#707 Launching a $200M Fund Backed By FTX w/ Matthew Graham

Matthew Graham is the CEO of Sino Global Capital, where he has almost a decade of investment banking experience in mainland China and has been investing in crypto for a few years. In this conversation, we discuss FTX fund, his current portfolio, China, India, and where Matthew sees the big opportunities today. ======================= MiamiCoin is the first token to be released by CityCoins, a community-driven project built on Bitcoin. CityCoins aims to give people around the world a new way to support their favourite cities. The protocol has already generated over $7 million dollars in donations to the city of Miami and continues to grow every day. If you want to get involved Follow @minecitycoins on Twitter to stay up to date with the project. Visit chat. CityCoins.co to join the community discord and contribute to the movement. ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit compassmining.io to start mining bitcoin today! ======================= Ethernity.io: The world’s first authenticated and licensed NFT platform, trusted by over 150,000 members. Digital NFTs and exclusive real-world unlockables, authentic partnerships with athletes and artists. Visit Ethernity.io, where you can buy and sell authenticated NFTs from top notable figures, rights, license, and IP holders you can’t find anywhere else; the start of an entire ecosystem bringing utility to #NFTs.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Matthew Graham is the CEO of Cino Global Capital, where he has almost a decade of investment banking experience in mainland China and has been investing in crypto for a few years. In this conversation, we discuss his recently announced FTX-backed fund, his current portfolio, China, India, and where Matthew sees the big opportunities today. I really enjoyed this conversation with Matthew, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Miami Coin. As you may have heard, when we had Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:27Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:34Anthony Pompliano?

  mining, go to CompassMining.io. Alright, let's get into this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this

• 3:40Speaker 01

  one. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:04Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up, guys? Bang, bang. I've got Matthew here with me. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Thanks. Great to be here.

• 4:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's just jump right into Sino Global. It's a fund that you have that is focused on China. Help us understand how the fund came together, what the thesis is, and then what your portfolio looks like.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  Sure. So the backstory is that I was a China-focused tech banker for many years. And so I had been following Bitcoin as a passion, as a hobby, since, I don't know, 11, 12, and 2011, 2012. And I, starting in 2013, I kept trying to interject my hobby into my professional life. And so that, that started out with terrible results. For example, in, in 2013, uh, I pitched one of the top 10 telecom manufacturing companies in the world. They, they said, um, tell me your best crazy idea.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  So I said, well, I think you should have a Bitcoin phone for power users. I think this is going to be a, uh, something that's going to be a huge phenomenon in tech. And you could establish yourself early by, by making a hardware, software combination, working with another company that I, I can't say. But, but you guys could do it together and you could have a Bitcoin phone for power users and get in early on something that I think, uh, is going to be pretty, pretty huge. Um, that was in 13. And so the, the response was, well, I asked for your best crazy idea. That, that is a crazy idea and I, and I fucking hate it. So that was my first attempt to combine my hobby with my professional life.

• 5:47Speaker 02

  But, um, so I, I continued following very closely. And then, um, post Ethereum, to me, this, uh, was a signal that suddenly this was actually a much bigger story. And so when I, uh, started reading about Ethereum, that, that was, um, um, my first true love in crypto, probably. Um, I, I, I realized that this, in, in my view, at that, at that moment, uh, this was now something that was going to be as big as the internet, you know, in the late 1990s in the United States. Um, um, it was going to be that same feeling. I, I was very confident. And so for the internet in the nineties, I was like a little too young for that, believe it or not,

• 6:32Speaker 02

  to fully get involved at that time. So I, I was determined not to miss this kind of like second chance at a, to participate in a generational, uh, technology change. So, um, I'm actually a very small C conservative type person. So we started, uh, out, um, so, uh, but by this time, sorry, by this time I had my own shop. So, um, I had my own boutique, uh, investment banking shop. And so we pivoted into crypto and being a kind of a conservative guy, we started out, uh, in the secondary markets. And with some small angel investments and and over a period of time and kind of increasingly

