Revenant Capital.
A DeFi fund for the people.
[THREAD]
A DeFi fund for the people.
[THREAD]
Before I get into the nitty gritty, I’d like to share a story.
A story about engineering luck, capitalizing on leverage, and taking asymmetric bets; and how these three principles coalesced to set the stage for an outcome that would impact my life in serendipitous ways.
A story about engineering luck, capitalizing on leverage, and taking asymmetric bets; and how these three principles coalesced to set the stage for an outcome that would impact my life in serendipitous ways.
Let’s start in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. At this point of my life, I had very little crypto knowledge. And honestly, I wasn’t even that interested. The only exposure I really had was my close friend @paik_michael texting me every week, urging me to get some exposure.
At first, I was extremely reluctant. But he was very persistent in his efforts to persuade me. Enough tries, and I finally caved. He started sharing his wisdom with me on a consistent basis. I was getting up to speed, and we'd spend a couple hours each week talking about it.
This is the only section where Michael makes an appearance, but he deserves a shout out. Without him, I wouldn’t be writing this now. I’m forever indebted to him for pushing me to be open-minded. This was ultimately the catalyst to what I’ll be talking about later in this thread. 
Now, let’s move on to January 2021. While I was more knowledgeable about crypto at this point, I still hadn’t reaped any “fruits.” In fact, everything I put money into, I lost. Many times. My ego wouldn’t let me keep deploying money, so I ended up taking myself out of the game.
However, even if I didn’t “play” anymore, the seed had already been planted in my head. In other words, despite the fact that I didn’t have my skin in the game anymore, I still kept an ear to the ground to stay up to date on trends and followed what was going on in the space.
Then, February 2021 comes along. I wake up one morning and unexpectedly get a DM from @thenatlog, an account with a profile picture that I didn't immediately recognize at first. Somehow, the Twitter algorithm made one of my tweets pop up on his feed.
The unexpected part was that Logan was an ex-coworker at a VC firm I used to work at. He was the smartest guy on the engineering team, writing code to help investors better analyze investment opportunities. I was client-facing, originating the investment opportunities themselves.
While we were on different teams, we’d always joke around with each other in the office hallway. He had my sense of humor, so we became friends very quickly. But, after I left the firm, we lost touch. So when I got his DM, “What have you been up to’s” were immediately exchanged.
Lo and behold, he tells me that he left the firm too, not that long after. I ask him what he’s doing now and he tells me that he’s doing something in crypto. “Hey, maybe you can show me how to actually make money,” I say jokingly. I invite him to my house for dinner. “Say less.”
He cruises over and brings his laptop. After we eat, he fires it up. “Check this out,” he tells me. What he ends up showing me leaves me mesmerized. Lines and lines of code. Then, he says, “This is a machine learning model I’ve been building from scratch over the past 3 years.”
He explains to me that he created an algorithm that was able to predict price movements in crypto. The rest of the night ends up turning into an impromptu 2-hour demo. “Ethereum will dip around this date. Bitcoin will pump around this date. It can all be predicted.”
In short, it runs thousands upon thousands of simulations using historical and current data in order to provide an output with a certain confidence level, and that output could then be used to make more informed trading decisions. It was the most quant thing I’ve ever seen.
He leaves my house and I legitimately can’t stop thinking about it. I decide to call him a week later. “I want to get involved,” I tell him straight up. Another hour-long conversation ensues. “I want you to trade my money.”
What did “my money” mean? It quite literally meant every dollar of my savings. I had liquidated everything I accumulated in stocks and ETF’s. Withdrew my entire 401(k) balance. He had no knowledge that I had done any of this.
“I want to bet on you. You do your thing. I give you capital. You can take however much you want off the gains. I’m prepared to lose it all if something goes wrong. I don’t care. Let’s do this.”
Right away, he expresses hesitation (as expected). “I’m not letting you take that risk. I haven’t even traded my own money yet... let me prove to you that this works first.” Back and forths ensue, but eventually I end up getting him to agree to take a "small" amount of my money.
“Alright, let’s do like $10k.” He gives me his wire information and I execute it the very next morning. Two days later, he texts me, “You did not just do that...” He finds out that I didn’t wire him the $10k that we had agreed upon. I wired him everything.
“I'm forced to be your guinea pig now. Call me your first angel investor. Like I said, if this money disappears, I won’t care. You have my word. Let’s put it to the test. We’ll never know what can happen if we don’t try. I’m doing this because I believe in you.” And so it began.
Why did I do this? Because I’m an idiot. Lesson in there, maybe.
