Casual Chat About Investment, Funds, and Cryptocurrency

“Chatting about Investment, Funds, and Crypto”

#Funds #curator

Starting early in the morning, let’s have a casual chat about funds. https://t.co/6dSNPF9P1P

In my pinned article, I mentioned that 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 a free investor if you want to brag).

Since then, over the past two 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 fund fundraising decks. Of course, I’ve seen various decks from other sources as well.

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 capital, by my standards, is all junk.

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

One role is to seek outside funding—brands, star fund managers, institutions. All the high-end, external-looking things you see are just to attract more money.

The other role is to manage that money, which is the junk mentioned earlier. Their strategies are usually copied from others, choosing a good time cycle, producing some good simulated data, and then letting the fundraising role do the money-raising.

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 important risk control capabilities.

Junk is junk, but there are 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 sharing profits 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 also invested in others’ funds, with similar results—blown up by overconfidence. It’s quite funny when you think about it. 😂

Let’s talk about DeFi Curator.

There are two motivations for doing this side project: one is to generate some passive income, and the other is to see if the bull market can help scale it up.

We have an advantage in doing this. Because we are one of the most knowledgeable teams about DeFi and risk control (let’s say one of the top), 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: we would keep all decision details transparent, avoid conflicts of interest, openly review code with multiple parties, and even if something went wrong, we could hold our heads high.

Before 1011, our portfolio was among the highest-yielding. If something went wrong, we would definitely exit faster than others, minimizing losses.

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

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

At the same time, I also realized that my idealistic vision was just wishful thinking. Being fair and transparent is worthless—

People won’t understand you just because you’re honest, open, and mistake-free. They invest in you only because you haven’t lost money.

Conversely, 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 already a risk I don’t want to bear. Even if legally innocent, there are risks outside the law.

Maintaining a loose structure reduces pressure during bad market times, which is also quite good.

Final thoughts and related ideas:

1. I believe that non-professionals’ understanding of investment shouldn’t exceed about 10% of their own money and energy. It’s better to focus on your main career.

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

2. I’ve said many times that crypto has enormous value in disillusioning people about investing. In every aspect, inside and out. No other industry allows you to understand, engage with, and practically operate at the underlying level of transactions as deeply.

3. I love reviewing industry experts’ retrospectives, which is also a huge value of crypto. Some outsiders don’t understand what’s so interesting about these bragging stories. What I don’t understand is how these things can be free to read—such great kindness. (Including this article)