"Casual Chat About Investment, Funds, and Crypto"

“Chatting About Investment, Funds, and Crypto”

#基金 #curator

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

I wrote a pinned article saying that in 2021 I was still a product manager, then I got involved in DeFi and became an institutional fund manager, and later went solo (you can call it a free investor if you want to brag).

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

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

There’s an older brother who helped me early on, often sending me decks for fundraising. Of course, I’ve seen decks from various other sources too.

Unfortunately, out of nearly a hundred pieces of material I’ve reviewed over the years, I could tell at a glance they were all junk, and I’ve never once received a solid investment recommendation. I can make a somewhat blunt conclusion: any fund that needs to raise public funds, according to my standards, is all junk.

How can an outsider simply understand financial institutions? There are actually only two roles.

One role is to look for external funding. Brands, star fund managers, institutions. All the high-end, outward-facing stuff you see is aimed at attracting more money.

The other role is to manage that money, which is the so-called junk. Their strategies are 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 have no ability of their own, but these things are invisible from the data and cannot 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. In reality, it’s not.

Active types are easy to understand—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-type funds, earn 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, and the result was the same—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 gig: one is to increase some passive income, and the other is to see if the bull market can help scale up.

We have an advantage in doing this. Because we are the team that understands DeFi and risk control the best (at least one of them), knowing exactly where the risks lie, each black swan becomes a profit opportunity.

Plus, some friends are willing to help out, so we got it done 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 ones. If something went wrong, we would definitely run faster than others and minimize 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.

Later, everyone knows what happened—the stablecoins invested by DeFi Curator exploded, but we were unaffected. The so-called veteran institutions are just amateurs and amateurs.

At the same time, I also realized that the beautiful vision was just my wishful thinking—being fair and transparent is worthless if it’s not valuable.

Others won’t understand you just because you’re fair, open, and flawless. They invest in you only because you haven’t lost money.

Conversely, as long as you don’t lose money, even evil, corruption, or fraud doesn’t matter.

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.

Keeping a loose structure means less pressure during bad times, which is also pretty good.

A few final related thoughts:

1. I think 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 one huge value of Crypto is that it demystifies investing. In every aspect, inside and out. No other industry allows you to understand, get involved, and practically operate at such a deep level.

3. I love reviewing industry experts’ retrospectives, which is also a huge value of Crypto.
   Some outsiders don’t understand why these boastful things are interesting.
   What I don’t understand is how these things can be free to read—such great kindness. (Including this article)