Todd Groth of CoinDesk Indices shares some thoughts on how macro analysis works in crypto.
One thing I like about macro investing is the scope.
While financial analysts and their respective crypto degens counterparts are looking at balance sheets, earnings statements, Solidity code and social media sentiment, macro strategists get to think about the consequences of exogenous things.
Put another way, while the analysts examine the forest tree by tree, macro investors sit on a hill, surveying the whole valley and considering which parts of the forest will be nourished or threatened by rainfall, forest fires, changes in land use and other factors outside of the idiosyncrasies of the micro analysis.
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Being macro in digital assets means considering historical environments in which cryptocurrencies have thrived as well as more challenging environments, such as 2022.
Last year, digital assets were clearly sensitive to the Federal Reserve’s efforts to tighten financial conditions. There are many ways to measure financial conditions, but to keep it simple we can simply use trends in nominal and real yields, U.S. dollar exchange rate baskets and corporate credit spreads. From these measures we can create a financial conditions indicator and see how it relates to the historical risk-adjusted performance of digital assets, as proxied by bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH).
To estimate trends in these financial-condition proxies we utilize a trend signal similar to the one used in the Bitcoin Trend indicator (BTI) released recently by CoinDesk Indices.
To represent nominal yields (“NomRates”), we use two-, five- and 30-year U.S. Treasury yields; we subtract the five-year breakeven inflation rate derived from TIPS to create a proxy for two-, five- and 30-year real yields (“RealRates”). U.S. dollar denominated baskets of advanced and emerging economy currencies are used alongside a broader basket as three proxies for the dollar (“FX_USD”). And option adjusted spreads (OAS) for high-yield corporate bonds rated BB and CCC are used alongside an investment-grade index to represent U.S. credit conditions (“Credit_OAS”).
Trend signals are generated from the data within these four macro indicator buckets, then averaged to result in a positive, neutral and negative score for the financial condition regime. Risk-adjusted return ratios (annualized return per unit of volatility) are calculated on BTC and ETH within each regime and compared to an unconditional buy-and-hold strategy (“BuyHold”) shown in the figure below.
(CDI Research, St Louis FRED)
From this preliminary macro regime analysis it’s clear that financial conditions matter when investing in digital assets. Keeping a pulse on market conditions, particularly real and nominal interest rates and credit conditions, can help to navigate the crypto cycle better by offering a better risk-adjusted return than a simple buy-and-HODL approach.
In summary, as investors in cryptocurrencies we’d all benefit from taking a broader macroeconomic and market perspective to not miss the forest for the trees.
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P.S.: See you in Austin this week at Consensus 2023. Come meet the CoinDesk Indices team at booth #1306!
Centralized exchanges will continue to serve as a first step into crypto but decentralized exchanges will further the future of financial systems, panelists say at Consensus.
Centralized exchanges (CeFi) have helped early adoption of crypto by the masses, but have suffered from many recent failures. In the long term, decentralized exchanges (DeFi) will strengthen the backbone of future financial systems, panelists said on stage at “DeFi vs. CeFi: A Distinction With a Difference” at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2023 conference in Austin.
Read full coverage of Consensus 2023 here.
The main hurdle of mass adoption of crypto has been the complexity of the technology for average users, which is why centralized exchanges, such as Coinbase (COIN) has been able act as an early on-ramp into crypto for many people jumping from the traditional fiat economy into digital assets.
“If my grandparents wanted to buy bitcoin, are they going to download Metamask, figure out how to hold their own keys and all that? Probably not,” said Nathan Cha, marketing lead at crypto derivative exchange dYdX during the panel.
However, the lack of transparency in a CeFi exchange is what eventually led to failures such as the spectacular collapse of FTX last fall. When a customer uses a centralized exchange, money goes into a wallet but everything behind that is controlled by an entity that isn’t transparent and is not using blockchain infrastructure, said Sidney Powell, CEO of crypto lender Maple Finance, using BlockFi and Celsius as an example.
