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Marcos Veremis

lines on the record: 67
first: 2022-06-13
most recent: 2022-06-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I would say that the bad times don't last forever. and that you hang in there and the good times come. And it's all cycles. Were times when I've been down at times during my career or life, I thought that there wouldn't be a recovery or things wouldn't get better. They do. Just hang in there. It's like Churchill said if you're going through hell, keep going. It's wise words”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be level headed and humble is number one, not to give up number two. I think that is something my dad was great at. And he instilled that philosophy and discipline in me. If you're down, you get up and you go on. And that is massively important in life”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest mistake I made was, I think, prior to researching crypto and taking a deeper dive is I didn't take enough risk. I think the transformational moment in my life was when I saw the Greek crisis, I go back to that and I saw that even if you think you're safe, Still might have a lot of risk, so why not take it?”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Were two individuals during my days at Cambridge Associates that had a very important effect on my career and my thinking, I can name them. One was David Chukis and the other is Jim Bell also at Cambridge. I worked with both of them when I was a younger consultant and their morality ethos, the way they thought about investing, all these things were very important to me. So I singled them out.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reading Ask my wife, she'll tell you, you know, I disappear and read. And all I need is a book and some quiet time. So whenever I have the chance I read about any topic that I can get my hands on Not as easy these days to do that because there's no time, but it's by far my biggest hobby”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, have a balance of both. When I said we're looking at the earlier stages, what I mean is we're looking more at the early stages because the ships are sailing away from the earlier stages. We just want to keep it balanced”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you look at the range of outcomes in venture, I mean, there's a very small group of 10 billion outcomes. There's a small group of a billion dollar outcomes. There's a wide range of $500 million outcomes. So you're stacking your odds in your favor. If you have high ownership on a smaller fund size, you're stacking the odds in your favor. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll beat the big guys because they could have the solanas of the world in there and crush you. That's possible. But we're talking about probabilities here and we're talking about Asymmetric types of outcomes, and venture is a big game of probability in my mind. So would a small fund underperform a large fund in many cases they would, yeah. They might not have the billion dollar outcome. They might have gone into a terrible set of deals. what we're trying to do is”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's math. It boils down to math. It's as simple as that. And I'll give you an example. The way we think about it at Accolade, not just on the crypto side, but on the venture side as well, is what's the average ownership? What's the fund size? I'll give you a theoretical example. Say you own on average 5% of a network and your fund is a $50 million fund. Just a theoretical example because valuations obviously are going to be the ultimate determinant of your ownership. But let's say you have a 5% average ownership and a $50 million fund. You need a $1 billion outcome, one unicorn to return your fund. Have 5% ownership of a network and your fund is 500 million, again, theoretical example. You need 10 billion.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some areas of asset management, larger funds have continued to win. So you could think of like platform hedge funds compared to smaller, long short hedge funds. How do you see that dynamic playing at him? You've clearly said you're favoring the early stage funds and some of the elite funds are now big. As the space grows, why is it that you think that the smaller funds is a better place to play going forward”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some managers who are really dabbling into the DAO space, for example, broadly speaking. We want to keep an eye also on other emerging categories. Like we saw gaming, and then we saw a natural fit between traditional people who had traditional gaming expertise and bringing on blockchain expertise. We want to see more areas like that as a space evolves and go in early. That first check on some of these things.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So spending a lot of time meeting with a smaller emerging fund. I think we've met around 250 managers at this point on the venture side. On the earlier stages, I think I mentioned that you're seeing the blue chip guys sailing away from the early stages with a fund sizes. So we've been focused on finding the new seed managers, pre-seed managers, et cetera. I think that's number one. Number two, I think as this space evolves, And in ways that we can't even envision yet more areas of expertise will develop. And we want to be on top of that. For example, is a big area. Decentralized autonomous organizations can do all sorts of things.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“World functions in two ways information and value. And now you have the value component. So when you start this way, I think people take notice and then they understand that this, yeah, sure, it's speculative, but it could potentially be massive. And then they understand that it's a part of technology. Then they understand that software engineers all over the world are working on this like they did work for Facebook in 2006 and 2007. And once they realize that, They say it's risky, but I need to have exposure to this because there could be some massive outcomes.