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.

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).

In 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. 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 also saw decks from other 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 none provided solid investment advice. 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-profile, external-looking stuff is just to attract more money.

The other role is the one managing that money—what I call the junk. 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 it still has 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, with similar results—blown up by overconfidence. It’s quite funny when I 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, openly review code with multiple parties, 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 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 we couldn’t practically or immediately control risk over in the code.

Soon after, everyone knows what happened—the stablecoins invested by DeFi Curator exploded, 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—

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.

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 in investing. 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 enormous value in disillusioning people about investing—inside and out. No other industry allows you to deeply understand, engage with, and practically operate at the foundational level of transactions.

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