model yeah that's a very interesting question um I think yes I think we're witnessing a significant momentum in the tokenization you know of uh real world assets but especially with yield ing assets right like bonds and treasuries I

think that these markets are already highly liquid and efficient making them Prime candidates for tokenization however when you look beyond that the broader Market still evolving and I don't think the CH I think the challenge isn't necessarily the technology or liquidity um those are progressing that's my opinion I think it's more about demonstrating the added value and clarifying the regulatory landscape um I think in this sense I believe like major players like the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ and other crypto exchanges might be the ones to lead the the charge in

tokenization if they can show how tokenization positively impacts their bottom line I think we could start seeing some real shifts but I think convincing institutional investors to over hold their back backend systems will take time and an organization needs to offer compelling advantages I mean I mean for example like how do we persuade institutions to adopt technology that relies on decentralized validation these transactions are transparent for just a moment before they they get finalized right so they raise trust issues so in order to unlock larg scale adoption I think we need need

a careful balance between transparency security and privacy especially if tokenization is to fit into highly regulated financial markets um but I personally believe that the potential inte integration with defi is incredibly promising I think organized assets can Serv as collateral in the centralized systems they can provide liquidity and around the clock markets advantages that traditional Finance simply simply can have but we really need to focus on product Market fit to ensure that the end user experiences are seamless so I truly believe that the real growth will come from tokenized assets that have the greatest

inefficiencies today um think about alternative assets like real estate Collectibles and private Equity tokenization can make a tangible impact by solving back office inefficiencies and creating a secondary market now when we talk talk about real estate and it's a trillion dollar market especially when you talk about tokenization of real estate I think we're not there yet and we're not there yet because the complexity of the regulation of the different jurisdictions around the world is a big challenge but I think we're making some progress but I'm not sure I'm not sure we're there and I think for all this

Innovation to happen we need a clear legal frame workor that's why I'm cautious that's why I'm always cautious about using the term completely decentralized I feel and I prefer that better distributor is a better term because I think we really need an in between stage between a fully centralized um world to go to a fully decentralized world I think that we cannot transition from this F decentralized system to a fully decentralized system overnight and that evolution is happening now but it is a

critical part of the process so I don't know if I answer your question but I think in my mind um we're not there yet yeah and I think real estate is probably a good example of that someone pointed out to me you know there's still towns here in the US with paper recordkeeping there's certain things that have to happen there all prerequisite for for for some of these things that people got excited about early on um so we I'm so sorry that I but I was going to bring up also right and and this is related to my trip in Asia um we we get excited you know all over the world you know talking about these type of solutions and our wa of course is the

newest trength but what I would invite people to really think about is that for example in Asia and I was very impressed by it especially in China is a completely cashless Society all I needed to walk around and navigate China was my phone in contrast when you come back to America and I'm talking about the whole continent we still have so many so many inefficiencies like you say not only real estate but like the healthcare industry supply chain we still rely on paper we still rely on paper currency and coins we have to carry them around we still rely on our carrying our ID I mean it blows my

mind that when we go to a doctor's appointment we still have to write on a piece of paper our social security number and we don't know where that's going right so there needs to be some transition and there needs to be something in between now it's not impossible it happened in China right I mean this technological Revolution and application specifically in that econ economy happened less than 20 years ago which for me is f fascinating is incredible so with that say I understand that with these emerging Technologies it could happen but we need to start I I think the right word is patience we need to have more patience you know with this space and with these Technologies I

think we we we we need to be more mindful of that sorry I interrupted you Kyle yeah it's quite all right um you know it's good point about some of the complexities though even for these digital Solutions you one key part for a fund of fund or really anyone evaluating uh a crypto hedge fund is the operational side of things you know how the processes that they have in place so you know on on our side you know we're we're building a portfolio management system to help automate a lot of that uh so I'm always interested to understand particularly from the allocator side you know what are the risks that you most worry about you know what do you worry about those fund managers not being able

