"Casual Chat About Investment, Funds, and Crypto"

“Casual Chat on Investment, Funds, Crypto”

#基金 #curator

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

I wrote in my pinned article 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, over the past two years, I’ve also tried some other things, like being an on-chain fund manager (DeFi Curator). But all of these basically wrapped up by the end of 2025, and I’ll explain why 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 all kinds of decks from various channels.

Unfortunately, out of nearly a hundred pieces of material I’ve reviewed over the years, I could tell at a glance that they were all junk, and I’ve never once given a definitive investment recommendation. A somewhat blunt conclusion: any fund that needs to raise funds publicly, by 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. Brand, star fund managers, institutions. All the high-profile, outward appearances are just to attract more money.

The other role is to operate that money, which is the so-called junk mentioned above. Their strategies are copied from others, choosing a good time cycle, producing some good simulated data, and then letting the fundraising role go out and raise money.

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 also information and technical barriers. It seems like a reasonable model. In reality, it’s not.

Proactive types are easy to understand—gamblers. Using investors’ money to gamble, sharing the winnings if they win, and losing no more than their principal if they lose.

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

Passive, arbitrage-type funds, earn management fees. But the risk remains huge because most arbitrage teams can’t avoid black swans, their skills are insufficient, and black swans happen every year.

I’ve also invested in others, 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 increase 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 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.

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. If something went wrong, we would definitely run faster than others, minimizing losses.

After 1011, I felt the market was off, so I reviewed the portfolio again. Removed those 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 we invested in at DeFi Curator blew up, 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 honest and transparent is ultimately worthless—

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.

Maintaining a loose structure, with less pressure during bad times, is also quite good.

A few related thoughts at the end:

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 what’s so interesting about these bragging stories.
   What I don’t understand is that these things are actually free to read—what a kind-hearted person. (Including this article)