• 7:14Speaker 02

  confident with an increasingly successful AUM and just as a prop shop. And so then in the last couple of years is when we decided that we wanted to pivot to making private adding private market investments, VC style investments. And that's when we needed kind of like a bigger presence because you need deal flow. You need to be out there in the marketplace. And so that was kind of the next iteration. And so up until now, we have been a prop shop managing partner capital. And so actually, by the time this is viewed, we will have made a blockbuster announcement, which is that we are launching our first institutional fund.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  And it's code GP with FTX as the listeners very likely know by now. And we're super excited to have FTX come in as a code GP and as a very significant LP. And to it was kind of the natural next step in our relationship with with FTX where we've done deals together and we're an FTX shareholder and we've known them since since very early days in their incredibly successful journey. And so we're pretty pumped up about these these new things.

• 8:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So walk me back through first before we get to the FTX news. When when you were a prop shop, what were you investing in and what was the thesis?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Sure. So the the thesis at a high level was this is one of the reasons we were able to to get involved with DeFi pretty early is that at a high level, I've always had the thesis that financial markets tend almost inexorably to trend towards increasing complexity and and abstraction. So we've always kind of looked to participate in what we thought could be the the next example of that. So for example, if you only have spot, you should start looking at, you know, Platforms that are going to provide futures and options and things like that.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  There's always going to be a trend towards complexity and abstraction. So that has always been one of our top level theses. But I think even more than that, really, we are bottom up investors. I think this is a unique market in that it's so dynamic. It moves so quickly that it's enormously important to have a very agile nimble approach.

• 9:46Speaker 02

  And so really, we look for unique entrepreneurs with with clearly differentiated visions and that are the kind of people that we would want to support for the long haul. And that's been our approach in the secondary market. And now it's our approach in the primary market as well.

• 10:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And talk about the geographic focus that you've had as well historically.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Sure, absolutely. So given my genesis as a China focused tech banker, helping international tech companies in the mainland China market. With our VC hat on, we look to help international blockchain companies here in this enormously complicated market in a manner that's consistent with local laws and regulations. And obviously, it's a very idiosyncratic market. Even for the very best international projects, it's quite impenetrable for them in many ways. So we are their trusted partner across halfway across the globe in many cases

• 10:58Speaker 02

  to be able to help them access this market. And actually, we are working on a huge new initiative these days, which is that we are adding a second geography. And so we are actually adding the India market. And I'm enormously bullish on India crypto market, which I think is in its early days, but growing very, very rapidly. I'm extremely excited about being able to represent our friends in this.

• 11:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you think about the types of investments that you've been making, you've got this geographic focus. Are these traditional illiquid private company like venture capital type investments? Are they more liquid kind of protocol or token investments?

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Sure, that's a great question. It ends up being a combination of both. So the most common example is token investments. And so these are also long-term investments, but in the form of tokens. The second most common bucket is equity with a token kicker. And the third bucket, which is kind of reserved for extremely high conviction situations. That's the equity bucket. And so we are equity investors in, for example, Wintermute and also FTX.

• 12:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so let's talk about Solana. I think you were a very early investor in Solana. That has been a spectacular investment, just as an example in terms of your investment thesis and kind of what's possible. Walk us through, when did you first hear about Solana? How did that come together? And then what was the investment?

• 12:40Speaker 02

  So very openly, we first heard of Solana when the decision was made for Serum to build on Solana. So we weren't like first, we were just super early. And so when we invested in Serum, that was basically a no-brainer to be able to have a central limit order book in decentralized world and it's, you know, the FTX family. So that was like a super quick decision, high confidence. But it led to the decision that we needed to find out everything about Solana, like now. And so we essentially dropped everything for a period of weeks and we did a lot of external tech consultations

• 13:24Speaker 02

  and things like that with friends from all around the world. We did a real deep dive. And so a lot of it came down to pattern matching. A lot of it came down to people and pattern matching, which are two of my favorite things. So people, I think that if anyone has gotten to know Toly and his team, they're just exceptional people, both in terms of technology expertise, but also in terms of like being amazing humans. So that's the perfect kind of people that we love to back, that we have full confidence that they're going to make ethical decisions that we're comfortable with, that they're

