We, Voynich.The.Younger, are a two-person team focused on helping the expansion of capital markets in the DeFi ecosystem. We officially kicked off our efforts mid-2021 but have been active in the space since March 2021.
We are excited to share our application to join AladdinDAO as a boule member. Feel free to ping across any questions.
About us
One of us, let’s call me Voynich or The Younger, is working in one of Europe’s leading Venture Capital Funds (for all Crypto Degens that do not understand Pleb language: Venture Capital means taking active minority positions in fast-growing tech startups). Talking to thousands of startups in the past years (from $1m - $5bn valuations, all around the world), analyzing them (product, commercial, financial) allowed me to get unique insights before deciding on investments within the broader investment committee (essentially what we do at Aladdin). As a side hustle, I have invested in 25+ startups across all stages with a special focus on Pre-Seed and Seed (Pleb: super super early) with a particular interest in FinTech / InsurTech in Emerging Markets. Being an active board member in scale-ups (Pleb: a bit older companies) gave me the privilege to work with some of the world’s best entrepreneurs (you are probably using some of their products lol).
The second, let’s call me The Younger or Voynich, is a TradFi professional during the day, essentially sourcing & structuring billions of USD worth of alternative & structured finance transactions (Pleb: helping companies to finance transactions and deals). Also built a very profitable trading business with several hundred millions of USD in assets under management (Pleb: learnt how to not lose a ton of money…basically). At night, I made several investments in startups, crypto & structured venture debt deals (yeah, I have a sleeping problem).
Being hybrids ourselves - working 60h weeks in TradFi while learning about DeFi during the night - gives us a very unique view of the scene, products and protocols, which is something that is missing in many crypto-native projects. Not everything in the TradFi world is broken and not everything in the DeFi world is the silver bullet or the promised land. Anyway, we have taken the red pill and will jump on the full-time journey in the next few weeks.
A couple of highlights in our crypto “career” so far
- Early investor / community member in Centrifuge: Working very early with the Centrifuge originator ecosystem to understand the underlying asset quality of their uncollateralised lending pools and the credit risk involved. Started engaging in lending to selected pools in March 2021 for yield and Centrifuge token rewards (which at the time were not tradeable) and reaped substantial returns off the back of that
- Various successful NFT investments: Ran a small NFT portfolio during the NFT Bull Run in 2021 and made 25x our money: most notable investments included BAYC, The Currency
- Others (We just do not want to waste everyone’s time - feel free to ping us):
- Analysed and deployed substantial funds into various yield strategies, including Goldfinch, Maple (early), FODL and others
- Got fvcked on KlimaDAO (because the VC took over the risk management for a minute). Loss: Minimal (because the TradFi guy took over after a minute again)
- Crypto VC (Pleb: Venture Capital) investments include major Crypto Custodian Provider and Payment Bridge between Fiat and Crypto
What we are excited about right now
The current crypto bear market doesn’t mean that there are less possibilities, quite to the contrary. We are currently working on several new interesting opportunities, including:
- Centrifuge, on its Tinlake DApp, finally skewed its rewards in favor of junior tranche (first loss) holders and we are therefore launching a new initiative to enter into a number of selected junior tranche positions by using our experience to underwrite exotic credit exposures
- Furthermore, we are excited about the launch of Altair (another Centrifuge DApp), which will bring a wealth of new credit opportunities similar to Tinlake. We already hold a lot of AIR tokens which we look forward to putting to use in the new AIR ecosystem
- We are very actively working on starting to build a credit history in DeFi and are currently looking to raise debt on top of the funds we manage in order to channel this cash into yield generating opportunities
- We are expanding our yield strategies to several new and exciting protocols - currently doing deep dive research and DD.
Why we want to join AladdinDAO as a boule member
We have been analyzing AladdinDAO for quite some time (and yes, ofc we invested + staked - rumor has it we hold quite a lot of ALD lol). So what is it we really want to achieve here - the answer is quite simple. We want to help Aladdin reach its full potential and become the GoTo DeFi DAO:
- We believe after the introduction of the new Tokenomics, a new era has begun for Aladdin. An era of more responsibility and (almost) fiduciary duty. With a growing book, we need more accountability on the positions we hold, managing our assets more actively and building clear KPIs on how our portfolio is performing. Focusing on what we do best - DeFi - is the key, everything else is a distraction. Translating the new Tokenomics and Governance changes into the product in the right way can allow us to build TVL and invest in long-term, sustainable products based on proper research and due diligence - this is how we attract TVL, this is how we create value, this is how our community succeeds.
- We want to bring our partnership approach to AladdinDAO: We have found there to be tremendous value in not only being an investor or liquidity provider in a project but being a real partner in the sense that one adds value beyond just providing capital, through very intimate knowledge of the projects, strategic advice and problem solving.
- In the spirit of Web 3.0, we believe in transparency towards our audience. As a result, we would like to propose a clear trading dashboard to see how our positions are performing, if we are staking tokens and where we can use our positions to actively govern protocols. Staking, governing, managing actively can give us significant alpha.
- Lastly, we have been hanging out with some of you over the last couple of months and absolutely love the vibes!
Tl;dr - 2 hybrid investors (TradFi + DeFi) with extensive investing experience trying to learn and create value for the community. Made some money with startup investing and some early crypto deals. Now we want to bring our unique skill set to the community to create value for AladdinDAO.
We currently do not have a primary trading address, but manage our funds across several wallets, exchange accounts and equity positions in startups. We would be more than happy to share more information about these positions should it be requested by the community.