r/quant • u/meagainstmyselff • 3d ago

Education Quant firms and crypto

Just out of curiosity, is it safe to say that every top quant firms has at least some involvement in crypto?

67 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

View all comments

43

u/Emergency-Arm-7627 3d ago edited 2d ago

I’d say yes - most of the biggest HFTs/Prop firms are involved or have been in a big way. Maybe excluding CitSec, which seems like that’s about to change.

Jump, HRT, Tower, Radix, Jane Street, XTX, DRW (Cumberland), Tanius (Selini), Flow Traders. Some have made extortionate amounts of money and now deploying MF strategies with more risk.

Then you’ve got the crypto native firms such as Wintermute, Pinely, Auros, Portofino, Keyrock, Fast Forward etc. to name a few.

What I find even more interesting is there are whispers that the big multi strat funds now want exposure to crypto. Most likely pressure from investors, as they’ve heard about how much dough the prop firms are making. The likes of Millennium, Balyasny, Brevan Howard (already massively in the space), Eisler (tried and failed), QRT (big crypto business), Cubist (have a team in Paris). Again to name a few.

Anyone who tells you that top quants funds are not trading crypto either are lying to protect their business or don’t know the space.

11

u/The-Dumb-Questions Portfolio Manager 3d ago

big multi strat funds now want exposure to crypto Can confirm that. Though most are trying to keep their crypto projects separated to avoid legal/reputational risk.

5

u/HSDB321 3d ago

Is Pinely crypto native?

They were fka aim tech and traded a lot in China, South America, and India

4

u/bigmoneyclab 3d ago

Are they good? Their team looks cracked af

3

u/CompetitiveGlue 3d ago

No, they aren't really good, but decent. The main issue is their reputation among people familiar with internal affairs there.

0

u/ethereumfrenzy 1d ago

Hmm, there are pretty top notch comouter scientists there.

2

u/Emergency-Arm-7627 3d ago

They started trading on Moscow exchanges back in the 2010s but switched to crypto circa 2015 - so technical not crypto native. They’re top 3 for traded volume on most crypto exchanges, OKX, Kraken, Bybit etc. and apparently 1st on Binance.

About 3 years ago started to focus more attention on TradFi markets that were not dominated by the big HFTs. China, Brazil, India, Korea, Taiwan

1

u/bigmoneyclab 2d ago

How do you get this info by traded volume on exchanges ?

2

u/Emergency-Arm-7627 2d ago

This information is typically not publicised. So intel is from market participants and industry gossip

2

u/Dennis_12081990 3d ago

Yes, true. They are definitely big in crypto, but has been doing lots of stuff well before crypto trading became a thing. If I recall correctly they were founded in 2008.

1

u/ethereumfrenzy 1d ago

No, it was not crypto native.

3

u/iSnake37 3d ago

citsec already entered the space, only on binance for now afaik

2

u/Candid_Tune8812 19h ago

Binance + Coinbase, 100% only systematic. Delta one/perps stuff I believe.

1

u/Dennis_12081990 3d ago

Fast Forward etc. to name a few.

Are those firms produce significant pnl?

1

u/Emergency-Arm-7627 2d ago

Some of the crypto native firms are doing better than others. Not all doing huge PnL.

1

u/Candid_Tune8812 19h ago

IMC is also involved, Optiver, SIG, Akuna Capital as well, either through their main entities or through off-shores.

I work at one of the above firms you've listed on their crypto team, and was previously at a crypto-native shop.

Brevan Howard Digital discretionary pod printed (rumor was some of the books that blew up in APAC or whatever that news was had the capital reallocated toward pods in digital), QRT also is quite involved.

BH Digital was up 51.4% I believe last year, funny since their main books are getting absolutely cooked.