#703 Uncovering Alpha in the Crypto Market w/ Delphi Digital

Delphi Digital is the leader in crypto research. Today we are joined by Anil Lulla and Yan Liberman from the Delphi team. In this conversation, we discuss Delphi Digital’s inception, their research division, the Delphi track record, where alpha exists in the market, and why institutions may struggle to win. ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 ======================= Matrixport is Asia’s fastest-growing digital asset platform founded by crypto veterans Jihan Wu and John Ge. With $10 billion in assets under management and custody. Matrixport offers one-stop crypto-financial solutions including fixed income, Defi in 1-click, structured products, Cactus Custody™, spot OTC and lending. You can earn a high double-digit yield with the Dual Currency Product or opt for the lucrative potential of our new product, Range Sniper. If you hold crypto and are actively looking to do more with your precious asset, then this app is one you don’t want to miss. Download the Matrixport App and enjoy a welcome offer of 30% APY on Fixed Income for new users. Visit invest.matrixport.com/en today. ======================= Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp

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. Delphi Digital is the leader in crypto research. Today, we are joined by Anil Lula and Jan Lieberman from the Delphi team. In this conversation, we discuss Delphi Digital's inception, their research division, the Delphi track record, where alpha exists in the market, and why institutions may struggle to win. I really enjoyed this conversation with both Anil and Jan, and I hope that you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Crypto.com. They're helping to mainstream the crypto industry, signing major global partnerships with multiple sports,

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:31Anthony Pompliano?

  you download the Crypto.com app today using code POMP. Again, it's 25 bucks when you download the Crypto.com app today using the code POMP, or you can click on the link in the description. Go download it now and let me know what you think. Next up is Cosmos. They are building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. You can dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp. Again, Cosmos, building the Internet of Blockchains. Go to cosmos.network/pomp to learn more.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:50Anthony Pompliano?

  If you hold crypto and actively looking to do more with your precious asset, then this app is one you don't want to miss. Download the Matrix Port app and enjoy a welcome offer of high yield on fixed income for new users. Go to matrixport.com or click on the link in the description. All right, let's get in this episode with both Anil and Jan. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:33Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I have Jan and Anil here from Delphi Digital. Super excited about this. How are you guys doing?

• 3:41Speaker 02

  Great. Thanks for having us on.

• 3:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. Let's start out maybe with, I know you explaining what is Delphi Digital? You guys are one of these crypto-native firms I've watched from the very beginning as you guys have kind of grown and put your hands in all corners of the industry. But how do you guys think about it?

• 3:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you know, we basically started Delphi, you know, Jan, myself, our three co-founders, Tom, Kevin, and MJ. We all come from traditional finance backgrounds and we started Delphi as a, you know, research firm. We basically wanted to cut through the noise and kind of, you know, give a high action, high action signal to basically anyone looking in the space and basically created a product that we would use, right? And we started a research firm. One, it fit our backgrounds, obviously, but two, we thought, you know, if we could get paid to learn about this space, it'd kind of feel like cheating. So I started that back in, you know, 2018, obviously got in touch with you pretty early on. You've been a big supporter for a while now.

• 4:33Speaker 02

  And, you know, since then, Delphi has kind of taken on a life of its own. You know, we started with five of us and now this isn't a joke, but now we're at 69 employees. And, you know, funny enough, we have, you know, three main divisions, research, which is, you know, what we started with, the subscription service. Labs, which basically was consulting, which we can get into as well, but now we're incubating projects. And ventures where, you know, we basically invest our capital into projects that, you know, we're really big fans of and think will make a big impact on the space.

