4 ms·

What is seen most often is NYC or equivalent finance traders and executives bolting into crypto. It seems hard for firms below the Coinbase/Kraken/heavy hitter

What is seen most often is NYC or equivalent finance traders and executives bolting into crypto. It seems hard for firms below the Coinbase/Kraken/heavy hitter trading shop bar to pull serious resume hires out of SV, but quite a few Managing Director+ level hires moved over into crypto. My sense is the NYC finance realize a core aspect of crypto - you might not think it's money, but enough people do, and there's an active market for it, so there is quite a bit of money to be made.

pavlov 5y ago
There's an important nuance to this: enough unsophisticated people think it's money, so there's lots of opportunity for finance people to make money. Traditional finance is well-trodden, every arbitrage opportunity has been tried decades ago. But crypto is full of doe-eyed innocents who think they're reinventing finance. Of course experienced traders want to take advantage of them. It must be more fun than ye olde eurodollar bonds, or whatever.
- dogman144 5y ago
  > enough unsophisticated people Well, sophisticated people also think it's money, but they entered '12-'17 and stopped talking about it. A more recent example though is Neuberger Berman's entrance. The tragedy of the crypto moment is serious folks who didn't come from crypto made up their minds about it and did it a while ago, but articles like OP run interference against "everyone else" doing the same. Some links: https://medium.com/john-pfeffer/an-institutional-investors-take-on-cryptoassets-690421158904 https://medium.com/john-pfeffer/an-institutional-investors-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wences_Casares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wences_Casares > Casares was the entrepreneur to convince Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, and other tech veterans in Silicon Valley to invest in bitcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantera_Capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantera_Capital - scope out Morehead's background.
- twox2 5y ago
  There are financial mechanics that exist only in the scope of DeFi and not in traditional finance. It actually IS new in a lot of ways and skilled folks are teaming up to make a killing, not just experienced traders. Take a look at what's happening in the "MEV" space. None of this existed in traditional finance.
  - dogman144 5y ago
    Ya this is more my point. Taking traditional algorithmic trading skills into a place specifically designed for it and with new market mechanisms. Whoever spends some time building DeFi/L1 protocols is going to make a killing jumping over to Jump/Jane Street/HRT in a few years with that knowledge.
  - Animats 5y ago
    Sure it does. Front-running is not new. Payment for order flow is not new. Altering the recent transaction history (the thing blockchains are supposed to prevent) is a criminal offense in other markets.
    - dogman144 5y ago
      you're mistaking the mempool with tx history unless you believe they're essentially the same? Issue there if so is the mempool isn't consistent from node-to-node so can't call it a tx history. It's more like pending TXs which end up landing in a certain order that's possibly different once confirmed (which current banks do with checking/debit TXs and isn't a criminal offense).
NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
There's money to be made in trading even when the asset trades at prices that are fundamentally wrong; as long as people are buying and selling, you will find market makers taking the spread. There's also money to be made in asset management for the same basic set of reasons.

pavlov 5y ago

There's an important nuance to this: enough unsophisticated people think it's money, so there's lots of opportunity for finance people to make money. Traditional finance is well-trodden, every arbitrage opportunity has been tried decades ago. But crypto is full of doe-eyed innocents who think they're reinventing finance. Of course experienced traders want to take advantage of them. It must be more fun than ye olde eurodollar bonds, or whatever.

dogman144 5y ago
> enough unsophisticated people Well, sophisticated people also think it's money, but they entered '12-'17 and stopped talking about it. A more recent example though is Neuberger Berman's entrance. The tragedy of the crypto moment is serious folks who didn't come from crypto made up their minds about it and did it a while ago, but articles like OP run interference against "everyone else" doing the same. Some links: https://medium.com/john-pfeffer/an-institutional-investors-take-on-cryptoassets-690421158904 https://medium.com/john-pfeffer/an-institutional-investors-t... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wences_Casares https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wences_Casares > Casares was the entrepreneur to convince Bill Gates, Reid Hoffman, and other tech veterans in Silicon Valley to invest in bitcoin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantera_Capital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantera_Capital - scope out Morehead's background.
twox2 5y ago
There are financial mechanics that exist only in the scope of DeFi and not in traditional finance. It actually IS new in a lot of ways and skilled folks are teaming up to make a killing, not just experienced traders. Take a look at what's happening in the "MEV" space. None of this existed in traditional finance.
- dogman144 5y ago
  Ya this is more my point. Taking traditional algorithmic trading skills into a place specifically designed for it and with new market mechanisms. Whoever spends some time building DeFi/L1 protocols is going to make a killing jumping over to Jump/Jane Street/HRT in a few years with that knowledge.
- Animats 5y ago
  Sure it does. Front-running is not new. Payment for order flow is not new. Altering the recent transaction history (the thing blockchains are supposed to prevent) is a criminal offense in other markets.
  - dogman144 5y ago
    you're mistaking the mempool with tx history unless you believe they're essentially the same? Issue there if so is the mempool isn't consistent from node-to-node so can't call it a tx history. It's more like pending TXs which end up landing in a certain order that's possibly different once confirmed (which current banks do with checking/debit TXs and isn't a criminal offense).

NovemberWhiskey 5y ago

There's money to be made in trading even when the asset trades at prices that are fundamentally wrong; as long as people are buying and selling, you will find market makers taking the spread. There's also money to be made in asset management for the same basic set of reasons.