“Effectively, it was a private ledger,” Powell said. However, that’s not the case for DeFi as there is more transparency in how the money is being stored and moved. “If you contrast that with, like, DeFi lending, whether it’s Aave, Compound or Maple, you can see the movement of funds at all times and it’s always controlled using Solidity and using smart contracts,” he added.
“The core difference [between CeFi and DeFi] is … self custody but more than that, from a technology perspective, it’s the use of smart contracts and a blockchain to actually operate the business,” Powell said.
However, that doesn’t mean that there will be a mass adoption of DeFi ecosystem anytime soon as CeFi will still likely be the main avenue, in the short-term, for traditional finance customers and older users to adopt the digital assets.
Also the regulatory environment that the current financial market has integrates well with the CeFi model, said panelist Salman Banaei, head of policy at Uniswap Labs. “CeFi has an advantage in the sense that their business model, with clear control persons, is reflected in kind of the regulatory infrastructure that we currently have,” he said, noting that this makes it an easier transition for CeFi to fit into securities or commodities or banking laws.
DeFi, on the other hand, has a disadvantage on that front, as it relies on open-source protocol which reduces “control surface area” from a regulations perspective, Banaei added.
However, in the longer term, this will change, he said. Over time, the role of CeFi won’t change drastically from what it is right now, whereas DeFi will eventually become the main infrastructure for the future of the financial system, Banaei said.
Down the line, “DeFi kind of becomes the backbone for a new economy, while CeFi kind of plays – continues to play – that kind of on-ramp role into this much richer DeFi-based environment,” Banaei added.
From technical improvement efficiencies to novel market-based solutions, a plethora of projects are trying to improve the bitcoin mining’s environmental footprint.
The environmental impact of bitcoin mining was trending again in the last few weeks due to a Texas bill looking to limit its grid participation and a New York Times article that condemned the industry.
Bitcoin mining consumes about 145 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year, says veri from Cambridge University’s Centre for Alternative Finance, which is about the power consumed by Sweden, according to the International Energy Agency.
To critics, bitcoin’s proof-of-work algorithm is wasteful by design as its electricity demand continuously grows. To industry advocates – it’s a feature, not a bug – as it secures the network while ensuring decentralization.
There is a third camp that sees bitcoin’s energy consumption as an opportunity. A slew of new products and companies are trying to mitigate the environmental impact with several innovative solutions that build on top of what is already in place to help miners become more sustainable.
Some of these projects are creating or taking advantage of market instruments that incentivize making bitcoin more “green,” while others are technical, centered around improving efficiencies and synergies around reusing the heat generated by the veri centers.
Renewable energy credits
One such product, offered by crypto lender BlockFills and fund Isla Verde Capital, aims to help not only miners but also investors to find a “green” solution for their energy usage.
The offering essentially is tradable environmental assets in the forms of carbon emissions offsets and Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). Carbon credits, assets that represent sequestered greenhouse gasses through projects such as reforestation, are as well known as they are criticized.
Renewable energy credits (RECs) represent ownership of the sustainability of electricity produced. These certificates represent 1 megawatt hour (MWh) of power produced from renewable sources such as wind, hydro and solar. They are usually separate to any power purchase agreements and are usually traded over the counter (OTC).
BlockFills and Isla Verde Capital tailor the purchase of RECs and carbon credits to miners’ needs, and later retire them, such that they can make claims about renewable energy sources.
The RECs are also geared towards bitcoin investors. “Massive asset managers” are now “looking at bitcoin, but they have these sustainability mandates that they must follow,” said BlockFills John Divine. The RECs can help them invest comfortably.
This might actually raise the price of RECs, “which directly incentivizes investment in renewable energy technology,” Divine said.
Incentivizing sustainability
Switzerland-based Block Green is another project that is trying to incentivize sustainable mining through a decentralized lending protocol. On their platform, liquidity providers looking for bitcoin-native investments can buy future hashrate over a specified period of time, or computing power.