• 5:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that you have to qualify it with, this is not a joke. That tells you everything you need to know about this industry. So you guys have grown really, really quickly. Talk to me about, let's start with the research business first in terms of how big is the team? What's the type of research that you all are focused on and what's the cadence of the research that you guys put out?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, now the research team is over 20 analysts. We also have like engineers there. We actually have a huge kind of like big data product that's coming out end of year as well. You know, essentially what we've become really well known for are our deep dive research reports. You know, our head of research, MJ has kind of done a really great job, uh, leading kind of like our research team and showing them the ropes of where to find data and exactly uh, where to find information as well as to question that information. So, you know, a lot of the information right now on crypto is kind of like very fragmented, right? You'll have a lot of resources, um, like crypto Twitter, but then at the same time, like news publications like Messari um, in the block, um, and then, you know, a whole variety of data, uh, data providers.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  Um, what we, what we really do is we look at, um, you know, places in the market that we think aren't being focused enough because we think that's, that, that's where the alpha is. And we dig really deep and kind of understand, um, you know, all the ins and outs and then kind of like portray that to all our members.

• 6:19Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And then when you guys think about that research business, it's obviously grown very big, both from analyst perspective and also from just the audience that consuming the research. Jan, talk a little bit about how the research, uh, ends up feeding into the investing strategy and how you guys get an advantage from having done such deep diligence on both the industry, on specific verticals, and then also on, uh, specific teacher opportunities.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's a good question. And so, you know, early on in the crypto space, I think a lot of these subject areas didn't contain a lot of breadth where you can kind of understand a lot of topics pretty in depth and, and, and, you know, be not as, obviously not a subject matter expert because no one really is, but have a pretty strong grasp of these ideas, I guess, relative to the, the general understanding of them. But a as the space has really grown, we've realized it's, it's, it's just tough to keep up with all the kind of areas and, and it's been a really big bonus to have this kind of research arm where we're able to share the IP and share the resources. So on the venture side, you know, we're looking at deals, we're working with portfolio companies. A lot of

• 7:24Speaker 03

  these, we realize, you know, how much time you really need to dedicate to working with these portfolio companies. And so, you know, one benefit that we have is this massive pool of, of kind of IP where you can tap into if someone's a subject matter expert in a certain area, we can pull them in, whether that's for portfolio company work, but also just in the, in the initial due diligence where, you know, now you have to understand a combination of token economics, competitors, the, the, the tech stack, the individual kind of protocols and then kind of understanding what the advantages and disadvantages of, of certain ones are. And so, having the ability to tap into this kind of, you know, a hive mind of, of IP is, is really useful for us. And so I think we do a really good

• 8:07Speaker 03

  job of, of trying to utilize that efficiently where we know who's good at what and, and where it makes sense to pull certain individuals in. And so we're able to kind of bring in very specific, almost like due diligence teams for different projects and that's both pre and post investment.

• 8:25Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about the opportunities that you all have found, there's a number, I mean, literally, we could spend the entire time talking about win after win after win after win. I'll go as far as to say that you all are one of, if not the best investors in the entire crypto industry. And, you know, maybe at some point we'll let people know why I think that. But help understand like just what are some of those wins and maybe walk us through one or two of the investments that you all made. When did you meet the team? How did you actually find them? And then what gave you the conviction to invest? And what was the outcome so far?

• 8:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great question. I'd say, you know, we've, we always joke about how we've kind of been built on a kind of a combination of wins and then really reusing that capital efficiently. But I'd say, you know, the two the biggest one or two of the largest were, you know, rune early on. That was a really big one. So we kind of got into DeFi early just based on the nature of the research business where we had to figure out what made sense and where value accrued and actually DeFi was a kind of a great bridge there. In terms of, you know, value pool for tokens. And so through that, we were able to get in, involved with the rune team very early on. So that was one of the larger ones where,

• 9:42Speaker 03

  you know, we've done well, where that was a single cent or rather, you know, runes priced at a few cents at the and then the largest one is we got involved with them in 2018 where we're looking into just crypto gaming and then realistically, you know, they're the only game that we looked at that's even still alive, but at the time they were head and shoulders above everyone else. And so, you know, we kept in touch with them. And then in 2019, we worked with them on their token design. And then fortunately had the ability to lead the round in 2020, which was right as the venture fund was launching. And yeah, that's, that's certainly been another big winner. For us, it really comes down to, you know, a combination. And I think you'll kind of get the same response from most people, but it's, you know, token economics, understanding the market,

• 10:27Speaker 03

  really understanding the team's vision and their kind of conviction and what they're doing. And then helping them in any way possible.