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Um. In the worst case, they're gonna keep grinding away, things like that. So they were like an A, AAA for people. And then um, the the second bucket is um, so and obviously, they had a a clearly differentiated vision. They were uh, building a a blockchain that was scalable in a fundamentally different way. And um, so I mean, I'm I'm not a computer scientist, right? But I'm really good with pattern matching. And so the fact that you you the analogy, excuse me, the analogy is that um, it's almost like when CPU started to hit a wall and it became increasingly difficult to increase CPU speed. And then people said, okay, so we're having trouble um,

• 14:43Speaker 02

  getting more performance in this way. What if, what if we started, what if we went to a a multi-threaded model? And so to me, that was kind of the pattern matching, and that was kind of the analogy. That Solana was like a multi-threaded blockchain, which may not be perfectly true in a technical sense, but in at like a 10,000-foot pattern matching level. Um, that was something that um, that I kind of um, that that that really resonated with me. And so it was very clear at that time that it was a bet that had tremendous asymmetric upside. A lot of people were worried about the big unlock, things like that. So the valuation was enormously reasonable.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Uh, and it was clear that we were super early, which is we we like to be, you know, we we don't want to be too early, but we like to be very, very early. I remember uh, at that time, the hardest thing actually was to uh, get a fill. So I had to call OTC desks all around the world, some that I hadn't even dealt with before. And it was a long tail asset. So I said, you know, we will take all the Solana that you have. We we will, literally whatever you have will eat. And people were saying, what the fuck is Solana? You know, these are crypto OTC desks. And they're like, we don't, you don't have that. So it actually took a a long, I mean, you know, a surprisingly uh, long period of time

• 16:07Speaker 02

  to get as much as we wanted. That was actually the most difficult part. But um, What price was this at? Uh, that was in, in the range of our, our fills were in the range of um, uh, eighty cents to a buck thirty in that range, across, across that range, I think. Um, uh, you know, ballpark, I, I don't want to be more specific for opsec reasons, but it was, you know, it was around, it was around that range, let's say.

• 16:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So it's a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy X, depending on, you know, what, what day it is. Uh, when you look at something like that, I'm really interested in, uh, one, you make what I'll call the initial allocation. Uh, two is, do you continue to invest in an opportunity like that as it goes? Kind of press a winner, once you see that it's working as kind of validating your thesis? Or is that initial allocation, kind of the totality of, of, of the allocation? And then the third thing is, how do you think about, uh, managing a position that I'm assuming was, you know, relatively small in the portfolio and now becomes a very large part?

• 17:09Speaker 02

  It wasn't small, it was a concentrated bet.

• 17:11Anthony Pompliano?

  It was, okay, so concentrated bet becomes even bigger, do you?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't like, um, spray and pray, I'm the opposite of that.

• 17:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so do you trim positions as they grow? Or just walk me through, like, once you make the initial decision, you have a concentrated position, do you continue to add to it over time? Or because it's concentrated, concentrated in the beginning, you basically stick with, uh, that initial allocation?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Sure, that's a great question, and so I would phrase it this way. So, uh, fundamentally, I, I, I fall into like the Paul Tudor Jones school of like, uh, you don't add to your losers and you add to your winners. So that's the first thing at a high level. But then the second thing, um, I don't really want to be fomowing in. Uh, so what I look for is a second catalyst. Um, or, or, you know, a catalyst beyond the initial thesis. Um, in the case of, um, Solana, after the unlock, which obviously was a bullish unlock, uh, we actually added to our position. Um, so I, I can't get too specific about, about the price.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  But let, let's say, let's say it was in the, um, uh, let's say it was in the ten to fifteen range. We actually added a, a second, uh, swath. Uh, and basically that's my fundamental, um,

• 18:30Speaker 02

  Way of looking at it, you add the winners and you trim losers and you look for additional catalysts because you don't want to be fumbling it.