The platform includes “know-your-miner” information about a company’s financials, operational veri, their energy sourcing and strategy. Block Green believes that market mechanisms on the platform will incentivize sustainable mining as liquidity providers will pick miners with sustainable operations, lowering their cost of capital.
“We are currently working with some of the largest miners in the U.S. and Canada and we have begun integrations with institutions such as custodians, exchanges and asset managers looking to give users access to transparent and scalable” returns on their bitcoin, said a spokesperson for the firm.
Tokenizing clean bitcoin
Another solution that is using financial incentives is offered by Clean Incentive and Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol (SBP). These companies are trying to promote investments in “clean” bitcoin by creating new, blockchain-based assets that miners can trade to capitalize on their use of renewables. Investors looking to verifiably own environmentally-conscious bitcoin are the right fit for these assets.
With SBP, miners can verify their use of clean energy with third-party auditors and be added to a registry. After that, for every block reward they get, they receive a Sustainable Bitcoin Mining Certificate, a blockchain-based asset which they can sell to institutional investors. SBP completed its first transaction of a sustainable bitcoin certificate in February.
Similarly, Clean Incentive looks to “collect, validate and tokenize ESG [environmental, social, and governance] attributes” from a network of miners, said its founder and CEO Casey Martinez, a veri scientist with experience in renewable energy.
The startup is still in stealth mode, but has already onboarded several miners, Martinez said Clean Incentive partnered with a small-scale miner from Canada, Ocean Falls Blockchain, in November.
Efficient cooling
Some of the more technical solutions that firms are providing include both hardware and software-related products.
Immersion cooling firm, LiquidStack, offers a hardware-based cooling solution that can cut the energy used by the computers in bitcoin mines by 40% and reduce their land use by one third, the company said in March.
For every megawatt (MW) of energy used for the actual computing in a veri center, LiquidStack’s solution uses 0.02 MW for cooling, whereas other options use 0.1 MW to 0.7 MW, LiquidStack said.
The firm, one of the earliest in the space, received funding from Trane Technologies (TT) in March, a 150-year old firm in the heating and cooling space which brought in $16 billion in revenues in 2022.
“What made LiquidStack attractive was its potential to improve sustainability for veri centers, including bitcoin mining, and its innovation,” said Amber Mulligan, VP of Strategic Sales and Marketing, Commercial HVAC Americas at Trane.
LiquidStack’s technology also makes heat reuse easier and more efficient, opening the door to a host of synergies for miners, said Mulligan, noting that because the heat is actually managed with liquids instead of traditional air cooling, capturing it and directing it to other uses is easier.
On the software-side, Vancouver-based mining services firm, Lincoin, has created a program that miners can use to more efficiently and profitably manage their operations, including their participation in demand response programs and heat reuse activities.
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Demand response is when a miner, or other energy consumer, shuts down their operations at times of peak demand, such that the grid can meet the consumption needs. Often miners get paid for this. Heat reuse refers to the practice of using excess heat from a mining operation for another activity, such as greenhouse farming.
The software, called Rails, integrates real-time veri from over 20,000 grid nodes in 9 deregulated electricity markets in the U.S. and Canada, said a press release.
“Large scale miners use Lincoin to monitor real-time profitability, manage and optimize their operations, streamline tasks and participate in grid ancillary services while smaller miners use Lincoin to innovate by managing heat in greenhouses, monetize their surplus solar energy generation, or simply mine intelligently,” said CEO Medi Naseri in an email interview with CoinDesk.
Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are changing the way we work – especially the media. Here are the rules of the road for CoinDesk.
New tools driven by artificial intelligence (AI) have been grabbing headlines over the past several months. The basic gist of these tools is that in response to specific prompts, they can “create” content (whether text, imagery or something else) much faster than a human ever could. Once they’ve been “trained” on extensive datasets, these tools can essentially predict what a user wants, often with stunning accuracy.
With the right set of queries, chatbots such as ChatGPT can write entire articles about specific topics in mere seconds. AI-driven image generators can instantaneously produce illustrations to represent abstract topics. Still other tools can synthesize video and audio content from the “raw material” of text and images.