to handle in terms of the operational processes that maybe are less of a worry when sort of you have all of those pieces from traditional finance that fund managers have relied upon to kind of keep things uh uh uh keep things going smoothly as opposed to say dealing with a bearer asset and some of the cyber security risk that you had alluded to before I absolutely I I think that operational du delance or OD is a huge part of a fonds manager job but especially for a fun of fund manager um and especially even more in the crypto space uh because it's such a fast based and volatile environment that uh OD

becomes essential in managing all the risk so when when it comes down to this risk um several key concerns is stand out for me U the first one is counterparty risk in a landscape with market dynamics and participants can change overnight as we have seen um it's vital that we properly vet our counterparties without that due diligence we are opening ourselves up to significant exposure and we seen you know with what happened in the past with FTX is the major example but there are many other another critical risk is liquidity risk even if an asset appears to have decent

liquidity on the surface that can go away much faster in crypto markets compared to traditional ones um and we saw that with the aftermath of the FTX incident um this has lighted the need obviously to find solutions that specifically to separate custody from exchange F functions uh which it makes sense right because that's exactly the way it works in traditional Finance I think this is crucial for risk mitigation um as I said similar to practice with SE tradition Finance where custodians are often highly regulated Banks um as for controls I think that robust going back to cyber security uh

measures um they're really not negotiable for us I think like G the frequency of attacks we've seen protecting assets is very very important uh we also need clear and transparent governance structures especially when dealing with decentralized Finance protocols I think effective risk management is possible without a deep um is impossible without a deep understanding of the technical architecture involved so and the only way to know this is to have extremely good communication with everyone involved so for us on our side as a fun of funds

constant dialogue with our fund managers is essential we need to regularly review and update for example signatories on custody accounts we have to ensure everyone understands who has access to key wallets and security systems and what we observed with some of the I would say mistakes in the past is that it's not often the technology that's the weak link rather it's human error that can leave a fund very V vulnerable um that's why a strong due diligence process from the very beginning particular when when we are selecting our underlying managers is so important so I think like to wrap it up or like in

your case I think it's important to consider at the overall landscape you know for due deligance especially for our managers we emphathize essential controls to a straining our risk management fra framework called constantly and I think there are eight uh controls that I that come to mind right now one is having a clear risk assessment framework diversification is key and I keep talking about diversification and that's very important you know on the phone ofone um level but also you know in the funds that we invest um a stress testing and a scenario analysis is very

important real time risk monitoring is also another consider ation compliance controls cyber security measures um communication as I said and the last but not least important that I think like sometimes we don't tend to look in the crypto space that it was very much enforced in traditional Finance the world that I come from is having regular training and awareness programs not only at the managing level but also the whole team yeah I mean that the the human element often the technology is ahead of

the policy and the training uh and the practices and the culture and uh you know I've heard this from multiple allocators people on the insurance side that you know the question on their minds is not like what self- custody wallet are you using it's like you know are you using 203 signatures do you do you have other measures in place what are your backups keys are lost these are things that like they're not necessarily technology specific they come up more uh with with crypto but they are kind of some unique uh uh challenges that you you need to have those uh in place we saw uh managers with like literally tens of millions of dollars locked up on FTX who weren't thinking about that exchange

custodian separation that you were talking about before so you know quite a few hazards and uh those controls are essential um and interesting enough I would I would just like to add because again crypto has such a bad reputation and the headlines so like another hacker and they lost another 100 million and so forth but something that's very interesting to me is again it's not the Technology's fault but furthermore we're actually able they're actually able to identify those hacks and because it's blockchain technology because we're able to trace down you know when it happens and how it happens in traditional