• 18:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it makes a makes a ton of sense. And then when you look at, let's say, Solana today, I think there's a whole bunch of debate in the crypto community around Solana, Ethereum, Polkadot, Binance Smart Chain, we can just go down the line. There's so many of these now that people have various thesis on, how do you see it playing out in the ecosystem? Is this something that could potentially disrupt or take market share from the Ethereum's of the world?

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Sure, sure. That's a great question. I would say that fundamentally, I am a multi-chain guy. So in my view, we are still so early just in crypto as a whole. And there's tremendous room.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  An enormous understatement would be to say that there's tremendous room for the ecosystem as a whole to to keep growing, right? We're still, you know, a thousandth as big as we will eventually be crypto, for sure. I'm convinced of that. So I tend to not, I mean, there will be some cannibalization. But to me, this is more about betting on multiple growth stories. As I mentioned, we were early, fairly early buyers of Ethereum in the secondary market and we still have a a substantial Ethereum stake and we still look at Ethereum investments as well. And we continue to look, you know, every month, we we look at at least one or or two

• 20:03Speaker 02

  additional chains and make a pretty thorough analysis to determine if we want to allocate capital in a in a different space. So for us, we're bullish on Solana, but we're also bullish on Ethereum. Yeah, I mean, of course, to some extent, these are going to go toe to toe. But I think there's room for multiple players and we're quite confident in the crust with those chains. And I think that there will be other chains that emerge as well.

• 20:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about Bitcoin in terms of how you see that fitting into the ecosystem. Do you guys hold Bitcoin? How do you think about it from a portfolio construction standpoint? And how does that play with the other investments you have?

• 20:39Speaker 02

  So we do hold Bitcoin and so in my view, we probably want to be, I'm bullish on Bitcoin. We hold Bitcoin. For us, we want to be a little bit further out on the risk curve. So it's not what we would view as a substantial source of alpha for us. Part of that too is because we don't really view ourselves as macro guys. I'm not, I think it's very difficult to predict. In general, there are exceptions, but in general, I think it's very difficult to predict bull and bust cycles in the crypto space. There was maybe one possible exception where we went net short.

• 21:20Speaker 02

  But, but in, in, in general, that's kind of my, my thesis that the extent to which you would be successful predicting those cycles will be dwarfed by the, by the gains that you miss out just from the fact that we're in, across long time periods, a, a industry that's growing so fast. So basically, we hold Bitcoin, but we, we don't view it as where we're going to get our primary alpha for, from. And we want to be further on the, out on the risk curve. So I would kind of view it in that way.

• 21:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so talk to me about this fund with FTX. They're coming in as a GP partner with you. So you two, you and FTX will both be co-GPs. Is that correct?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct. They're coming in as a co-GP and also a very substantial P as well. And it was kind of the next, it was kind of, kind of a very natural outgrowth of our long-term and deep relationship with FTX and with Sam specifically. And so we had done deals together and it was just kind of very natural, actually. In fact, when we made the initial decision, it was about a five-minute conversation to do it. In true Sam's style, I said, hey, you know, I was thinking about this. And then we talked about it for five minutes and he said, all right, let's do it.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  Very, very Sam style.

• 22:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so what is the thesis of this fund? Is this going to be China and India? Is this going to be all early-stage protocols? Like, how do you think about that thesis?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  Sure. So it's going to be a continuation of our Sino process, which again tends to be very bottom-up. And so basically, to answer your questions about geography, in general, I would say it tends to be the other way around. Actually, it tends to be we help international companies in these geographies. And so that's the reason why they want to have us on their cap table, because we're extremely strategic for them. It's enormously difficult for even a stud entrepreneur in Silicon Valley or Lisbon that hasn't interacted with the China and India markets before to be able to do so in an effective manner. And so if we're on your cap table, we can hope you do that. And so we do go the other way as well

• 23:38Speaker 02

  in terms of investing in China and Indian entrepreneurs. Actually, we're working on a blockbuster deal in India as we speak. And Delta Exchange is a portfolio company based in Bangalore. But at least historically, historically, the concept has been that you want us on your cap table because we invest in a traditional way, a very long-term way. And we're going to help you in markets that are 2 billion people, more than that combined, right? China and India. And you probably know that that is going to be something pretty helpful to you and that you definitely can't do it yourself. So you need a high-trust partner

• 24:24Speaker 02

  that's going to work with you in a long-term way to make that happen.