• 10:35Anthony Pompliano?

  So talk a little bit about, you guys had very deep conviction. You made very concentrated bets. When you first started out, you didn't have a ton of capital to deploy, but you continued to make a number of great concentrated bets. Walk through kind of the investing strategy or like asset allocation strategy of why concentration versus kind of a more diversified portfolio. And then how do you guys think about recycling that capital? Given that there's liquidity faster, people can hold it, but there's still, you know, material amount of upside when something is liquid in the market. Just talk through that a little bit.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great question. So we started with just a million. So, you know, for us, But with that amount of capital, we had to be very early and and pretty high concentration there where, you know, it we couldn't really spread that too thin. And so for us, um, at the time as well, where the market wasn't as large and and so there wasn't, there was still a lot of kind of um, opaqueness to it. We, for us, we realized if we can get involved with these teams early and and know that that's where we can make the biggest impact, whether that's on token econ or a protocol design, we realized that that was the biggest value add we could really provide. And so for us, it just made sense to really,

• 11:48Speaker 03

  um, once we were kind of bought into an investment, really committing as much time as physically possible to helping improve it, helping people understand why this makes sense. And so that's kind of where a lot of the synergies across the business lines came into play as well. But for us, you know, all of our bets are are very long term bets and and, you know, most of the, we we hold a majority of the position that we've invested in a lot of these concentrated, um, bets as well. It's not, you know, something where we recycle. These are bets that we think have, can stand the test of time. And so that that's kind of the the logic for really being high conviction early on. And so just based on kind of that, um, process, we're able to, you know, shave a a small amount

• 12:33Speaker 03

  of these positions and then kind of reallocate early on. And so like, our idea was to continue trying to be the the first check in the door so that we can, and and working with the team as closely as possible is, you know, a lot of these teams have to focus on what they're building, but just by the nature of of kind of our design, we're able to help them understand the the competitive landscape and and kind of all the other elements there. And that becomes a really big value add for these teams where they can really focus on doing what they do best. And then we can kind of supplement in areas where we think we can really help.

• 13:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And Neil, maybe you could talk a little bit about, you guys had this big consulting arm. This is how you found a lot of these projects early on, combined with research, you're able to help do token design, token economics. Uh, what was that business? Why was it so valuable in terms of by helping from the investing perspective? And then you guys recently shut that down and have moved it more towards like a labs model. So maybe you can talk a little bit about the decision, uh, to to cease that work and then what you're going to do in in its place.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so funny enough, when we first started Delphi, our first year or first six, seven months at least, we're mostly just doing consulting for, you know, big funds in the space, you know, like Block Tower and, you know, other crypto funds really diving into certain sectors. And, you know, that's actually how we found out, actually, like Jan mentioned earlier. But, you know, really when we walked through why, you know, the, you know, we had this big Ethereum report, we walked through what the economics of B2.0 were a little bit, you know, iffy from a security perspective. And that was really a big moment for us because within 24 hours, we were talking to Vitalik, the whole E2P and Core team. Like a month later, he, you know, we sent him our models and everything and he pushed through an updated proposal, went on like a Laura Shin podcast

• 14:12Speaker 02

  and shouted this out. And that's one, when the floodgates really opened for a lot of these protocols, reaching out to be like, all right, these guys can actually help us think through, you know, certain incentive mechanisms within our protocol and network. But two, it also kind of gave us a big confidence boost as well and kind of like was an inflection point for Delphi where we realized, instead of just helping people understand the space, we could also help the space kind of evolve and, you know, make maybe the right decisions rather than going down the wrong path. So that's when we started, you know, one, we were already like, you know, really infatuated with DeFi and what was going on there. We were really excited. This was still in 2019, but we started working closely with some of the, you know,

