Beating Bitcoin at Scale with Directional Crypto Strategies | Sam Gaer of Monarq Asset Management

This episode is brought to you by VanEck. Learn more about the VanEck Rare Earth and Strategic Metals ETF: http://vaneck.com/REMXMax Sam Gaer, CIO of Directional Strategies at Monarq Asset Management, joins Other People’s Money to discuss how he uses quantitative directional strategies to trade crypto assets and produce an institutional quality return stream that has outperformed bitcoin at scale. He explains how his experience as a market maker, executive, and self-taught electronic exchange technologist driving some of the most important technological advances in finance led him to “burn the boats,” leave tradfi, and go all in on building institutional crypto strategies with Monarq. He also discusses how institutional appetite for crypto hedge fund strategies is growing with increased regulatory clarity, greater availability of institutional level funds, and evolving market opportunities in crypto-native and crypto-linked tradfi assets. Follow Sam Gaer on X: https://x.com/samg67 Follow Monarq on X: https://x.com/monarq_mgmt Follow VanEck on X: https://x.com/vaneck_us Follow Max on X: https://x.com/maxwiethe Follow Other People’s Money on: Apple Podcast https://bit.ly/4e7QJ1M Spotify https://bit.ly/3Yhaazi YouTube https://bit.ly/3C63VXR X https://x.com/opmpod Timestamps 00:00 Intro 01:43 Q4 Crypto Volatility 06:21 A Disappointing Year for Crypto Bulls 10:29 Taking Advantage of Extreme Volatility 12:50 Triple Barrier Risk Management 15:43 $REMX 16:26 Responsible Leverage 17:17 Is the 4-Year Cycle Over 21:55 Early Days Pit Trading 24:16 Building Electronic Exchange Technology 26:38 CEO of NYMEX Europe and NYMEX IPO 27:24 Move to FINRA 28:43 Building and Selling a Volatility Hedge Fund 29:15 Burn the Boats 32:14 Joining Monarq 37:14 Differences Between Crypto Fund Managers and TradFi 39:17 Institutional Adoption of Crypto Hedge Funds 44:27 Can Crypto Strategies Scale to Meet the Demand? 47:19 The Crypto TradFi Collision 49:57 The Difference Between Institutional and Non-institutional Quality Crypto Funds 54:13 Hyper Liquid and Other Market Improvements in Crypto 59:26 Will TradFi Take Over Crypto? 01:01:31 Digital Asset Treasuries 01:08:46 The Next Stage for Monarq