• 24:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And this is both in liquid protocols and also in equity deals?

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct. Yeah.

• 24:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And then what size checks are you guys looking to write out of the new fund?

• 24:38Speaker 02

  Sure. So it is a stage agnostic fund. So I would say that we can do seed through Series B. And so the check size is quite variable. I would say most of our checks go in the 500,000 to 2 million range, but we can definitely go higher in very specific high conviction situations. We could definitely do five or 10.

• 25:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And when you think about what the opportunity set is, FTX obviously being a partner and a large LP, is there other institutions that you're going to raise capital from? Individuals? Like, how do you think about the other portions of the capital base?

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Sure. So the reason to, there are a couple of different reasons that we wanted to go institutional. And so first and foremost is, I don't know if you're familiar with like the Nasdaq story, but Nasdaq was one of the early investors in Tencent. They invested in Tencent, you know, it might have been even at seed and they never fucking sold any, right? I hope I can swear on.

• 25:49Anthony Pompliano?

  You can.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  I swear, my habit is to swear constantly. I've been on my best behavior so far. But, but, so they invested really early in Tencent and they never sold fucking anything, right? So Nasdaq now is sitting on, at the very least, tens and tens of billions of Tencent stock. Actually, it might be hard, it might even be like a hundred billion dollars, this South African conglomerate. So there's Nasdaq on the one hand. And here's a different example. We all know that Goldman Sachs, they're the smartest people on the planet. These guys are really fucking good. But one thing where they messed up pretty big is they invested in Cedar Series A, I guess it was,

• 26:32Speaker 02

  in Alibaba and they sold Alibaba in like 2000, I don't know, 2002, 2003, something like that. So they sold when it was still hundreds of millions of valuation and they missed out on all those three gains. I want to be Nasdaq. So the first reason that we're doing institutional fund is I'm not selling my fucking FTT or my salon or any of this stuff. I'm holding this like indefinitely. So we wanted to take outside capital to enable us to keep on our existing proprietary. For us, one of the advantages is that we can help with your international venture. You're doing the international aspects, especially in Asia, of course, right?

• 27:14Speaker 02

  But so for us, that means we want to be able to have stakeholders all around the world. We want to be able to bring in LPs and friends in places like Berlin and Lisbon and just all around the world, right? So that was an additional reason for us to move to this new institutional

• 27:30Speaker 02

  model and take outside capital for effectively the first time.

• 27:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so what exactly are you looking for? There's lots of people who work in the industry that are listening to this. What are the things right now or themes or specific opportunities that you're interested in?

• 27:42Speaker 02

  You know, again, I would emphasize that we really are bottom up guys. And that's because I just think as industry moves too fucking fast. I'll give you an example of why that actually was to our benefit. I fully admit that, you know, CryptoKitties was cool, but after that, I didn't really think about NFTs too much. And that would not have been one of our top down thesis. If I, if I, if we were a top down investor, would not have been one of them, right? But then about two years ago, I started to see early signs that NFTs were picking up. And so we started to invest in the NFT space because we looked in a bottom up way for people that were doing cool shit in that space. And so I think that's kind of, and as a result, we were able to be pretty early on with, with NFTs.

• 28:27Speaker 02

  And I don't think we would have been able to do that if we were locked into these top down thesis. So fundamentally, I think we're just more bottom up guys. I look for, I look for people that are doing differentiated, that have differentiated visions in the long term

• 28:44Speaker 02

  that are working on in a long term, sustainable way. And then obviously I look for these, these, these fucking, you know, tech studs or just uber geniuses like, you know, Toly and Vitalik. And of course, we all know SPF, right? It's just, you know, what he is. He's fucking amazing, right?

