With bitcoin 2024 It's fast approaching: From July 25-27 in Nashville, Tennessee, three entrepreneurial fund managers are competing to win $1 million in seed capital at the bitcoin Alpha Competition powered by Samara Alpha Management in alliance with bitcoin Pro Magazine.
In a recent podcastbitcoin Magazine sat down with the judges of the bitcoin Alpha competition to discuss the state of the bitcoin market and how individual investors are leveraging their agility to get ahead of large capital allocators as bitcoin moves into the era of institutional adoption.
Patrick Lowry, bitcoin Alpha Competition Judge and CEO of Samara Asset GroupHe believes that while spot ETFs have been a resounding success, trillions of dollars of institutional capital have yet to seize the opportunity in “the greatest form of money humanity has ever conceived,” largely due to regulatory and organizational burdens. This has left smaller organizations (family offices and individual investors) to seize the opportunity.
Commenting on his experience at Deutsche Digital, one of Europe’s first bitcoin ETP issuers, Lowry said: “I can attest to how difficult it is to become an asset manager. It’s incredibly difficult to get started and found your own asset management company. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve been given a scare by a huge number of regulators and compliance officers.”
“So one of the things I always wanted to do was to empower the new-age managers, the emerging asset managers, in this asset class that I believe in so strongly. (Helping them) so that they don’t have to go through the same hurdles that I went through six or seven years ago.”
Joining Lowry on the judging panel are Adil Abdulali, CIO of Samara Alpha Managementand Jack Elliot, CTO of Animus Technologies and winner of the inaugural bitcoin Alpha competition.
Abdulali, who brings his decades of experience in the hedge fund space, noted that bitcoin, compared to traditional assets, offers a unique risk profile with its higher volatility. This volatility, especially on the upside, reduces the need for leverage to generate returns. Abdulali believes that obviating the need for leverage offers capital allocators a unique option compared to fixed-income arbitrage, stating:
“Whenever you have an unleveraged strategy that also generates high returns and there is a drawdown… you don’t need to liquidate. You can stay in the trade for as long as you need to… any type of leveraged strategy, no matter how safe you think it is, will eventually be susceptible to (margin).” This apparently offers a new way to manage investment risk and another tool in the toolbox when looking for returns.
While bitcoin has certainly benefited from the improved sentiment surrounding Donald Trump’s positive comments about the asset of late, even these types of moves can present risks for fund managers. Jack Elliot, a chief technology officer focused on optimizing ai-based strategies at his firm Animus, noted the importance of being flexible and resilient to tail risks when it comes to modeling and operating in the bitcoin market.
“It’s just about recognizing the reality… this is a space that is extremely young and developing extremely quickly and there are going to be a number of different factors that are going to change the way the market behaves. And some of them are going to be incremental changes… and I think there are going to be a number of them going forward… For us, it’s about staying on track… it’s a fun problem because (modeling the market) is intractable.”
On July 25, Lowry, Abdulali and Elliot will select the winner of $1 million in seed funding to enable an entrepreneurial fund manager to scale their fund strategy, selecting from the following three finalists:
- Boreal.xyz
- L1 Performance
- Capital of the hill valley
The bitcoin Alpha competition is one of four total tracks in the largest tournament bitcoin Presentation Day 2024where leading founders and projects in open source, mining + energy and layer 2 + scaling will present their vision to top venture capitalists and audience members.
bitcoin Magazine is owned by btc Inc., which also owns and operates the world's largest bitcoin conference, The bitcoin Conference.
