Casual Chat About Investment, Funds, and Cryptocurrency

“Casual Chat About Investing, Funds, and Crypto”

#Funds #Curator

Starting early in the morning, let’s have a casual chat about funds.

I’ve written a pinned article about this: in 2021, I was still a product manager. Later, I got involved in DeFi and became an institutional fund manager. Eventually, I went solo (you can call it freelance investing if you want to sound impressive).

Since then, in the past couple of years, I’ve also tried some other things, like being an on-chain fund manager (DeFi Curator). But these mostly wrapped up by the end of 2025. Why? I’ll explain later.

Let’s go back to the original tweet about funds.

A senior who helped me early on often sent me decks for fundraising. Of course, I’ve seen decks from various sources.

Unfortunately, out of nearly a hundred materials I’ve reviewed over the years, I could tell at a glance they were all junk, and I’ve never given a solid investment recommendation. A somewhat blunt conclusion: any fund that publicly raises money, by my standards, is all junk.

How should an outsider simply understand financial institutions? There are really only two roles.

One is the entity that seeks external funding—brands, star fund managers, institutions. All the high-end, outward-facing stuff you see is just to attract more money.

The other role is the one managing that money—what I call the junk funds. Their strategies are copied from others, choosing a good time cycle, producing some good simulated data, and then letting the fundraising role do the work.

It’s not that they lack ability; it’s just that these things aren’t visible from the data and can’t be linked. Especially the most critical risk control capabilities.

Junk is junk, but it still involves information and technical barriers. It seems like a reasonable model. But in reality, it’s not.

Active funds are easy to understand—they’re gamblers. Using investors’ money to bet, sharing the winnings if they win, and losing only their own capital if they lose.

That’s human nature. When returns mainly come from profit sharing and there’s no downside protection, betting is inevitable—no exceptions.

Passive, arbitrage funds, make money from management fees. But the risk remains huge because most arbitrage teams can’t dodge black swans, their skills are insufficient, and black swans happen every year.

I’ve invested in others’ funds myself, with similar results—blown up by overconfidence. It’s quite funny when you think about it.

Let’s talk about DeFi Curator.

Starting this side project for two reasons: one, to generate some passive income; two, to see if the bull market can grow into something bigger.

We have an advantage doing this. Because we are among the most knowledgeable teams in DeFi and risk control (at least one of them), understanding exactly where the risks lie, each black swan becomes a profit opportunity.

Plus, some friends are willing to help, so we got it up and running quickly.

Initially, I had a beautiful vision: keep all decision details transparent, avoid conflicts of interest, open-source the code for review, and even if something goes wrong, we can hold our heads high.

Before 1011, our portfolio was among the highest-yielding. If something went wrong, we’d be faster than others to exit, minimizing losses.

After 1011, I felt the market was off, so I reviewed the portfolio again. Removed assets that everyone was investing in but we couldn’t practically control or immediately manage risks on.

Soon after, everyone knows what happened—the stablecoins we invested in collapsed, but we were unaffected. The so-called established institutions are just amateurs.

At the same time, I realized that my idealistic vision was just wishful thinking. Being fair and transparent is worthless if it’s not valued by others.

People don’t invest in you because you’re honest or open—they invest because you don’t lose money.

On the flip side, as long as you don’t lose money, it doesn’t matter if you’re evil, corrupt, or fake.

The potential risk of others losing money is a risk I don’t want to bear. Even if legally innocent, there are risks outside the law.

Keeping a loose structure reduces pressure during bad times, which is also good.

A few related thoughts at the end:

1. I believe non-professionals shouldn’t invest more than 10% of their money and energy. It’s better to focus on your main career.

Or if you plan to specialize, you need to understand every detail. From your learning experience, do you have the success stories or talent for this?

2. I’ve said many times that crypto has a huge value: it disenchants people from investing. In every aspect, inside and out. No other industry allows you to understand, engage with, and practically operate at the core like crypto does.

3. I love reviewing industry experts’ analyses—this is also a huge value of crypto. Some outsiders don’t understand why these boastful stories are interesting. I don’t understand why these things are free to read—what a kind-hearted person. (Including this article)