• 29:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk to me about Sam. Why are you so impressed with Sam?

• 29:05Speaker 02

  So, you know, a lot of this obviously is pattern matching. But we, we actually, we met Sam when FTX looked like three people. I cold called him and I visited him in Hong Kong. And, you know, at that time, so again, this is a great example of why I don't believe in top-down investing also. Nobody thought somebody could, um, dethrone finance. It was basically inconceivable at that time. It wa- or at least it wasn't on people's radar. Nobody was thinking like, oh, somebody's gonna come along and they're gonna kick finance's ass. This was basically not anything that anyone thought was likely anytime soon or that they should be actively looking for.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  But then you go and, and you meet Sam and, I mean, he's just, you know, you, you can't talk to the guy without five minutes, you know, for more than five minutes without realizing that he's clearly one of the smartest people in the world. And, um, but I, I actually don't think that's the secret of his success. I think it's sleeping on that fucking beanbag, you know, working and out hustling, uh, everyone else. Number one, and number two, the fact that he has successfully built, um, an FTX culture that is composed of people who are also really fucking smart and sleep on fucking beanbags. So that's to me what the real secret is with FTX.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  But, um, you know, obviously, um, wasn't like I, I, I met him and instantly knew that he was gonna be potentially the next Jeff Bezos. But it was very clear that this was, um, an asymmetrical path that I wanted to take in, in the biggest way that I could, which is what we did.

• 30:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then talk to me about FTX's rise. It's been absolutely incredible, obviously, uh, um, has taken everyone by storm. But what, what's your read on that, having been an early investor?

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Sure. So, um, uh, I think, you know, again, it's, um, it's the extreme level of technical and business competence. Um, gets you kind of like the ante. But again, you know, I really think it's the fact that they're out hustling people with, um, with product iteration and with the fact that Sam will literally answer, uh, people's DMs about, you know, tech questions or whatever question, things like that. Um, I, I think they're just out hustling people as well. So if they're definitely smarter than the competition, honestly, and they're also out hustling everyone, you're gonna get some pretty good results over time. Um.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  So, and you know, one thing that I was thinking about the other day, though, which is just fucking amazing. They have five engineers that built out the FTX platform, five.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  So think about how good these guys are. Uh, so it's not like a super huge organization yet, but they're all fucking studs.

• 31:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  And they're all hustling.

• 31:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think another exchange would come along and, uh, and dethrone them? Or do you think that they've got what it takes to, uh, to remain at the top?

• 32:05Speaker 02

  Um, I think these things are always hard to predict. I think, um, the, the bar is now incredibly hard and it would be, I, I don't think you can ever say, well, no, it couldn't. It couldn't happen. I, I, I don't believe in that. That's not a real thing for anyone who didn't, you know, Amazon or Google or, or whomever, but it gets increasingly difficult because you, you build a mode and then, you know, it gets, it gets harder and harder. The more dominant and established you are. So, um, I think, uh, FTX is a good example of the institutionalization of crypto, which a lot of people, you know, view as maybe not good, but I view as amazing because maybe because I'm, uh, you know, I, I am a tri-fi guy in my, in my origins.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Maybe, maybe it's, I'm, I'm not as good at being a revolutionary maybe. But, but look, this is about institutionalization and these guys are fucking studs. They, um, they came, a lot of them came from Jean Street, um, which is not a household name because proprietary trading firms, um, manage their own capital and they have no reason to be household names, but Jean Street is, um, you know, right up there with, uh, Citadel and, and companies like that. And, and, and it's even more elite than, than Goldman Sachs, basically, which we already, as we already talked about, they're fucking studs over there. So these guys are best of breed and, um, I, I never believe in, it's not possible to get knocked off, but it would be incredibly difficult, uh, for someone to compete, to go toe to toe with them.

