Interview with Barnali Biswal, CIO at Hilbert Capital | European Blockchain Convention

[Music] hi everyone um joining us again here at ebc1 uh speaking to the brightest minds of the industry my bra I'm Anin poo of uh re blon's Tech PR agency uh and here with me now is vernali bisat yeah a chief investment officer at Hilbert Capital how are you very well thank you and pleasure to be here with you me thank you for joining us of course how are you enjoying the event so far it's wonderful I mean definitely feels like people are energized and I cannot understand how they have this much energy right up their you know a very busy week in Singapore for many of them I I I suppose but I assume most the flights came straight from Singapore yeah but um no I it feels uh like people are uh positive and looking towards uh more sort of uh constructive environment as compared to previous couple of years I suppose um but yeah I mean you can also feel that there is a lot of like concentration of energy for people who've been in the space for a while and a lot of kind of the for lack of better expression a lot of kind of noise has been eliminated from the space which is actually great what it's been stous yeah them we very mature yeah I do you want to tell us a little bit about hbert capital in your position there yeah so Hilbert capital is a crypto focused asset management firm we've been um around for I'm not entirely sure if we are the longest track record in the industry but we must be one of the longest uh operating form it's founded by two Swedish um phds back in7 uh 2017 2018 the funds were launched later on in 2020 out of one words um we are focused on liquid part of the cryptocurrency market we sit under what is called hbert group it's the parent company that is also focused on other infrastructure and web related projects we are largely a quantitative or systematic training firm um our products vary from logo lead to what we would call Aral to BTC returns Ty of over risk and return profile yeah so that's a little bit about of all so digital assets are pretty volatile uh asset to to work around with how do you mitigate this and communicate Lal investors yeah yeah so uh one of the key criteria that a lot of the non seasoned investors Miss is that volatility is not risking we are loss of capital due to volatility is the risk volatility in fact is the source of return or outside return in crypto um so our job as one of the money manager in the SPAC is to control for the risk that is stemming from operational as well as counterparty and credit Etc um within the space and by virtue of that one can control for the volatility impact on the portfolio and that actually is why there is a such a um sort of opportunity or or ground or opportunity FR in crypto where you have an emerging asset class that has you know typical of emerging asset classes High volatility but not a whole lot of capital chasing after that volatility and that's dampening it and uh you know reducing return potential um there are also the whole land in crypto tends to shift every few months therefore there are sources of alpha that you might not even have recognized today but will be available 2 3 6 months from now so I we view our risk management through that lens where we control for operating in the space and making the the principal remain intact and that has has an implicit impact on the realized volatility of the W uh so let's talk about web 3 a little bit a lot is happening in that space right now anything in particular that catches your eye or attention there there are it's such a broad space now but we are largely a firm that's focused on the tradable part of the uh digital asset space um and pertaining to that what most interesting to me is the Defi and uh the the the defi space the developments within it and the maturation that we have seen especially um following FDX and there has been a lot that had that is being built and have been built and refined very quietly away from the Fanfare that you saw previously and that gives me a lot of confidence at as you well we as we sit here we see a lot of hint of demand for a lot of decentralized uh Finance related um whether that is lending whether that is liquidity provision whether that is your your uh peer-to-peer transaction removing kind of this centralized exchange risk um all of that have very direct implication for our business um that's an area that I typically try and follow as closely as we can even though we don't have a life brought up in this space at the moment um away from that we have other B business interests that span more sort of the Community Development within the media uh space in the web3 media space um and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ai and AI crypto and uh sort of the interplate that we are starting to see and I think it's a very very early stages but one of the more inting areas to watch 100% uh so that's been extremely insightful um anything else that you saw here today or that you like to talk about that we haven't covered yet no but I I just want you know mention that it's it's impressive how much of the talent has stuck around and the quality of talent in the space has definitively gotten better than even in the span that I have been in the industry um I'm very excited about that because you know there are evangelists and then there are Builders and we need both and now the proportion of those two feels appropriate um so you know it's a matter of time for broader adoption and sort of the uh evolution of technology to a state that takes us from even this sort of I would say little bit beyond very early stages um to sort of mainstream but 2024 is definitely been a to banner year for that right so um yeah I I'm really impressed by just the dedication that you see in the space yeah we've grown up a little bit yes yes definitely thank you so much for your time it's been such a pleasure thank you very much thank you for having me