This obviously has massive implications for creative fields, and in particular media organizations like CoinDesk. We’ve been researching AI tools for the past few months, while simultaneously observing how other media companies have been using AI. We want to empower our staff to take advantage of these tools to work more effectively and efficiently, but with a process that safeguards our readers from the well-documented problems that can arise with AI content – as well as the rights of the original content creators on which the generative content is based.
There are several use cases for AI in the process of creating content. This article deals with the main ones that are relevant to CoinDesk’s content team. It does not cover every use case, and does not speak to workflow outside of the process of content generation.
Generative text in articles
Current AI chatbots can create text from queries very quickly. Users can also customize the text with adjustments to the query — complexity, style, and overall length can all be specified.
However, an AI cannot contact sources or triage fast-breaking information reliably. While it performs some tasks extremely well, AI lacks the experience, judgment and capabilities of a trained journalist.
AI also makes mistakes, sometimes serious ones. Generative tools have been known to “hallucinate” incorrect facts and state them with confidence that they’re correct. They have occasionally been caught plagiarizing entire passages from source material. And even when the generated text is both original and factually correct, it can still feel bland or soulless.
At the same time, an AI can synthesize, summarize and format information about a subject far faster than a human ever could. AI can almost instantaneously create detailed writing on a specific subject that can then be fact-checked and edited. This has the potential to be particularly useful for explanatory content.
Given its limitations and the potential pitfalls, the writing of an AI should be seen as an early draft from an inexperienced writer. In more illustrative terms, an AI tool is comparable to an intern who can write really fast. The analogy is apt: Typically, interns need a great deal of supervision in their work. They are often unfamiliar with the area they’re writing about and the audience they’re writing for, occasionally leading to serious errors. The editor assigned to their work needs to edit their work carefully, check the underlying facts and help tailor the article to the audience.
However, with the right editing process, the work of an intern can be made publishable relatively quickly, especially if the intern has command of the English language (something AI excels at). Similarly, with the right safeguards in place that both prioritize a robust editing process and target the specific pitfalls of AI, we believe that sometimes using generative text in articles can help writers and editors publish more information faster than a purely human-driven process.
With that in mind, CoinDesk will allow generative text to be used in some articles, subject to the following rules. The generative text must be:
Given the requirements and the inherent limitations of AI with respect to the primary ingredients of journalism (e.g., talking to sources), the number of use cases for generative text are few. However, we see an opportunity for AI to assist in explanatory content, such as in this article here. In every case where generative text is used in the body of an article – whether in whole or in part – the AI’s contribution will be clear through both a disclosure at the bottom of the article and the AI’s byline: CoinDesk Bot.
Generative images
CoinDesk will immediately discontinue the use of generative images in content. This is due to pending litigation around the use of proprietary imagery as “training” for various AI-driven image generators. We might make an exception in the case when the point of the article is to discuss generative images and the images are used in a way that constitutes fair use, but these would be on a case-by-case basis.
Using a generative image tool to help “inspire” a work of art created by a human is generally OK (this is akin to doodling on scrap paper) with the caveat that the human-created image should not be a de facto copy of the AI-generated image.
Generative voices
AI tools can generate or use human-sounding voices to read copy, effectively turning articles into audio clips or podcasts. Though CoinDesk doesn’t currently employ these tools, we see the practice as an evolution of tools that already exist for the visually impaired. If possible, the use of an AI voice generator will be disclosed in the accompanying show notes.
Social copy
Social copy typically functions as a short summary of an article, crafted for a specific platform. Because of its short length, social copy is relatively easy to fact-check and edit, and some AI text tools may be adept at crafting text in the style of specific platforms. In addition, there is less expectation among social audiences that the text accompanying a linked story is original.
For these reasons, CoinDesk allows AI-generated social copy as long as the person preparing the post edits and fact-checks the copy (which is standard), and for the same reasons we don’t think disclosure is necessary (and would lead to some very clunky tweets). As with use in articles, using generative images in social posts is forbidden.