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel that the best introduction to the space that has had the highest hit rate, if you will, in terms of investors who are considering it is the following. What is the internet? You start with what is the internet. And the internet is a decentralized system of computers that share information globally. It's a global network. And we saw how this decentralized system of information sharing created entirely new business models that were not available before. Mobile, of course, was another key moment. Here, I think when you start by talking about the internet and then talking about blockchain as the internet of value, because what are our underlying L1 blockchains? They're global networks of computers, global settlement layers. They're open source. And they are kind of like a natural extension of the global information network.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you speak to an investor who Close hasn't invested in the space, but they've clearly done some work and they're close. I'm curious what the tipping point is that either gets them over the edge or creates continued hesitation.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could have seen some really aggressive action against crypto back then. Now, how can it be? I think 30, 40 million of Americans hold some sort of crypto. Their public companies who are crypto companies, it's a major part of American wealth and global wealth. Senators and Congress people are being actually campaign financed by some of these folks. I think it's going to be a constructive dialogue from the regulators. Meantime, but not systemic anymore. That's my best take on it.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over time and gets stronger. That's what has been happening actually historically. I remember back when Mt. Gox blew up, which was an exchange. Many folks thought the crypto space was over. How could an exchange lose everything? And then you had Coinbase. And now you have all these institutional custodians and exchanges. Hopefully you're going to see the space mature in several of these systemic risk areas. So these are two, leverage and hacking risk. And then regulatory risk. I don't think it's systemic anymore. I could be wrong. I think it was systemic in 2018.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there's still a lot of risk in the space. Just to be clear, this is early stage. It's an experimentation and iteration. Leverage is one thing in the system, especially decentralized finance. You've seen that several occasions with unwindings of leverage and massive sell-offs. Their smart contract risks that still exist, there are hacking risks. Although Bitcoin and Ethereum, the big chains have not been hacked and they can't really be hacked. I mean, it's going to be really hard. You've seen side chains being hacked and bridges. All of these things are systemic risks to the space. Leverage, hacking risk. The counter argument is that with code and software, you can be much more efficient. That's great. But on the other hand, there's these systemic risks. And hopefully the industry grows over time, learns.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What do you think are the remaining systemic risks to the ecosystem now that Bitcoin has at a strong price, even if it's volatile for a long time, a lot of people would say the longer that Bitcoin isn't zero, the less likely it is that it will ever be zero. I'm kind of curious more broadly, a lot has evolved in the security and the infrastructure behind the blockchain, where do you still get concerned about systemic risk?”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More switched off, they're living a little bit more large will they do well in the future I don't know we'll have to see maybe they are disciplined and they're just enjoying themselves for a bit being from the outside and observing it it's kind of being like a coach Because we're coaches, like on the allocator side, we have the perspective of the coach, right? We're at the sidelines watching the game and watching the players and their personalities. They're immersed into their game. But you have the ability to observe things.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Many of these folks have that because certainly from the blue chip side because they were in it in deep winter, they believed in it and they came out strong. So we know they have the grit. Now with big success and big money, the question then it's not about, grid is wanting. Now their discipline is tested. You have the same hunger? Are you going to go to work in the morning fighting as if you had $8 million and not a billion dollars or if you had zero money in the bank? Will you do that from what I can sense and gather there's a large number of these guys that are like that? Others not so much they have clearly Soften in a way, like I mean, they seem”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A study in human behavior because you've had this massive gold rush in a period of two, three years where folks who had $10 million, $20 million funds now have a billion dollar funds. If they've made distribution or they have an open edited structure, they probably are now worth hundreds of millions. There are some of these folks who are worth hundreds of millions at this point. They're 30 years old It is my general belief that you truly understand people in two situations. Crisis and when things are really good, you see the sides of the people. In crisis, you see whether they have the grit and the persistence and the stamina.