tl;dr: A refusal to hide performance and how it is a sneak peek of the futura for everyone.

One of the things I’ve noticed about the world of financial services marketing is that the old adage by Mark Twain holds true.

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Now that potential investors will ask us about the historical performance of the Crypto Futura Fund, I’ve started to pay attention more closely to how other funds market and present their performance.

I haven’t done a scientific study, but here’s what I’ve observed.

It’s pretty tricky and borderline sneaky.

When you think about it, really the ONLY thing that an investor cares about is “how are my investments doing?”

Yet, frequently when I get reports, I’ll see things like “Year to Date” and “Month to Date.” 

I’m not sure what I am missing, since I am still new to the FinServ marketing game, but I don’t really care about Year-to-date if I’ve been invested in the fund for 2 years.

I just want to know: “where do I stand?”

Investment is about Belief

As for potential investors, it’s another story.  

Our fund had an annus horribilis for our first year because we launched right after the crypto boom (it had taken us 8 months to get all the SEC/FINRA stuff up and running) so our timing could not have been worse.

One thing we cared deeply about was governance and security so, while we identified the opportunity for a fund as early as 1 BTC= $800, by the time all of the lawyers, auditors, etc. were done, we were at 1 BTC= $19,000.

Part of this delay is due to the fact that my partners and I are first-time fund managers so we had a steep learning curve, but the reality is that compliance, custodianship, governance, security, auditing just take a long time and expense.

So, if you had invested with us on day one, as of today, you’d be down about 50%, even though we had a respectable year 2 and, we’re up almost 50% in 2020.

But I refuse to lie about our performance. And I refuse to hide it.

So it’s interesting when people look at the past performance and say, “so if I had invested with you on day one, I’d be down 50% as of today?”

and what I want to say is

“yeah, but you didn’t, because you didn’t even know about the opportunity nor would you have had the guts to do it since this is risky and risk means, well, risk.

Plus, there’s no way you’d even know about opportunities like Nexus Mutual because you have to be really deep in order to understand why they matter.”

But, of course, I don’t say that …or haven’t yet ;-).

The reality is that early stage investors, whether it’s an emerging asset class like crypto or in a start-up understand risk and reward in a way that many others do not.

You don’t get huge payouts without accepting some risks. And the potential payouts in crypto are huge.

There’s a reason that you hear “past performance is no indication of future performance.”

But it also works in reverse. Yes, we sucked in year 1, but that doesn’t mean we will suck forever.

All I can say to people is

“look, someone is going to be a make a lot of money in this asset class. Whether it is us or not remains to be seen, but someone will do it. We’re just going to do our best to do it for you.”

I can’t provide Proof-of-Returns into the future, so if you want to judge us on the past, that’s fine. But if you want to invest based on the future, then I can provide Proof-of-Work

This blog and my 100s, if not 1000s of posts, on crypto is proof of work. The articles I read. The investments I make with my own money. The mistakes I have made. The humiliations I have suffered. The time I spend exploring new tools and dApps. The monthly reports I write. The people I follow on Twitter and the conversations I have on Telegram. The groups I am in.

There’s the proof that I’m in the game.

Either you believe that all of that, plus our efforts to be disciplined investors when it comes to holding other people’s money (e.g. AlphaBrain: How a Group of Iconoclasts Are Using Cognitive Science to Advance the Business of Alpha Generation), is going to have a greater likelihood of generating returns than you managing it on your own…or you don’t.

Either way is fine.

The numbers are what the numbers are. We may nail it. We may miss it.

But I’m not going to hide what happens, even when it is ugly.

Crypto, the movement, is about bringing transparency. We’re going to bring it and accept the reality as it is.

That’s what the Crypto Futura is all about. My partners and I are just living in it today.