Headlines
Like social copy, headlines are quickly fact-checked and edited. Because editors will always be directing the process, we view AI-written headlines as suggestions and are thus allowed. Disclosure isn’t necessary because this process does not add any new information, and editors will always check the headlines for accuracy and style. This also applies to subheadings and short descriptions.
Assistance with research
AI may sometimes be able to assist in summarizing long documents such as court filings, research papers and press releases, among others. As long as no part of the text generated is copied to a published article, this is generally allowed with no disclosure needed, with two important caveats:
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AI-generated story ideas
Any ideas generated by an AI will inherently need to be vetted and researched by the reporter or editor, so this is allowed. Unless actual text generated by the AI ends up in the final article, it’s not required to disclose that the idea was originally suggested via AI (although the author still may want to do so).
The future
These are the rules of the road for CoinDesk as we travel forward into an AI-driven future. That road may change direction suddenly, expand to a multi-lane divided highway or perhaps even come to a dead end, so we expect these rules to evolve in the coming months and years. Regardless, we’re determined to tread into this new frontier, but to tread carefully. We want these rules to empower our content team to work smarter, using AI for the very specific tasks that machines are best at, so humans can focus on what they’re best at: journalism.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is confirming crypto industry worries that, yes, the proposal last year to widen its view of securities exchanges is meant to fold in DeFi.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) may be coming for decentralized finance (DeFi) as it considers reopening a proposal from last year that would now explicitly target platforms for those crypto transactions as exchanges that need to be regulated.
The SEC proposed expanding the definition of the word “exchange” in January 2022 to capture a broader swath of trading activity in the U.S. At the time, the agency said in its proposed rulemaking that certain entities engaging in trading activity were not regulated as exchanges, creating a “regulatory disparity.”
The securities agency read last year’s comment letters from the crypto industry calling the initial proposal an overreaching power grab that failed to provide enough clarity about its meaning to be legitimate. The commission is going to vote Friday on what amounts to a response to that criticism. If approved, the updated proposal would use more direct language that includes DeFi in the widening definition of regulated exchanges, and it will detail its estimates on how much that change is expected to cost the industry.
The specific changes will be published after the meeting ends with a vote later today.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler contends that most crypto platforms are already operating as unregistered securities exchanges, with or without the latest tweaks to the definition of what it means to be an exchange. But he and the commission are poised to “reiterate the applicability of existing rules to platforms that trade crypto asset securities, including so-called ‘DeFi’ systems,” according to an SEC fact sheet outlining the changes.
“Calling yourself a DeFi platform is not an excuse to defy the securities laws,” he said in remarks prepared ahead of the meeting.
SEC officials, speaking to reporters ahead of Friday’s meeting, said the reopening and additional information came after a number of market participants asked for more information about the proposed amendments and how exactly they would be applied to crypto assets and DeFi.
The agency isn’t looking to actually define DeFi in the rule, according to SEC officials, but will evaluate each situation by how the activity is being handled, including whether there’s an intermediary and exactly what service that intermediary is providing.
In the prepared remarks, Gensler reiterated his view that “the vast majority of crypto tokens are securities” and that crypto trading platforms already meet existing requirements for securities exchanges.
“These platforms match orders of multiple buyers and sellers of crypto securities using established, non-discretionary methods,” he said. “That’s the definition of an exchange – and today, most crypto trading platforms meet it. That’s the case regardless of whether they call themselves centralized or decentralized.”
Industry pushback
The crypto industry has long advocated for U.S. rules that can bring certainty to how the companies and activities need to operate, though prominent crypto executives and their lobbyists have also said that the SEC’s position that they need to register and follow existing securities laws won’t work for this industry. The SEC has broadly chosen against a tailored approach to the cryptocurrency sector that would acknowledge how it differs from the rest of finance, with Gensler routinely arguing that longstanding securities laws are sufficient.