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things that's happened particularly last year, maybe the last two years, is anyone who was in the space for a while has had just monstrous returns, at least on paper. Curious about what you've learned of the GPs and their behavior and response to almost unprecedented windfall type of earnings.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Performs a service to the holders of it and either today or in the future they can give also economic power to these governance token holders in the same way that equity would. So Uniswap, what's the value it's offering? It's a decentralized exchange. The way I can go to Coinbase, I can go to Uniswap and exchange tokens or USDC. I get charged for that like I would at Coinbase. The difference is that the money goes to the token holders and the market makers and the liquidity providers, not market makers in this case. You can in theory do a pretty simple discounted cash flow analysis on that and figure out a value. As digital assets expand and as we have a metaverse in the future with functioning economies and around the metaverse, I don't see how it would be different from the physical world.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are all types of crypto assets out there Bitcoin is one thing. Bitcoin obviously is a form of digital gold that's supply demand driven method you need to think about. Limited supply demand where does it come from Greeks, Argentinians. I mentioned to you before my experience with Greece, that's the natural first demand. And then there's demand from people wanting to hedge against the financial system, et cetera. There's no cash flows you can discount. It's more about believing in this emergence of this new internet type of asset that has these properties. There are several like that. But they're also governance tokens. Take Uniswap as a governance token, the Uni token, or other types of DeFi tokens. Effectively, they give governance rights on a platform.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you think about the value side of that equation up until recently it was really hard to understand the connection between underlying technology and valuation in some of these rounds and some of these projects? I'm kind of curious how you take your traditional investment hat and then port it over to this space.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blockchain gaming for sure on the consumer side broadly speaking and that has a heavy NFT flavor there and decentralized organization, autonomous organization flavor but with a consumer angle. I think also DeFi is still an area where you need, I think, experts. That has been the case, but it But from emerging, I would say blockchain gaming and the consumer side, broadly speaking, right now.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“NFL or whoever to partner with these startups now you have a need For new types of funds in that sense, for some of these verticals, if you will.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And now they paired that expertise with a team they brought from the outside on the blockchain side to fund early stage blockchain gaming startups. We think that managers like that in a vertical like this have an advantage and why talk to entrepreneurs ask them. The one thing they will tell you is we love the crypto guys. They gave us some of our first checks. I'm talking about the ones that have developed already. However, what we lacked was somebody who had a lot of experience in content and how to design a game, not just the crypto economics. So all of a sudden you have this need for somebody who has that expertise. Same with consumer. When I say consumer, I mean dealing with brands who want to enter the metaverse or NFTs, having the distribution and the cloud and the relationships with the”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I would say 2018-19, everybody was a generalist, although you first saw specialists emerge in decentralized finance from there. That was the first time you saw specialists because it was the first wave of applications really outside of the cortech and the infrastructure. Today you have funds that have more of a consumer angle or more of a blockchain gaming angle. And I'll give you an example. I mean, we are invested in a fund that focuses 100% on blockchain gaming. They're gamers. They've been around the gaming space for many years investing on the traditional side.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take, for example, so rare and dapper labs. So rare is the Dapper Labs of Europe with European soccer, Dapper Labs NBA Top Shot. Many American funds did Dapper Labs, many European funds did the seed round of so rare, not American funds. That's just an example. So you want to be geographically diversified in that way. And also now that there's some areas of expertise that have been developed and certain managers have strengths in certain areas, DeFi, blockchain, gaming, NFTs on the creator economy, consumer in general, you're starting to see managers who are strong in some of these verticals. You want to put different managers with different strengths into the mix to build a diversified portfolio. So I'd say these are the three. Ways we are narrowing down the fund universe and making allocations on constructing portfolios.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Find newer managers on the pre seed and seed side, so it takes quite a bit of work to do that to keep the market cap, if you will, if you want to call it market cap, to keep the market cap of the entire fund down. So we're trying to be more towards the early stages. Number one, number two, we're trying to be somewhat geographically diversified. So the majority of the exposure is in the US, of course, but we have quite a bit in Europe and we have some in Asia. And especially in the earlier stages, even though crypto and blockchain are global, the startups are global and distributed most of the time in terms of teams at the early stages, the sourcing, the geography with regards to the sourcing matters.