• 14:51Speaker 02

  pioneers in that space. So like Synthetix, you know, Ave, Compound, gave us a huge amount of insights, both from like, you know, getting that builder input when, you know, you're on the phone with Kane or Stanny, you know, every week, you just have a whole different perspective of the market that you don't really just get just from following crypto Twitter or anything like that. So one, it made us realize just how much of an edge and, you know, how much alpha there was in building. But two, you know, actually, you know, consulting and actually giving these protocols, these ideas and feedback and, you know, new designs. More often than not, they, you know, took our advice, but there were certain points where

• 15:33Speaker 02

  maybe they didn't, they weren't able to prioritize some of the things that we thought were important or something like that. So we very quickly realized that, you know, we could also be building these protocols ourselves and build it exactly the way that we thought and prioritize the things that we thought were more important. You know, relative to what, you know, maybe other protocols that we didn't have, you know, our hands in. Good. So, you know, we introduced F I Labs earlier this year. We shut down the consulting division because we wanted to, you know, focus all our time on the incubations that we have. I'm sure Jan can kind of dive into some of the incubations that, you know, our partners Jose and Luke have been leading. Most of which are on Terra, actually, which is a network we're pretty, you know, excited about and been working, you know, very heavily on.

• 16:15Speaker 02

  But, I mean, we're really excited because I think, you know, one thing that I think people will realize is, you know, a lot of what's going on on other Layer Ones, I think people are very quick to say, you know, they're usually copycats or something like that. I think there is a lot of innovation happening across Layer Ones. But I think one thing that's going to be really cool for us to, you know, release later this year, literally in the next 60 days, is this money market called Mars Protocol on Terra, where we basically innovated on every layer of the stack. The governance model, how the tokens distributed, you know, how the money market itself works, dynamic interest rate model. So it was really exciting for us to be able to just have this playground to experiment on

• 16:57Speaker 02

  and take all the learnings from both our research and our consulting to kind of build what we think is going to help push the space forward and help change the way people kind of like build protocols in this space as well. Jan, do you want to elaborate at all in terms of the Labs work?

• 17:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So I touch on two upcoming projects that we're really excited about. So Astroport is going to be an AMM on, or a DEX basically on Luna, on the Luna ecosystem. And one we're super bullish on in the sense that, you know, the AMM design, you'll have a few varieties which will accommodate for, you know, different types of pairs, whether it's stable swap pairs or, you know, variable price pairs. So you have your standard X Y K and then the invariant model as well. And then we think that the token design is really Really interesting as well. We're, you know, we've kind of taken what we've learned and

• 17:54Speaker 03

  from various protocols and tried to kind of innovate on that where, you know, our, our goal is to really have, and I think this kind of gets sometimes overlooked is you want your, the customers and the users of the protocol to also be the token holders. And so oftentimes there's a kind of, I guess, a delineation there where some people are just holding it passively and hoping for, you know, upside as, as Visa crew. And then you have the users that participate and use a protocol, but don't really have any incentive to hold the token. So we think we're looking to bridge that gap. And we think that the design we're putting forward should really help with that. So we're excited for that launch. And then, so that, that'll be in November and then in December we'll have Mars that's launching. It's a

• 18:35Speaker 03

  like a best in class kind of money market protocol. And so we think that that's one of the primitives that's missing from that ecosystem. And, and so we expect a lot to be built on that. And just by nature of kind of how the Terra ecosystem works and, and how aligned everyone is, there's a lot of collaboration and, and, and you know, a lot of teams work together on some of these designs, particularly even though they're, they're kind of separate protocols. The understanding is that, you know, you're, you're in the leverage. It's kind of like a building Lego. So you'll be able to leverage what exists to, to help supplement what you're building. And so I think that kind of collaboration, you don't necessarily see it as much in, in other communities. And so we're really excited to, to watch that, that grow. And so,

• 19:20Speaker 03

  um, yeah, those are two we're incubating now, but, uh, you know, there's a, or rather, those are the two that I'm just going to mention now as the ones that are launching most recently. But, um, yeah, the team's certainly hard at work with, with several others as well.