The SEC had pushed this exchange-definition rule and other proposals last year that – without detailing its intentions with crypto specifically – had suggested that the agency meant to formalize its reach into the digital assets sector.
Later, the agency became more explicit about having its eyes on digital assets, when it issued another proposal in February that could bar investment advisers from keeping assets at crypto firms.
With each proposed rule, the SEC’s walls are closing in on crypto businesses that insist there’s no path for them into regulated finance.
The agency received almost 400 comment letters on this week’s revisited proposal and disclosed 35 staff meetings and calls with Wall Street lobbyists, industry self-regulatory organizations, the Bank of England and others regarding the effort. A reopened comment period would give crypto lawyers and lobbyists another 30 days to argue against the rule before the agency will review those responses and decide whether to approve a final rule.
Even when the new exchange definition didn’t name crypto explicitly, the industry opposed it with the assumption that it had digital assets platforms in mind.
“The proposal fails to adapt to – let alone acknowledge – the fundamentally new ways in which individuals can conduct asset exchanges using DeFi protocols,” the Blockchain Association and the DeFi Education Fund argued in a 2022 letter to the SEC. “Instead, it would improperly apply regulations designed for intermediating exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange to software or software developers.”
Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee that oversees the SEC, wrote a letter to Gensler with another committee member that said the agency seemed to be trying “to expand the SEC’s jurisdiction beyond its existing statutory authority to regulate market participants in the digital asset ecosystem, including in decentralized finance”
Circle Internet Financial sought the chance to ask for more specific rules for crypto.
“In view of the unique architecture of digital asset markets, we suggest that the commission would benefit the most from a wide-ranging concept release focused on digital assets markets and how best to achieve its policy goals in light of the unique architecture of such markets,” the company’s comment letter suggested.
But some were glad last year at the possibility crypto could be folded into this SEC oversight.
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“The cryptocurrency industry is rapidly expanding with some industry lobbyists insisting that their offerings and platforms fall outside the securities laws and regulations,” Better Markets, a Washington-based group advocating for tougher protections in the financial system, wrote in a comment letter last year. “But clearly, the commission must apply securities regulation equally to all securities regardless of how novel, ‘innovative,’ popular, or profitable such offerings may be.”
It’s been a tough month for DeFi in U.S. policy circles, after the U.S. Treasury Department also made clear last week that DeFi services should be subject to anti-money-laundering laws, saying the platforms have been used by criminals and for terrorist financing.
DWF Labs made headlines with more than $200 million of investments in crypto projects such as CryptoGPT or Synthetix. A closer examination reveals that many of their deals aren’t typical venture capital investments, but packaged with market making services, pledges to boost trading volume or even selling tokens directly for a project’s treasury. Industry experts claim red flags and conflict of interest, but the firm says it’s all a misunderstanding.
The giants of crypto venture capital are mostly a well-known group of firms that’ve been around for years, companies like A16Z, Paradigm, Pantera Capital and Digital Currency Group (CoinDesk’s parent).
So the quick and loud emergence of a firm called DWF Labs as a seemingly large player in the space over the past few months caught many by surprise. They announced through press releases and media organizations like CoinDesk and The Block a slew of investments in projects including $40 million for internet alternative provider Tomi, $40 million for artificial intelligence-related token Fetch.AI and $10 million in AI-focused crypto data project CryptoGPT.
But a closer examination reveals DWF, whose founders made their money as crypto high-frequency traders, isn’t exactly a venture capital firm – not always, at least.
While the recent slew of headlines refer to DWF’s partnerships with crypto projects as ‘investments,’ DWF Labs actually functions more similarly to an over-the-counter (OTC) trading desk. The company typically approaches a crypto project with a token, and offers to buy millions worth of the token at a discount to market value, according to conversations with several crypto projects that have worked with DWF.
But DWF Labs says it’s all a misunderstanding. “There might be some questions on the use of the word investment,” said DWF Labs Partner Stefano Virgilli. “When we use the word ‘investment’ – to us the most important thing is that if we’re purchasing the tokens and they’re using the funds to further develop, that’s an investment,” he added.