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we think of it both in the open-ended funds and the closed-ended funds. We think of it in a similar way. The way we at a very high level that we think about it is we want to be biased towards early stage. So that is important, especially as fund sizes are growing.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in some ways, like even if there's a softening and valuations go down and there's a bit of a bear market, it should weather it pretty well in my view.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's strong still, so some quick stats here, like last year the industry raised about $25 billion or so in capital on the venture side. In the year before 2020, the number was 3 billion. This first quarter alone, the industry raised $10 billion, so it's tracking to, we'll see how it ends because there's been a sell-off recently, but it's tracking at a higher number even than 2021. So there's an immense amount of dry powder. And so far We haven't seen a weakening of the pacing and investment activity. Now, we can talk in six months. Maybe it will be something very different. But right now it hasn't shown in the crypto space outside of the public market and the liquid tokens. What's for sure is that the industry Better capitalized than ever.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Especially in an environment where the central bank printed an insane amount of money. It's been an unprecedented response, as we all know. Take advantage of that when you can. That's my opinion. Several of these folks are just not macro driven at all.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do. I don't think when you're sitting on 10 and 15x and 20x, 30x's, and you have a liquid portfolio of assets, just think of it as a traditional venture fund. Say that I was a traditional venture fund in 2018, and for some reason most of my company is IPO'd and I now held these companies, and I could liquidate them. And I was sitting on the 2030x range. I would want them to distribute a fair amount in my mind. I would like them to distribute more than one or two X. I would like them to distribute 5x or 6x. That way the investor has locked in a historically amazing return and then has the option for much higher upside. And the reason I feel this way is because I do honestly feel that there are massive cycles here. The gains of yesterday can be losses tomorrow.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that's been a larger group. And of course, their portfolios go up and down wildly every quarter. However, if you speak with them, they will tell you these returns are going to compound over a five to 10 year period. We don't care about this quarterly volatility. We've de-risked investors by giving them their capital back, but that's enough. We didn't invest in Uniswap or two years. We invested in these so that five, six years from now, the TVLs and the activity on the flow blockchain and the partnerships with the NFL and what have you are going to be 20 times what they are today. So we're going to hold on until then, and we don't care. So in short, two different philosophies there to deal with this volatility.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have a precedent from the 2018 Vintage, and we've looked at that, actually. There are broadly two types of managers from that vintage who have fully baked now portfolios that are mostly tokens at this point in terms of value and a large percentage of their portfolios are unlocked and they can actually sell if they want. First categories folks who have distributed a lot of capital back already. And that group has some, it ranges from DX to 5x, these sorts of numbers you see. And these are all cash back to investors from the sale of those tokens. There are others who have opted for a different approach, either returning 1x or 1.5x or maybe 2x the capital just to de-risk the investors and then hold long term.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's interesting that it takes out that instinct for the allocator investing in a fund. But as you mentioned, a lot of even venture investments say that a manager would make in this ecosystem Get to a token stage that trades relatively quickly. And we know that it's an incredibly volatile area. So I'm kind of curious what's happened with managers' behavior when there's so much volatility, even if they're effectively venture investments, but they're still a traded price attached to it.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you're locked, because you're locked, you won't make any bad decisions in terms of timing. You're going to find out 10 years later how you did. And it takes out that behavioral instinct of... Selling out the worst possible time and buying at the worst possible time.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The good reasons are the following number one the way these closed end funds work is they draw capital over time right so you kind of average into the space naturally of course you could do it yourself with an open-ended funding theory but this way the manager calls when they find an interesting deal and you invest over a period of in theory of two years or so it's been a year cycle so far but that's the averaging end part That's number one. Number two, you get more early stage. So just to be clear, if you go into venture structures on average, you go more into early stage, which means precede seed series A, pre-launch tokens, and equity type of deals. And the upside is probably higher there. It's also riskier Some So the good reasons are you average in over time, you invest earlier stage.