Embracing Ultra-Liquid Crypto Capitalism
Trillions of dollars in market cap and some 40 yrs into the internet and cloud era, our digital space is still governed by feudalist superstructures guarded by mega cyber-lords. Stifled innovation and plateauing growth are the dark underbellies of a digital economy sans free markets. It's the internet's original sin.
Until now. The arc of history bends towards a digital economy encoded with true ownership, free flow of value, and efficient markets. Crypto, through enabling low-cost, accessible tokenization and exchange of money, "stuff", and potentially even services is our most likely gateway from cyber-feudalism to ultra-liquid, highly-granular Digital Capitalism. For short, we shall call this iteration of capitalism "Ultra-Liquid Crypto Capitalism".
The world's digital economy will be 10x larger than the meatspace economy. Crypto token markets will be its major capital formation and value exchange centers. Web 3.0 FAANG? Think bigger. There's a generational opportunity to build innovative investment products for the ever-changing, nascent token universe -- of which NASDAQ-like pseudo-equities are but a small subset.
This is why we are building Maverick, .
Maverick is a mission-driven, token-centric, research and investment platform created to drive the vision towards ultra-liquid, crypto-enabled digital Capitalism.
We monetize by building investment products that best capture opportunities in this new paradigm.
CeFi blow-ups and the debacles of narcissistic sociopaths in crypto might temporarily delay the progress of history, but not permanently derail it. Our goal is to eventually build a suite of products that offer the greatest number of people the best exposure to this emerging on-chain economy.
Our 1st flagship product, Maverick Opportunities, is an actively managed evergreen token strategy, with a flexible mandate across various types of tokens (fungibles, NFTs, yield-bearing tokens, etc.), and primarily operating in public markets.
Designed to best capture the evolution and growth of crypto-native economy, while minimizing the risk of ruin or significant loss of capital.
See our most recent Investor Update post-FTX blow-up for transparency on investment processes @ Maverick Opportunities.
Expect to hear more specifics from us in Quarterly Letters going forward.
This is just the beginning. Ultimately, we believe achieving our longer-term goal requires:
Hyper-focus on the key primitives of "ultra-liquid crypto capitalism";
Flexible & innovative approach native to crypto;
Robust & tested risk management system built to last.
Let's talk more about how we are building Maverick accordingly.
1. Hyper-Focused, Token-Centric
First, on being token-centric. Investors frequently return to the safety zone of "equity" & "infra" during bear markets. The events surrounding FTX's demise should put to rest the idea that equity of CeFi/crypto-related "real" businesses is an inherently safer bet than tokens.
We are hyper-focused on our mega thesis: Crypto will teleport us into the era of ultra-liquid, highly-granular digital Capitalism, where "tokens" and on-chain free markets built around them are the most important economic primitives & social-coordination layer. See our essay explaining this "pragmatic token maxi" approach.
Our investment focus area reflects this bias. We like it when tokens are the key primitives to crypto networks, web 3 businesses, decentralized brands, investor DAOs, etc. We don't spend much time looking at generic infra, B2B SaaS in crypto, and crypto redux of RandomXYZ (web 2.0 business) with a peripheral token thrown together as an add-on. To be clear, the things in red may still be great investments, but we are happy to pass.
Ultimately, we believe that to maximize returns investing in what's essentially the new world (the digital great voyage), you really want to own the foundational legos, the rails/machines that make them work in full harmony & fluidity, and not much else.
2. Flexible & Innovative Approach
Second, the success of the vision towards an ultra-liquid, highly-granular digital capitalism would simultaneously mean:
2.1 Alpha will require active, not parasitic capital.
Writing codes don't require much capital upfront and crypto already has its natively available financing rails to bootstrap project growth. Investors will need to be more active capital. Participating in staking, liquidity bootstrapping, and activities that provide value to the crypto-networks will be increasingly demanded from token holders to accrue value.
2.2 Alpha will be increasingly specialized.
Crypto uniquely rewards domain experts with access to global permissionless capital leverage, with a much lower barrier of entry for those without an existing brand.
2.3 The diminishing role of traditionally-constructed investment vehicles.
All of this means that traditional fund structures and investor mindsets aren't set up to flourish in this new paradigm in the long run. To that end, we have the privilege of leveraging the radical flexibility of proprietary capital to explore new asset classes (aping emergent NFTs), experiment with unconventional & diversifying return streams (i.e. LP on NFT AMMs), and collaborate with frontier investor organizations (i.e. game asset DAOs), to a degree most funds with a pre-determined client mandate cannot.
We welcome potential partners and collaborators who share a similar vision to us. This experimental approach will fuel our long-term edge in investment product design.
Ultimately, from Bitcoin to ICOs, from DeFi to NFTs, crypto has always been the challenger to the incumbent Capitalist regime. If (when) the arrival of crypto-native digital Capitalism eventually takes the old Capitalist machine as sacrifice, we want to be on the right side of history.
3 Robust Risk Management
Lastly, getting to where we think crypto is headed, it's going to be a long, bumpy road. Macro uncertainties, regulatory red tape, and malicious actors could all set back this industry for years.
Surviving is 90% of thriving. We put our own money at stake together with that of our clients' (prop capital is the majority LP in Maverick Opportunities), and live or die with the risk we put on. Robust risk management is not just a couple of paragraphs on LP letters for us.
With experience in a premier macro hedge fund, endowment office, and running real client portfolios (across equity and crypto) at institutional size, we have iterated relentlessly on this front and continue to stress test our system.
Expect to hear more from us in the following quarters on navigating the current macro quagmire and managing risks for token portfolios. See our latest investor update.
4 Who we are & where to find us
About ourselves. An ex-hedge fund monkey & macro junkie turned crypto investor, I (@Simiao) have been incredibly lucky to have a team of curious and enthusiastic people () joining me in our journey to make Maverick a crypto investment platform built to last. We are a close team of four, each with distinct strengths and weaknesses that, fortunately, complement one another. We are idealists and realists; creatives and engineers; risk-takers and risk managers. Separate we are all fallible, but together we work like a seamless machine.
We are at a turning point in history from digital feudalism to emerging digital Capitalism. Building Maverick to be long-term focused, innovative, and robust is the best way we can think of to capture the perennial opportunity at hand. See you on the other side of history!
Sincerely,
Simiao Li
Author:
Twitter: @simiao-li
Telegram: @SimiaoLi
DMs are open.
Team:
Twitter: @GMMaverickCap
Learn more about Maverick: https://www.maverickcrypto.xyz/ For long-form essays and research deep dives: https://www.maverickcrypto.xyz/blog For inquiries/media/outreach: ask@maverickcrypto.xyz