Finance it happens all the time we just don't hear about it that often because they're not able in most cases they're not even able to track it down so I think it's important also to remember that yeah to me one of the one of the great ironies is the degree to which we've reproduced uh some problems of opacity and lack of transparency in a space uh you know thing around like some of the CI lenders Etc um uh that you know is built on decentralization and transparency but there certainly are places where you know it it has done significantly better uh than trfi and and that's a whole kyc AML aspect of it I think people don't talk about that enough um so you know kind of wrap

wrapping up like you know looking at these different structures we kind of started with small specialist crypto funds that that evolve to deal with these unique operational complexities where do you see it going you know is it the platform model of like the the millenniums or balnis of the world uh is it decentralizing bya defi do the funds go away uh or you know some combination what what what do you see is the future path for for for fund structure I think it's a mix of all of the above that you mentioned I think we're seeing as small especialist crypto hedge Fones continue to evolve because they have become Adept navigating the

operational complexities of this Market but I do think we'll see the emergence of platform type models from larger asset manager managers firms with a resources to scale these Innovations um and I'm seeing more and more traditional Financial um asset managers launching crypto funds so adding a crypto fund to their already you know billion doll you know AUM platform and it actually sense um at the same time I think the D5 space will continue to grow and decentralize as I said with a transition period but institutional

players will drive a lot of the future adoptions I think it's hard to say if there's one clear Direction the entire Asset Management world is moving in I think rather I see the ecosystem becoming more multifaceted with especialist managers larger platforms and these centralized structures are all playing an important role in the blockchain crypto space and frankly personally I think what makes this space so exciting that's probably a great place to uh to to end uh wrap up I've tried to weave in questions from everyone if you if you throw and any in the chat happy

to address it before the end uh but why don't we finish there with what most excites you in terms of innovation you know the wildest project that you've seen or things that you think are unique applications of the technology that uh people might not have have come across and might want to explore wow I mean there's so much happening right now I think it's hard for me to pick just one um so I will probably break it down into a few categories because there are different kind like wild out there um for me personally P personally I'm fascinated by what's happening in augmented reality and extended reality um as someone who loves art and fashion I've seen some mind-blowing

projects that blend design with XR um I mean imagine the future of passion where you wear clothes with moving digital elements and I was in I was actually in Tokyo and I went to the Y3 store and they already have clothing that it can interact with your phone and things can come out of your clothes I think that's fascinating again that's on the more more more fun uh lighter you know uh development of Technology but I think it's just incredible um I also met with a founder of a very interesting and Powerful project that will be released next year uh in Singapore that is using VR to

reinvent the luxury retail world um and again this is not just a concept A major luxury group is already on board and behind of these projects so I'm excited to see what that looks like and then on a more serious note uh though maybe less fun there are a few I saw in Texas specifically a few defense simulators that are just jawdropping they're using hyper realistic environments for training and strategy and while I'm not sure they're necessarily great for Humanity I have to say that the tech behind them is very very impressive but in terms of projects that I am the most passionate about and

that I can see they will have real Global impact one that really stood out to me was in Brazil um where they are using Ai and blockchain to streamline agriculture Supply chains so think about how much food gets wasted due to the delays at ports and inefficiencies in transport it's not only Capital wasted it's also food so this project is actually tackling that project head on by optimizing the entire process reducing waste and ultimately as I said saving both food and money so that's a kind of innovation that has a potential to make a massive difference globally

and that's the type of innovation that I'm most excited about and this is one of of the reasons um we are launching next year a direct Venture strategy for Latin America because I do believe that this technologies will get implemented faster and more efficient in markets where they're needed uh like Frontier markets like I mentioned before southeast Asia Africa and latam as well so I think these last project that I talk about in Brazil with supply chain what is very interesting is that it ties into what we're seeing in the financial industry too these are projects that use blockchain to streamline Payment Solutions um so at the end what is fascinating to me about the blockchain

space is that everything is all connected and these Innovations are starting to reshape entire Industries and that's the reason why I join this space so that's very exciting it's a very exciting time to live in all right Paul I think I know I know you have something after this uh and do not want to hold you up thank you so much for the time thank you for everyone uh for joining the webinar uh and thank you once again to our hosts at the CVA uh and if you are interested to follow up uh you can contact through the CVA uh you can contact paa or myself directly uh our uh contact information

will be made available in terms of uh LinkedIn