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are good reasons for it and bad reasons for it. The bad reason being that you think this is venture capital and all my structures are closed end in venture capital. Hence, I have to do closed end because this is part of venture capital, even though there's early liquidity and these folks are in certain cases sitting 80% of their portfolios are tokens after three years. I think that's not a good reason. It's more how do I classify things type of reason.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who want to have access to it in the bull market have opted more for the open-ended types of funds? In the end, I think it's up to the investor and their circumstances on how they want to play this.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are several ways to do it. There's, as you know, there are venture capital funds, they're hedge funds, they're long-only funds, there's direct exposure through Bitcoin ETH, large cap, DeFi, et cetera. Maybe I should mention there's also that whole ARB and market neutral space, which is a separate thing, I would say, from the long-only exposure. But it is a part of crypto. So you have so many options as an investor. The vast majority so far have opted to take the venture capital approach, but there have been others who have taken an approach of let me buy Bitcoin ETH. Paying any fees, it's a good beta proxy for the industry. And in fact, Ted, if you look at how Ethereum performed over the past few years, it beat most funds, net of fees. So some folks have opted for that approach. And then people who value liquidity substantially more”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is it that you're basing your decisions on? What type of information? So, to make a long answer short, We look for people who are in the flow, but not in the noise.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's super important because being in Discord groups and chats and Telegram chats is part of the due diligence process here. It's an essential part of the due diligence process. So we often like to see managers who, even if they're older, which there aren't that many, but even if they're older and are more mature, they have younger people. On the team who spend their entire day gathering information in these channels. So we certainly assess that. And I think most of the memos we've actually seen from these funds. I would say that a large amount of information in these memos is gathered from these channels. So if somebody is investing in NFTs and is not plugged into the Discords and communities, it's a big question mark. How do you have special insights here?”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you learn things about their organizations, about the younger people there. You put the pieces on the puzzle together. It's much easier today. That's number one. Number two, you have track records. So you can see, hey, how did these guys contract their portfolios? Did they have high ownership relative to fund size? Did they have one 1000x outcome drive the entire portfolio, which is great. However, is it replicable going forward? Or did they construct a high ownership type of fund relative to fund size that has had substantial odds of success, even at much lower multiple outcomes? So, you have just much more information now. With that said It's still a super young space. So, if you ask anybody in traditional venture or traditional hedge funds, they will tell you, I don't know how to underwrite this space. They only go back to 2018.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think now you have track records and you have portfolio construction information as well. And I would say you also have a much longer trail of references and opinions on these folks. So we do all sorts of things here at ACOLI. There's an entire process around, but I would say some of the key things are referencing. So that's something you do a lot. You try to speak with many entrepreneurs. That's probably more important substantially more important than speaking with LPs, I would say, or GPs. You learn what people perceive to be their strengths and weaknesses, how they've evolved over time, because these things change.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was super different. I spent 13 years at Cambridge Total, and I spent my first seven doing hedge fund investing, so researching hedge fund managers and putting hedge fund portfolios together. Back then, this was a mature industry even in 2006 when I joined Cambridge, and there were track records, even people leaving firms had track records from other firms. There was much more to base your work on. You could do quantitative analytics reference calls and everything else. But with crypto, almost all of it was soft. And it felt as if you were taking a much riskier bet. You would want to underwriting a traditional manager. So all we did back then was speak with people, understand how they think. Do reference calls, figure out whether they have the personality on the grid, and the passion around the space to be around for the long term.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are they thought leaders? Are they writing interesting things? Are they thinking through this in a way that makes sense to me? Are they people who believe in it, who have grit, and who are going to stay there and have skin in the game? It was more of these soft parameters that you were looking at back then. Today you have experts at this point. I mean, at this point, many of these guys are now, they know the crypto space inside out and they're considered experts.”
2022-06-13 · Capital Allocators · Marcos Veremis – Allocator's Perspective on Blockchain (EP.254, Crypto for Institutions 2, EP.01) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source