• 33:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. How big is your team in terms of, uh, as you've kind of built this out, you, you've really made a name for yourself, been very successful. How do you think about building your team?

• 33:43Speaker 02

  So I, I think of it, um, I'm not a, a big believer in, in having, um, uh, huge teams. We've got 12 people. I, I, um, we're actively looking to expand. We're especially hiring for India. Um, but I don't really believe in having huge teams. Uh, we have a distributed team. So we have two people in the United States. We've got Europe. We've got all across the world, but everybody's focused on the China and the, in India markets. Um, one thing that I do believe in though, um, which I believe very strongly in, we have, um, a super unique and tight corporate culture. And I think it's one of our biggest assets and I, and the reason that we have that

• 34:22Speaker 02

  is because it, uh, from day one has been intern to hire. So everyone except for myself started as an intern, uh, paid intern, of course, um, including our general counsel and head of investor relations. Uh, started as an intern. He just joined us full time, but he started as a 39 year old intern with a law degree. So, um, so we have an extremely tight knit, uh, very unique corporate culture, which I think is our strength. And I, I believe very much in, in this intern to hire model. Um, but I don't necessarily believe in having like these big fucking teams. It's not super interesting to me, especially not for a, a VC.

• 35:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I, I love the intern to hire model. That, that is fantastic. Especially there's an element of intellectual humility if somebody's willing to start as the intern, even if they've been successful in their career.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  So, um, the, the one thing about that though, um, intern at Sino is a little different. So in, in intern, you can have enormous responsibility starting day one because it's, it's basically a trial by fire. It's the opposite of like getting coffee and things like that. You're, you're doing everything as if you would, uh, uh, as if you were already a, you know, an investment analyst, investment associate, or whatever the jump function would be. Um, so it's, it's intern in the sense of being a trial by fire for up to three months. And, um, but it's, it's very much doing, you know, extremely serious work from, from day one. You can, you have enormous responsibility.

• 35:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. When you think over the next 25 years, what are the one or two themes that you want to focus on? Are there big kind of macro type themes that you're like, okay, we are going to do our bottoms up research and investing, but here's the the big thing crypto in general, however you wanted to find that obviously is the biggest macro theme, but are there kind of sub themes within that?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  It's very difficult to answer questions like that, obviously, but you know, I would say that in my career I've made two huge bets. There were two times when when I said, okay, I'm gonna take that that big swing, the home run swing, I'm gonna take, you know, I'm gonna really go for it. There were two times that I did that. And the first time was was I bet on China and the second time it was I bet on crypto and the third is that I'm betting on India. So I would say I've made three taken three home run swings in in my career to try to hit the ball out of the park. So right now I'm really thinking about the fact that India has an enormously youthful

• 36:54Speaker 02

  population with a slice of the population that is that goes to schools like IIT and the Institute of Technology, which is actually a a series of schools, kind of the way that that the that the Cal Berkeley, kind of the way the Cal system works. But those schools are every bit as good as any tech university in the world up to and maybe even including MIT. So they've got a swath of extremely educated, enormously talented engineers. They've got a very youthful population that's increasingly interested in crypto. So favorable demographics, a rapidly growing economy

• 37:39Speaker 02

  and in a tech litter of population, I'm making a big bet on India. I would say that's that's the thing that that's the the third big bet that I'm that I'm making in my life and and I, you know, when I make these kinds of big bets, it's definitely a 10 year bet.

• 37:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about the firm?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  So our website is signallglobalcapital.com, but also I would encourage you people to check out our GitHub because I believe in kind of the crypto ethos. And so as a part of that, we open source all of our investment theses and our reports and things like that. And so I believe our GitHub is signallglobalcap, C A P for capital, short for capital. So that's our GitHub with all of our open source investment theses. And that's also the company Twitter as well, signallglobalcap. And then as many people know, I'm available to talk shit on Twitter at Matty Signall.

• 38:36Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, before I let you go, we got to talk about Twitter. You are a prolific tweeter in a very unique way. There's strokes of genius, and I've seen you tweet things like, wow, that is a really profound insight. And then there is just complete shitpost as well. So what is the, what is the Twitter strategy that when you sit down and you're like, here's, here's what I'm going to tweet today? What is the thought process?