The controversy
Investments in crypto projects typically follow a venture capital model. Projects tap venture firms for capital via funding rounds (i.e. pre-seed, seed, Series A, etc.) and, in turn, the investors receive a portion of the project’s equity. In most cases, particularly in early stage investments where a project has not yet launched a token, investors will receive a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT), a contract that outlines the tokens allocated to the investor if the project launches a token in the future.
DWF Labs’ investments are more ad hoc in nature and the company primarily selects for projects that have already launched a token.
While DWF Labs refers to itself as “a global web3 venture capital and market maker” or “multi-stage web3 investment firm” in press releases, the deals are often presented as “strategic partnerships” that can include token acquisitions, market making services, pledges to boost a token’s liquidity and trading volume, and additional support with marketing and media presence.
Even helping projects’ treasuries to sell their token holdings, according to the press release the firm distributed about its launch in September.
In the post, the firm said that “DWF Labs invests in digital asset companies and supports existing markets, enabling digital asset companies to sell their tokens for up-front capital without adverse price impact,” adding that “DWF Labs buys tokens with its own funds, allowing its corporate customers to sell tokens quickly.”
It is quite common in the crypto industry for market making firms to have venture capital arms. Jump Crypto and Wintermute, two heavyweights in the crypto market-making sector, both began as trading firms. But both have since expanded into cutting venture checks for projects, and even building their own pieces of core infrastructure (Jump has backed the Wormhole cross-chain bridge and Wintermute has launched its own decentralized exchange).
However, the industry standard is that these contracts should be separated. Even though the lines between the two divisions can be blurred sometimes by the market makers, some industry observers have grown concerned about DWF’s recent activity and seemingly packaging different services under partnerships.
“It’s a massive conflict of interest,” Walter Teng, research firm Fundstrat’s vice president of digital assets, told CoinDesk. “If you invest, you want the token’s price to go up. If you market make, you can manipulate the price to go up by spoofing.”
“All of their ‘investments’ are poorly disguised agency OTC (over-the-counter) trades,” a market making firm’s executive told CoinDesk, who asked not to be named due to company policy. “They make a big announcement about ‘partnerships, investments’ or some other nonsense, but in reality it is a way for token projects to sell their treasury without announcing that they are selling their treasury.”
DWF’s managing partner Andrei Grachev defended the firm’s token maneuvers in a recent tweet, calling it “dumb” if a market maker (MM) leaves all the acquired or borrowed assets in a wallet, because an “MM should create markets, provide depth, improve order execution instead of doing nothing and waiting when the market is skyrocketing to execute its call options.”
DWF Labs’ strategy
DWF Labs launched in September, as an investment-focused arm of Digital Wave Finance, a top high-frequency trading firm that trades spot and derivatives on over 40 exchanges, according to the firm’s press release.
Grachev told CoinDesk that DWF Labs’ funding comes from the money earned from profits of the high-frequency trading business. Grachev denied that the firm has received any funding from Russia, a rumor circling within the crypto industry.
Grachev said that the firm has multiple types of investments, some with token lock-ups, others without vesting period, and focuses on projects with tokens. “We prefer to have tokens but we also have several equity deals,” said. “But frankly with equity…it is not our strong side,” he said.
While he said that DWF Labs “usually do not include market making deals in our venture side,” later, he admitted that “we have pure investments without market making, we have market making [agreements] without investment, and we have [them] combined.”
“As a market maker, of course we support our portfolio. If we invest, we will provide much more liquidity to the project compared to if we don’t invest,” Grachev said.
When asked about DWF’s investment strategy and due diligence, Grachev talked about focusing on five sectors – TradFi, DeFi, GameFi, CEXs and artificial intelligence – and aiming to “have stakes in all major chains (…) in order to have access to their ecosystems.” The firm looks for projects with “life and traction,” he said, checking social media posts and what exchanges their token is listed on.
“If a project is listed on BitFinex, Coinbase or Binance, then the project is proven and good because these exchanges have very strict due diligence and very strict policies of listing,” he added.