• 19:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So I am going to ask this cautiously, uh, why Terra versus Ethereum, Solana, Finance, Smart Chain, uh, or many of the other platforms that you could, uh, go build on?

• 19:44Speaker 03

  Sorry, it literally cut out just as you asked that for me.

• 19:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I said, why Terra versus Solana, Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, or any of the other platforms you can build on?

• 19:55Speaker 03

  That's a great question. So, you know, we've always been interested in stable coins and particularly, so like even ranging back from, you know, Maker was one of the first projects we looked at. We thought the design of DAI was really innovative. And so the need for stable coins is clear. There's a, you know, a massive market for it. And now, over time, you've seen iterations of how they work or how they can be designed. You know, some try and fail. We spent some time, we're trying to work on EST. And so we've looked through a lot of these models. And I think like a decentralized stablecoin is incredibly valuable. And so, you know, you have the USDCs and USDTs of the world that work really well.

• 20:36Speaker 03

  But they do have issues in terms of, you know, potential decentralization down the road. And so we think that you have a world where both can coexist and people can kind of pick and choose. And for the, you know, the algorithmic stablecoins, the difficulty is always, how do you? It's tough to make sure that it's fully collateralized while also incentivizing some form of demand or some form of growth, basically. You often have to pick and choose, and that's what you've often seen with the algo stables where, you know, you can incentivize growth, but then they're effectively under collateralized. Or you can have them fully collateralized, but then it's difficult to incentivize growth. Here you have this combination of an algorithmic stablecoin that's built on top of a layer one, which is Luna.

• 21:20Speaker 03

  And now the demand and the utility comes from all the protocols that are built on top. So we think the design is really innovative there. We like the value of cruel mechanics as well. And so we think that this kind of integration of an algo stable within a layer one is a very unique design that doesn't really exist anywhere else. And, you know, by virtue of that, and just our interest in creating or contributing towards some large algorithmic stablecoin. We think that, you know, there's A lot really happening there. We're also just big fans of Do and kind of Terraform Labs and a lot of the other teams building on it as well.

• 22:01Speaker 03

  It's a community that's, you know, really inviting. And so it's basically a combination of things. That's basically what piqued our interest initially and got us involved. And then over time, the decision to really allocate a lot of the resources from our labs division into that was just a function of kind of a lot of the other things that you wouldn't really know until you met the team and met the teams and met the community and kind of interacted with them.

• 22:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And they'll talk a little bit about.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Well, one thing I'll say there too is, you know, maybe a little bit of a fluke, but we also are building something on Solana and we are exploring other layer twos too. One thing that we found, you know, to kind of piggyback off what Jan was saying, when we started building these protocols, we realized just how much more kind of like insights we gained onto the layer ones that we started being bullish on, right? So, you know, we, our ventures, our venture fund holds Solana, but right now we want to, you know, be building on it as well. So we can kind of learn the ins and outs, the pain points, the benefits, et cetera. So for us, we're kind of building across the ecosystem. Terra is just like the first one that we're launching protocols in.

• 23:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes sense. Talk to me about the update to the research business. I know that you guys were launching a brand new kind of research offering. You're going to be increasing prices. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on there. Just explain what's happening.

• 23:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So this is, you know, something that our team's been working on basically since January, February of this year. You know, shout out to, you know, the whole research team, but as well as, you know, our lead designers, Max, Nate, Abe and Adam, Mark and Colin. Basically what we, you know, thought from first principles early this year was just like, what does the best research platform in crypto look like? We already knew what we, you know, we had, you know, what we think is like the best content by far. We just wanted to know, you know, exactly what kind of tools, data products that we would want to have as investors in this space. And obviously we're very crypto native, you know, we've been in this space for a few years now, but, you know, just those. You know, since 2018, we have basically been 24/7 crypto.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Because of that, I think it gives us a really good edge of understanding exactly what clients want. So for example, you know, we've kind of redefined our products and, you know, like you said, our prices are doubling next week, but um, you know, I don't know when this pod goes out, but basically if you subscribe before November 2nd, you can lock in your prices for a year right now. And you know, the two main products that we have are Insights and Pro. Pro used to be called Institutional. Insights is kind of, you know, the go-to crypto and kind of like really have a, keep a good tab on the space whereas Pro gives you everything. Insights, you know, some of our favorite, you know, some of the popular products that, you know, we know clients really like are,