Anyways, from that day on, we got to work. Did I question my decision a few times? Absolutely. But as I’ve tweeted multiple times, you can always get money back by making more. It's tangible. But what you can’t get back? Regret. That's potentially lifelong and intangible.
The money was officially deployed for trading on March 1st. Longs and shorts were constantly opened round the clock. March 31st comes along and we’re at a gain on the portfolio. April 31st. Gain. May 31st. Gain. And this continues on and on, up and to the right at each month end.
Even when the market went south, we were able to avoid wiping out over half the total portfolio (consisting of ETH), minimizing it to about $50k. We hedged, ended up erasing the loss, and brought it back to a gain in a few weeks. The model gave us the data to call these shots.
Now, I’m not comfortable sharing the exact amount of money I have in my portfolio for privacy reasons. But over a span of 5 months, we were essentially able to triple the initial principal balance using a combination of momentum trading and yield farming.
Throughout those months of trading, I also shared some ideas about expansion too. As you know, I was the only one supplying the AUM, and Logan was only taking a fee off of me. There was a clear opportunity to think bigger and fully actualize his potential.
I pitched my vision to him to create an actual fund of some sort. I would handle the marketing side of things and he would do what he did best. I would leverage my reputation, connections, and audience to raise money, and he would trade like the madman he is.
The overall idea was to showcase consistent results on a wider scale and attract the right eyes to eventually position the underlying technology and systems to get acquired by a larger quantitative fund. That’s our end goal and what we’re moving towards for the next 3-5 years.
And so it began again. A couple more engineers were brought on to refine the existing model and help to create new ones. Internal systems were set up. The legal side was taken care of. We spent hours upon hours working on this in private to get set up and properly execute on it.
And now we’re ready to finally talk about it.
Enter: @0xRevenant
Our value proposition with this fund is to help people get exposure to upside and grow their money through a systematic, quantitative approach underpinned by three core advantages, which I'll expand upon below.
Enter: @0xRevenant
Our value proposition with this fund is to help people get exposure to upside and grow their money through a systematic, quantitative approach underpinned by three core advantages, which I'll expand upon below.
1. Our Emphasis on Thinking Simply
The best models are the simplest, yet people always overcomplicate. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we improve upon what already works.
The best models are the simplest, yet people always overcomplicate. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we improve upon what already works.
2. Our Machine Learning Chop Shop
We take proven, robust, dependable, artificial intelligence systems, strip them for parts, and repurpose them for trading applications.
We take proven, robust, dependable, artificial intelligence systems, strip them for parts, and repurpose them for trading applications.
3. Our Ability to Integrate Rapidly
We execute on lightning-fast stress testing of market hypotheses against live market conditions and train thousands of models atop billions of data points.
Wall-to-wall time from ideation to deployment is under an hour.
We execute on lightning-fast stress testing of market hypotheses against live market conditions and train thousands of models atop billions of data points.
Wall-to-wall time from ideation to deployment is under an hour.
More technically, we train multiple models with different parameters with each model producing a forward looking forecast, signaling when to enter / exit trades. The models vote on what is the most likely outcome. Actual execution is done by a human with round-the-clock coverage.
An important point I want to emphasize is that this is not a get-rich-quick scheme. If you’re expecting moonshots, stick to meme coins. We don’t make degenerate bets. Again, we operate through clearly-defined principles, while constantly iterating on and refining the algorithm.
Keep in mind that while the initial model took three years to get to a point where it can be trusted as an advantage, we’ve only been actively trading for half a year. We want to reiterate this point upfront. There are no guarantees nor can we give you an expected return.
Whether this makes you hesitant or not is completely up to your risk tolerance and how much trust you carry after having read my personal experience. But above all else, the priority remains being to grow your money dependably over the long-term through bear and bull markets.
Also worth noting is that you’re free to deposit and withdraw as you please. There’s no obligation to keep your money in here whatsoever. If this isn’t for you, you’re free to watch on the sidelines. If you think this is a good opportunity for you, we’ll do our part accordingly.
I’ll end it with this: If you’ve always wanted crypto exposure, but don’t know what you’re doing or don’t want to just put your money into ETF's, this fund may make sense. Don’t do anything you’re not fully in on. Listen to your gut and call the shot that you’re comfortable with.
At the end of the day, who knows what’ll happen in 5, 10, etc. years. But in the end, I know that whatever happens, I can peacefully go to sleep at night knowing I’ll never have to regretfully ask myself, “What if?” If you resonate, go ahead and check out the three links below.
A more detailed look into the actual model.
https://twitter.com/thenatlog/status/1417233961030324234?s=20
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