This episode is brought to you by VanEck. Learn more about the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF: http://vaneck.com/REMXMax

Sam Gaer, CIO of Directional Strategies at Monarq Asset Management, joins Other People’s Money to discuss how he uses quantitative directional strategies to trade crypto assets and produce an institutional quality return stream that has outperformed bitcoin at scale. He explains how his experience as a market maker, executive, and self-taught electronic exchange technologist driving some of the most important technological advances in finance led him to “burn the boats,” leave tradfi, and go all in on building institutional crypto strategies with Monarq. He also discusses how institutional appetite for crypto hedge fund strategies is growing with increased regulatory clarity, greater availability of institutional level funds, and evolving market opportunities in crypto-native and crypto-linked tradfi assets.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:43 Q4 Crypto Volatility

06:21 A Disappointing Year for Crypto Bulls

10:29 Taking Advantage of Extreme Volatility

12:50 Triple Barrier Risk Management

15:43 $REMX

16:26 Responsible Leverage

17:17 Is the 4-Year Cycle Over

21:55 Early Days Pit Trading

24:16 Building Electronic Exchange Technology

26:38 CEO of NYMEX Europe and NYMEX IPO

27:24 Move to FINRA

28:43 Building and Selling a Volatility Hedge Fund

29:15 Burn the Boats

32:14 Joining Monarq

37:14 Differences Between Crypto Fund Managers and TradFi

39:17 Institutional Adoption of Crypto Hedge Funds

44:27 Can Crypto Strategies Scale to Meet the Demand?

47:19 The Crypto TradFi Collision

49:57 The Difference Between Institutional and Non-institutional Quality Crypto Funds

54:13 Hyper Liquid and Other Market Improvements in Crypto

59:26 Will TradFi Take Over Crypto?

01:01:31 Digital Asset Treasuries

01:08:46 The Next Stage for Monarq