• 24:50Speaker 02

  you know, we, we have this one, uh, we have this one newsletter called Weekly Yield Strategies. And basically every week we have one of, uh, one of our analysts, um, you know, funny story, I actually hired this guy on Twitter based off his DGEN score. He was like, I had one of the highest DGEN scores ever, never saw his resume or anything like that, just knew that he was a huge DGEN. And basically every week he sends, uh, across a variety of different forms based on stable assets, volatile assets, on different, uh, you know, on different chains as well and, uh, shows our members how to earn yield. And obviously, um, you know, we have fat disclaimers and everything like that on there. But, um, this has become like a huge hit within our, uh, you know, within our Insights tier.

• 25:33Speaker 02

  Uh, another product that we just recently launched, um, called Dow Digest, that's led by one of our analysts, Aaron. Basically, um, you know, now governance is becoming, uh, you know, front and center for a lot of these protocols. Uh, actually keeping up with these community forums is very hard because of how many, uh, you know, DAOs people are a part of. So what we do is we basically, uh, look at the biggest governance proposals every week and then highlight it for our members and also say, you know, one, obviously, you know, the timing and what it, what it means, but also what could happen to that protocol, um, you know, in the weeks or months following it. Both of those are just two examples of kind of like, uh, you know, newsletters and kind of like reports that. Our members get both on the insights and pro tier.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  But obviously, pro is well known for, you know, our deep dive research reports. And then we have analyst calls, which we converted to office hours where basically every week we hop on with our institutional clients and it's just kind of like a Q and A. And that's been a lot of fun, honestly. I honestly have been spending a lot of time just kind of like doing the tedious stuff at Delphi. So I learned most of what I know about crypto nowadays, just listening in on those calls.

• 26:43Anthony Pompliano?

  So for either one of you, talk a little bit about where the alpha in the market is. I think, you know, two years ago, alpha was very different than what it is today. There's a lot of that are showing up. They have a lot of money. There's a lot of rich people from the legacy world all showing up saying, hey, it looks like there's asymmetry or high yields here. How do I play? What ends up getting commoditized in the market? And then where does alpha continue to kind of persist as you guys look forward over the next, let's say, two to five years?

• 27:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a great question.

• 27:12Speaker 03

  So I guess there's a few pockets that it kind of depends on what you end up doing. So on the venture side, you know, some of the office is just basically

• 27:23Speaker 03

  being the biggest value add investor you can be. And that's how you'll get into a lot of these deals. So right now, you know, like you mentioned, capital is so abundant that they got these teams that are raising. They don't need pure money, like they can get money from anywhere. It's more so what else can you really offer? So I'd say on the venture side, it's really being a value add investor. And that way, you know, you get a reputation for it and it kind of improves your deal flow and just your ability to get into these deals. On the secondary market side, there's a few things. So if you're like a pure trader, then it's kind of trying to get ahead of some of these narratives where often you'll have, you know, even throughout a bull market, you'll have different narratives that lead to kind of rotations

• 28:08Speaker 03

  from one sector to another. And so if you're like, you know, just general market, alpha in that sense would be just trying to get ahead of certain narratives. And then you don't necessarily need to pick winners per se, but you can kind of, you know, a rising tide lifts all boats type of situation. And then realistically,

• 28:28Speaker 03

  If you're not purely trying to get ahead of narratives, it's it's looking for dislocations or really kind of digging through what projects are doing. So now there's so much data available and and there's so much kind of data to sift through that you can really look for metrics of of adoption or growth or kind of like dislocations in the market. There's also because of the the massive interoperability that that exists across a lot of these protocols where they're, you know, working together to where one of them specializes in one area and can can serve as a as a backbone for a project in another one, looking at kind of a lot of the cross protocol interactions and then seeing, all right, assuming this trend plays

• 29:11Speaker 03

  out and certain kind of, yeah, assuming this trend plays out, what does that mean? Where does the value accrue? How does that flow through to all the protocols involved? So I think, you know, some of the trend stuff is obviously really hard. Distinct one is really looking through data and seeing where there's growth, adoption, and then kind of dislocation between what price is representing and what the fundamental growth represents.