• 39:01Speaker 02

  So here's the thing. So none of that, this was intentional. So I just started tweeting one day, just as like a form of creative expression. This was not a calculated marketing strategy or anything like that. So obviously, you know, it's actually grown into a powerfully effective tool. And so I, you know, I've thought about it more over time, but at least in its genesis, it was not a calculated strategy. It was just me expressing myself. And look, I'm pretty fucking eccentric, to be honest. So it gets a little, you know, a little fun,

• 39:42Speaker 02

  and it gets a little weird. And there's, there's me with some, some cool insights. And then, you know, I love to talk shit. So there's some of that. But Um, so it started out as a non calculated just way for me to express myself because you know I'm Uh, I, I don't really have a lot of, I, I, I'm, I'm working, you know, eighty hours a week and I'm at my computer and, and I like to fire off a, you know, a couple tweets. As, uh, as my way of taking a break every hour or whatever. So it started out as that. But actually, I really think that Uh, especially in crypto, increasingly you, you have to have a brand as a VC. So

• 40:24Speaker 02

  It, it came about naturally, but I, I think it's, it's, um, had a, a great effect in terms of, uh, Sino being able to have a unique brand. And, uh, and personality and people, um, feel like they know us because they fucking do. They, you know, I'm

• 40:40Speaker 02

  I'm very open about who we are and what we're like and things like that. And, um, It's a great way to get to know entrepreneurs better and to get to know people better and to support our portfolio companies and, and things like that. So it, it actually is, um, a pretty powerful business tool, but you know, the genesis was just me expressing myself.

• 41:00Anthony Pompliano?

  I think you're doing a great job. I, uh, I enjoyed, I, I enjoy both, uh, the insights, the shit posts, the locking of horns, the whole nine yards. I think it's important, uh, and it's, uh, one of the only industries in the world where this happens out in public for everyone to see. So it's, uh, it's pretty damn.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  I didn't want to say you handled the shit talk better than basically anyone I've seen.

• 41:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Matthew, listen.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  There are two, there are two categories of, of shit talk that I do. The first category is with buddies of mine like, you know, Larry Sermack or whoever that I'll make fun of. I don't know. He's like nine feet tall, you know, whatever. Um, but then the, the second category is people I don't know as well, but I, I'd like to, um, Uh, you know, I, I, I talk shit and, and I, I like to kind of make a point at the same time, but I, I really like, Yeah, I like, uh, you punched back and I really fucking liked it because, because it was a combination of two things. It was the fact that I respected that you, you were like enough is enough. And you punched back and then I especially respected it because, um, Uh, you know, because I I DM'd you, right? And I was like, hey, you know, I just want to let you know that it's

• 42:07Speaker 02

  it's not personal. Like, maybe I was trying to make a little bit of a point here, but also I like to talk shit. And you were super fucking cool about it. And both of those things I really like. So I have to, I have to say you you handled it uh better than almost anyone that I I've seen because I do like to talk shit. And I thought that was pretty cool. So I I did just want to say that.

• 42:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, I appreciate that. But uh, you you know, you know why uh that is? I have four younger brothers and in my house of five boys. We the the language is talking shit. Yeah, you just that that's how you, you know, like when you walk into the room, you have to talk shit. If you don't talk shit, you're gonna get mowed over. So I have decades of experience in this realm. You didn't know that you were dealing with a expert shit talker.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  That it that it makes sense now, yeah.

• 42:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome, man. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on and uh doing this. Obviously, the work that you guys are doing is uh is fantastic. Uh, you have established yourself as one of the best investors in the space. Um, and then obviously with the uh the new announcement and FTX joining as a uh a co-GP on this new fund is very exciting stuff. So we're excited to see what you guys are able to do there. And we'll definitely have to do this again in the future as you continue to grow and succeed.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Thanks so much. This was fun. Great to be here.