Investing In and Hedging Crypto Markets

Chris Sullivan, co-portfolio manager at Hyperion Decimus, joins Raoul Pal, Real Vision CEO and co-founder, to discuss starting a crypto fund, strategies to hedge risk, and how to handle the complexities of investing in the crypto markets.

Sullivan explains that his team started a crypto fund that trades on algo models in 2018 when the markets began to plummet, saying that they were still able to perform in the bear market because of arbitrage and mean reversion trading. Sullivan says that they spend 99% of their time analyzing and reanalyzing their trading strategy and investment holdings. Hyperion Decimus does market making for exchanges as a way to hedge their other positions, and their team does significant qualitative analysis of projects including vetting the teams, auditing the code, and keeping their investments in crypto to the top 50 coins by market capitalization.

Filmed on April 12, 2021.

Key Learnings: Crypto is a complex market that requires not just fundamental analysis of projects, their teams, and cash flows, but also highly sophisticated code audits and broad awareness of the crypto landscape. Investing primarily in the most valuable projects by market capitalization may help reduce some investment concerns such as illiquidity of assets and lack of network effects or product market fit.