Grachev also said DWF doesn’t usually participate in specific venture rounds. “We just approach them,” he says.
CoinDesk viewed a series of messages between DWF Labs and a crypto project that showed a member of the DWF Labs team offering to invest in the project and provide free market-making services. DWF told the project it could invest via a direct OTC purchase of liquid tokens from the project’s treasury, or with a lock-up period and market-making services.
Messages from the market maker to another project showed that DWF offered to buy tokens in daily tranches without any lock-up period at a discount or in one installment with a one-year lock-up at a steeper discount. According to the message, DWF promised to help list the token on Korean exchanges including Binance Korea which the firm has “good relationship” with, create options trading and “build narrative” leveraging DWF’s team and media presence.
There were several past announcements when DWF mashed investments and market-making deals.
One instance was its strategic partnership announcement with derivatives trading platform Synthetix. According to a press release on March 16, the firm said it acquired $15 million of the project’s native token SNX “aimed at boosting liquidity and market making,” adding a quote from Grachev that “we are thrilled to invest in Synthetix.”
Blockchain data shows that DFW’s wallet – labeled by crypto intelligence firm Nansen – received 5.3 millions of SNX directly from Synthetix’s treasury wallet between March 14 and March 16. Then, the firm transferred all tokens to Binance in multiple transactions between March 16 and 20.
Transactions between DWF Labs and Synthetix treasury. (Nansen)
In November, DWF announced a $10 million investment in the TON ecosystem. The firm’s press release said that the “strategic partnership” with the project extends to “an investment, token development, market creation and exchange listing.” The partnership also includes “50 seed investments scheduled over the next 12 months,” doubling the TON token’s trading volume in the first three months of the partnership, and developing an OTC market “to let buyers and sellers complete large transactions.”
Another case is the firm’s investment into web3 influencer platform So-Col. According to a story by crypto-focused publication The Block and cited on DWF’s website, DWF invested $1.5 million in “a round” by purchasing So-Col’s native token SIMP in February. Irene Zhao, So-Col’s founder, said that the tokens have a one-year vesting period ending in February 2024. The post does not mention other services besides investing.
However, Nansen’s blockchain data on the Ethereum blockchain shows that DWF’s crypto wallet received 3.3 million SIMP tokens between March 6 and March 24. Within the same period, DWF sent some 2.6 million tokens to KuCoin exchange, then transferred the rest to an unknown wallet on March 30. After the announcement on March 28, SIMP almost doubled from around 1.7 cents in a week, then started to plummet on April 4 towards 1 cent, per CoinGecko data.
CoinDesk reviewed Telegram messages of a So-Col representative saying that they decided to work with DWF Labs because besides serving as a market maker DWF also invested in the project directly helping to extend the startup’s runway.
Sending tokens to exchanges
Grachev said that DWF Labs keeps most of its funds and investments on centralized exchanges (CEXs) and transferring tokens to an exchange does not indicate the company will sell.
“We keep all of our inventory, almost all of our inventory, not only our investments but our own funds on exchanges,” he said.
However, keeping supposedly long-term investments on exchanges is a worrying sign for some industry experts, hidden from savvy blockchain analysts and traders whether DWF sells tokens or uses them for market making purposes.
“It’s a red flag,” a founder, who asked to remain anonymous, of a crypto analytics firm with former market making experience told CoinDesk. “They [DWF Labs] market them as an investment, and then claim to do ‘market making’ so they can keep funds on exchanges and just dump.”
It’s hard to opine on where a firm like DWF should draw the line between VC and market making. Perhaps, a page from the TradFi banking playbook could work. In that realm, investment banking and trading/research is separated by a so-called Chinese wall. Where that line might need to be drawn for crypto investment firms is unclear.
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In the interview, Grachev admits his “biggest mistake” was not properly explaining his firm’s operating philosophy and investment process. “We need to be more open. I want [the community] to know how we work and then let people decide who is right and who is not right,” he said.
