The article is missing some critical details.

What does the fund do? The article suggests they do arbitrage. Those opportunities actually tend to increase when things are volatile. Also while you can lose money doing it you wouldn't expect a precipitous collapse in NAV. If you discover you're slower than everyone else you can shut down.

Volumes aren't necessarily correlated to price either, so that isn't entirely convincing.

I've also heard that plenty of arb guys are doing fine.

If he's speculating and not just running arbs, what is he doing? If he's just punting the cryptos that would seem more in line with what's happened, but it's not clear what he's up to from this.

Also, with arbitrage it's limited how much capital you need. A lot of HFTs use very little. If you're getting money like a hedge fund you have to be sure it can be put to use.

Ex HFT and fund manager.

I mean, given how hard cryptocurrencies crashed this year is it really a surprise? The only way for him to make money would probably have been to short everything continuously but seeing how irrational and easily manipulated the cryptocurrency market has been in the past that seems rather foolish.

Given his pedigree you'd think he'd know better than to bet on something that's 99% pure unbridled speculation and 1% actual technology. It's like knowingly investing in a Ponzi scheme, what did you expect?

I like how cryptocurrencies were launched as an alternative to central banking, wresting control of money away from the government and big banks. An open and level playing field that would democratize how people transact financially with each other.

And then the first thing the early adopters did was recreate the flawed financial institutions that surround "real" money so that they could pretend to be Gordon Gekko and throw around words like "arbitraaaaage".

Is there data on what percentage of cryptocurrency transactions are "Real, actual, humans buying and selling real, actual, things or compensating each other for their ideas and thoughts" and what percentage consists of "traders shouting at each other in the echo chamber"?

“Remember, bubbles happen around things that fundamentally change the way we live,” he said.

Ah yes, I remember how beanie babies changed the way we all lived. And tulips, of course. And rhodium?

Hmm.

With bitcoin down nearly 80% since all time high and the others down 90% (https://www.coingecko.com/en?view=all_time_high)

Not surprise anyone who came in and trade may be catching knives. Plus all the uncertainties in market participants

It amazes me that funds hold long positions in a market without safeguards and regulations and that really has yet to formalize. I'm bullish on digital currencies but there's going to be a ton of turmoil while the world figures out how to deal with this new asset class and major shake ups as regulations start to formalize or continue to formalize in some cases.

Long plays in this market are massively risky bets. They seem completely unnecessary as well. With the volatility that exists and the decent level of volume, there's tons of easy money to be made.

FYI - article is from November. He's still bullish...

Here’s a deep New Yorker profile of the man and his crypto ambitions from the more halcyon era of April 2018:

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

I found this article pretty good about the whole IPO “experience”:

https://equity.guru/2018/08/01/galaxy-digital-holdings-glxy-...

From what I read when the firm launched, I thought this operation would behave like a traditional market making desk, profiting from spreads and hedging aggressively. If anything volatility would help P&L, but I guess there just isn’t enough volume or liquid crypto derivatives to hedge effectively.

I actually thought given the size of the position, he was part of the group manipulating transactions in order to liquidate at the top. Holding those positions long term doesn't seem smart.

Picking up pennies in front of a steamroller

point? alternative investments are risky?

This guy showed up on bloomberg businessweek wearing a blazer and track pants. usually a recipe for losing that sum of money as a boomer....

You can't win in a losing market ( market capitalisation). I explained it to a friend of mine and he didn't want to hear it.

Now we're one year further and he says it will go up again... Some people just don't understand :)

Buy high, sell low

More proof from HN that cryto is bad.

This article was published November 28 of this year. From mid-November to now, cryptocurrency exchange rates have fallen by about 50% across the board, with some much higher.

This move took many speculators, including Novogratz, by surprise:

"I did think Bitcoin was going to hold at $6,200," said Novogratz. "It stayed there for four months. It felt like the selling was finished. But then Bitcoin Cash decided to fork again."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/billybambrough/2018/12/12/bitco...

I suspect many of these speculators are betting on a quick recovery. Should that not pan out, Novogratz and many others are headed for a world of pain.

Meanwhile, Bitcoin the technology continues chugging on. The most noteworthy development is the rapid build-out of the Lightning Network scaling solution, but there's a bunch of stuff beyond that which gets almost no attention.