The Crypto Illuminati
The Illuminati Round Table
On-Chain Investment Management
0:00
-54:46

On-Chain Investment Management

Perspective from a Head of Investments on DeFi and On-Chain Investment Management

Illuminati Round Table Call Notes:

Introducing Huf - Head of Investments at Reimagined Finance (ReFi) and host of the ReFi DeFi podcast

  • Twitter: @hufhaus9

  • Studied Economics and graduated in 2010; Worked for Investment Bank in London, where he worked for almost ten years

  • After quitting his job, he went full-time DeFi in 2019

  • In 2019, DeFi was just degen and yield farming on multiple blockchains

Development Of ReFI

  • Huf and some of his developer friends decided to tackle a bigger problem in December 2021 

  • There's a lot of on-chain money in USDC, and ETH is looking for a home to generate yield but isn't necessarily willing to lend on CeFi

  • The solution they created is the first crypto institutional on-chain asset management service for high-net-worth retail investors, "where you can go in and deposit USDC, and you'll get your returns in USDC," as Huf explained 

Major Innovations At ReFi

  • In December 2021, most investors who were familiar with using Binance and speculating on a token were really stuck when it came to generating a yield on their own: go to Uniswap, go on the pool, decide which assets you want to contribute to the pool, and all of this complicates the job

  • ReFi addresses this issue by launching a token - ReFi token

ReFi Tokenomics

  • A crypto investment management protocol listed on the Ethereum (ERC20) and BNB (BEP20) chain, which allocates capital and generates yield on behalf of its investors

  • $ETH (ERC20) Chain: 10,000 $REFI

  • ReFi makes it easy for anyone to start earning investment profit distributions without the complexities of individuals deploying capital on multiple chains and protocols

  • The ReFi investment team also offers treasury management services for various crypto and DeFi protocols 

  • Investors can purchase $REFI on the Ethereum or BNB chain, so they can choose to receive distributions in either $ETH or $BNB

  • "ReFi got almost 2 million dollars in the treasury, which is currently farming." according to Huf 

ReFi Pro

  • ReFi team has launched ReFi Pro, a crypto institutional on-chain asset management service for large institutional and retail investors

  • Investors simply place funds in ReFi Pro vaults built on the Ethereum blockchain

  • The ReFi investment team then deploys investor capital from these vaults onto various chains and protocols to generate alpha/yield for investors

Investment Management and Why ReFi is a Good Solution

  • For example, if you have 1000 dollars to invest and you want to invest in the stock or bond market, you have two options:

    • Choose between passive instruments ETF - that works well when you know what you want to do and what you want to invest in

    • When it comes to retail or corporate investors who don't know what to do with the money, they employ active managers - BlackRock bond fund

  • A very small portion of cryptocurrency holders know what it means to have a MetaMask wallet, bridge across multiple chains, or participate in DeFi borrow and lending protocol, etc. - ReFi and Investment Management exist

  • Investment Management is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but if you hold an ETF, you cannot sell it on a Friday night; you must wait until Monday when the market is open

  • That's different in DeFi, where you can enter or exit your opposition at any given time

Benefits of Investment Management

  • With Investment Management, you know at any time what the portfolio is composed of

  • Transparency is a major key 

Is ReFi Selling Bundled Investments, or is It More of a Strategy of Farming and Staking?

  • ReFi can stake on any chain; it can be active on any number of whitelist active protocols, long the market, short the market, and other stuff in the crypto space

  • ReFi has a process and a team constantly looking for different opportunities in the DeFi space

  • The ReFi team has been active users on Arbitrum JMX, and they've been doing some trading recently on Aave using MATIC tokens

Tips for Investment Management for Someone With a Portfolio From 0 to 10K or over 10K?

  • Huf advises: "Not to overtrade because the amount of the fees you've been paying is the percentage of your portfolio if you go in and out of the positions, and time is gonna add up in percentage terms”

  • “If you got a 10k portfolio, you gonna pay like 200 or 300 dollars of fees, and you already lost a significant portion of that 10k dollar portfolio...Don’t overtrade because entry cost, exit cost."

  • Make sure to follow Telegram and Discord groups and news

DeFi Option Space?

  • With options, investors can profit whether prices rise by buying the right to buy the asset with call options or fall by purchasing the right to sell the asset with put options at a predetermined price and date. Or they can let the option expire and only lose the options fee

  • DeFi is now making options more accessible to the average investor

Risks Of Investment Management?

  • Number one smart contract risk - don't put your treasury on old funds and relatively new protocols; avoid beta-tested stuff

  • There are several tools to prevent risks, like how much beta you have to the market - beta means how average your portfolio is going up or down

  • Another risk is how much volatility your portfolio is subscribing to and whether that is something you're comfortable with or do you want to take less risk

What's Next?

  • ReFi token is no longer investible because they are moving to a new business model and token next year

  • "We will be a very clean on-chain investment management solution”

  • ReFi's goal is to build a suite of DeFi investment tools, starting with new protocol centered around an innovative approach to on-chain trading and ReFi Pro rebrand focused on institutional-grade asset management

Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter and in-house research content!

Please Share, Leave Feedback, and Follow Us on Twitter, Telegram, and LinkedIn to stay connected with us.

Leave a comment

Discussion about this podcast

The Crypto Illuminati
The Illuminati Round Table
Weekly Twitter Spaces hosted by Garlam Won and Kadeem Clarke, interviewing influential builders in crypto
Listen on
Substack App
RSS Feed
Appears in episode
Kadeem Clarke