OI14: Behind the Scenes of a Crypto Hedge Fund ft. Michael Hall & Anatoly Crachlilov
Top Traders Unplugged
Niels Kaastrup-Larsen
4.8 • 712 Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Moritz Seibert speaks with Anatoly Crachilov and Michaell Hall from Nickel Digital, a prominent London-based crypto hedge fund. Anatoly (CEO) and Michael (CIO) founded the company in 2019 with an initial focus on in-house arbitrage and basis trading strategies. Over the years, their business model has evolved and adapted to the fast-changing world of digital assets. Today, Nickel Digital operates as a multi-strategy, multi-manager setup with more than $250 million in AUM, making it one of the largest and longest-standing crypto hedge funds globally.
Anatoly, Michael and Moritz speak about the opportunities and challenges of operating a multi-PM digital asset hedge fund, how they differ from traditional asset hedge fund pod shops, and how the attract and find new PMs to work with them.
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Episode TimeStamps:
02:13 - Introduction to Nickel Digital and how they found their way to crypto
08:10 - A trip down memory crypto lane
12:25 - Why is the basis still so wide on crypto?
15:07 - The state of alpha in the crypto space
18:23 - What kind of portfolio does Nickel Digital run?
19:56 - How they take advantage of automation to carry out a 24/7 365 trading strategy
22:24 - How they manage the managers
25:22 - How they approach netting cost
27:40 - Their process for paying managers
30:59 - Their manager onboarding process
38:41 - Why traders make more money at Nickel Digital than anywhere else
40:52 - What is the average sharpe ratio in the crypto space?
43:19 - The tech backbone - how Nickel Digital is connected to exchanges
46:08 - FTX collapse - The most stressful period for their business
49:46 - How they manage price and risk in 24 hours/day markets
54:06 - How crypto differ from regular markets
57:09 - The pitfalls of trading crypto
01:02:35 - What is their long term vision for Nickel Digital?
Copyright © 2025 – CMC AG – All Rights Reserved
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Warnings, alerts, and when things get really serious, our phones start ringing, even if they're in |
| 0:14.7 | do not disturb mode. |
| 0:16.1 | We have a cascade of alerting systems to notify us of any issues that we have with any systems, |
| 0:24.9 | with exchanges going down, because exchanges can have outages, they can stop broadcasting |
| 0:30.3 | correct positions, all sorts of things can happen. |
| 0:33.5 | And we have to be informed of that. |
| 0:35.2 | So the way that we sleep soundly is we build very robust risk management systems. |
| 0:42.3 | Imagine spending an hour with the world's greatest traders. |
| 0:46.1 | Imagine learning from their experiences, their successes, and their failures. |
| 0:50.5 | Imagine no more. |
| 0:52.3 | Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, the place where you can learn from the best |
| 0:56.8 | hedge fund managers in the world so you can take your manager due diligence or investment career |
| 1:01.7 | to the next level. Before we begin today's conversation, remember to keep two things in mind. |
| 1:07.2 | All the discussion we'll have about investment performance is about the past, and past performance |
| 1:11.8 | does not guarantee or even infer anything about future performance. |
| 1:16.0 | Also understand that there's a significant risk of financial loss with all investment strategies, |
| 1:20.6 | and you need to request and understand the specific risks from the investment manager about |
| 1:25.1 | their product before you make investment decisions. |
| 1:28.0 | Here's your host, veteran hedge fund manager, Niels Kostrup Larson. |
| 1:37.2 | Welcome to another episode in the Open Interest series on Top Traders Unplocked, hosted by Moritz-Seepard. |
| 1:43.3 | In life, as well as in trading, |
| 1:45.7 | maintaining a spirit of curiosity and open-mindedness is key, |
... |
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