• 29:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And then when you guys start to think about how you're going to continue to invest, obviously, the pool of capital you're investing out of has grown over time. Does that change anything you all are doing? Or is it pretty much just more of the same exact strategy?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  To an extent, it's more of the same exact strategy, I think. Because of just the size, we end up having to have. So our bread and butter was always, you know, working because so like our early picks were effectively venture picks. Like, you know, back then, they were just liquid trading. And so you were just accumulating position on the secondary markets early on. That's not as prevalent now in terms of getting in really early on, since a lot of these protocols are launching at at valuations that. Were too low before, or rather, are a lot higher than what we saw before. So we continue to, you know, execute on the venture strategy and really try and scale that up. And, you know, now that we've grown the team a bit, we can, we're going across different sectors.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Whereas before, you know, early on, it was mostly DeFi. Now we're spending a lot of time on the gaming side, Web three and kind of NFT infrastructure as well. So we're able to kind of do a lot more of what we were doing in that sense. But we've also had to take somewhat of a secondary market strategy as well now that the fund has gotten to the size it has. So, you know, we're not traders by nature and that's not where we think we have an edge. So we don't necessarily do that as much, but it's a, it's something we have to be aware of now, now that the fund's gotten bigger. But for the most part, we're looking to try and continue doing as much of what we were doing before. And, and really trying to work with these teams early on and invest on the primary market side.

• 31:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Neil, take us home. What's your, what's your final pitch for people who are interested in the research? They want to learn more about what's going on in the industry or where there's potential opportunity in a vested standpoint? What's the pitch for them to go subscribe to research?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, you know, now that our team is, you know, sixty nine people, one thing that has become, you know, a fact to us is just that there's no team big enough in crypto to keep up with everything going on. It's just impossible. So, you know, what our team really tries to do and serve as a product is, you know, you gotta remember research powers both our consulting labs arm as well as our ventures arm. So we're literally users of our own products. So, you know, we want to make sure that it's like the best it can be. You know, one thing that we really try and do is build that conviction, right? So, you know, in a bull market, you know, anyone can kind of, you know, make money in crypto. It's, it's a lot easier. What we try and do is build conviction in positions that we think, you know, some people may sell for a ten or twenty X.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  And, you know, you can actually hold for that thousand X. And, you know, I think we've done a really good job of that, but it's something that, you know, we focus and spend a lot of time thinking of how to constantly add tools, data products, et cetera. So I think, you know, while we're really excited about, you know, how far Delphi has come, you know, what I really wanted to get on the pod to tell everyone now is like, you know, we're still on the ground floor, you know, with this new platform that we just launched, depending on when everyone's listening to this this week and prices going up next, you know, next week, we're really going to be hitting it hard. And I think there's a lot of good stuff in store just from what the research team's working on as well as our data engineers.

• 32:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. Where can we send people to find you both on the internet?

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, so my Twitter is just at Anil Delphi. And then obviously the Delphi Twitter is just at Delphi underscore digital. And Jan, I think you're at Jan Lieberman, right?

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 33:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I highly suggest everyone go follow you guys on Twitter, but more importantly, go subscribe to the research. I read each one that comes out. And if you guys weren't here, I would say nice things. If you're here, I won't be too nice, but you guys know what you're talking about. So I appreciate all the hard work you guys are doing. I think there's a lot of people around the industry that look to you all for insights, cue up the great work. And we will definitely have to do this again in the future.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for the time, Tom. Appreciate that.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Thank you very much.