Orichal Partners is a Cryptocurrency Investment and Blockchain Advisory Firm based in Asia. The Managing Partners will be sharing their project with us in this interview.
1) Please tell us about the Managing Partner?
3 main Managing Partner + Legal Counsel currently leads the firm. The partners at Orichal came from key roles at prestigious and reputable tier 1 financial institutions. In addition to bringing a wealth of financial experience, the team will continue to uphold the professional standard, governance and discipline are key values they abide to in this new asset class.
Scottie Siu, Co-Founder & Managing Partner:
Equities Trading at Janchor Partners, Balyasny Asset Management and Turiya Capital.
Asset Management at Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan.
Anthony Wong, Co-Founder & Managing Partner.
Cross Asset Institutional Sales and Trading at J.P. Morgan.
Chris Kim, Head of Korea, Managing Partner.
Equities Trading at Mirae Securities
Proprietary Trading at Solomon I&S
Henry Yu, Legal Counsel
Fintech & Blockchain sector specialist
Some background notes: I have known Chris for six years in my Hedge Fund days, one of the most trusted people I know. He now runs the Korea office, and I have known Anthony, my other co-founder and managing partner for over 10 years where we started our career together at JPMorgan. We are all have a traditional finance background. I was fortunate to have worked for three high profile hedge funds, where I have shadowed and learned so much from the smartest people I know. Henry as a partner and our legal counsel, runs his own law firm, that specializes in Fintech and Crypto-space; his office of 25 members advise many of the top exchanges and industry players. His strong network base has proven to be a great value for Orichal. Last year, no lawyers entertained us as no one wanted to touch crypto, but with Henri’s support and belief in us, we are now on the industry’s radar.
2) What is Orichal Partners and how does it work?
Orichal Partners is one of the first multi-strategy cryptocurrency investment and blockchain advisory firm in Asia. It was founded by a group of experienced finance professionals to venture into blockchain investments and working with many token companies as a strategic advisor.
Under our Asset Management arm, we manage two main private capital portfolios (only digital-asset);
- “Master” portfolio, which invest across multi-strategies (Secondary Market: Research, Quant, and Primary Market: Token offerings) with absolute return focused
- “Smart-Beta Liquidity Tracker (SBL)” portfolio which aims to provide liquidity adjusted exposure in the cryptocurrency market. Sets clear rules around the high liquidity, custody and portfolio rebalancing.
3) What problems are you solving and what services do you provide at Orichal Partners?
Here to build the best-in-class investment vehicle to gaining access to this new Digital-Asset Class (crypto). The same mindsets and standards that we have been investing, trading and think about portfolio construction in traditional asset space, are the same ways we approach this new ‘crypto’ asset class.
Orichal as a firm believes the value of portfolio construction, liquidity and risk-management, as well as portfolio and trading technologies, are all just as important as investment strategies design.
We take a multi-strategy investment approach to navigate our exposure in the most efficient way with a long-term view. We believe if any institutional investors are looking for exposure in this asset-class, they ought to benefit from investing with more of a long-term bias rather than short-term.
At Orichal, we are constantly curious and adaptive to the markets. This is also where our value is. We realise there are lots of inefficiencies on this side, and as for any early stage of one asset class, there is a huge need to bring more professionalism and real application in this field; in order to open up the sector for mass adoption.
For sure, there is a lot of risk and volatility in this industry, but to us, from a risk-reward perspective it is more interesting than any other asset class.
Our vision is to become a true pioneer and role model in the space; sharing our intelligence and offer the best-in-class exposure vehicle to our private investors. Continue to foster the blockchain industry through our advisory and collaborative works with trusted partners across the field.
4) Where do you see the adoption of blockchain technology in 2019 and beyond, which industry will benefit the most from blockchain and What should blockchain startups lookout for?
Still in early stage/days of Blockchain as a technology, yet seen the full impact that this technology will have in the world we live in. Still, it’s already showing potential across a range of industries. At the very least, the “Blockchain” industry has rapidly gained public awareness over the past 12 months.
In the future and beyond, we should see expansion and evolution of networks that will form the infrastructure layer. More tailored blockchain ledger solutions for specific purposes (private and public). Continue growth of decentralized applications to create large-scale decentralized services; potential application beyond just finance sector (ie. governance, real estate, energy, etc)
Gradually, we should also see an increasing scale of mass adoption behind the layers that supports our daily and common activities (ie. messaging, games, social network, etc).
Value of the “Blockchain Technology” sector worldwide projected to be $2.3trn USD by 2021 from $548bn USD in 2018 (source: Statista)
5) What is the fate of the cryptocurrency markets, where do you see the adoption of cryptocurrencies and what should all crypto investors look out for in 2019?
It may be under the radar, but institutional investors (ie. larger guys like Goldman, Fidelity, or even smaller guys like family offices) absolutely are not ignoring the cryptocurrency market, investors may view this early-stage investment, but are absolutely aware this is an asset-class to stay.
2018 has been a wild year for traders as the market retraced in price and slowly edges its way towards maturity. Real and healthy development in the crypto-investment industry can also been scene.
In the coming year and beyond, we foresee a few things:
- Increased adoption of “security tokens”: fully-compliant representations of ownership in traditional asset classes such as real-estate, equities and bonds. The blockchain present a 24/7, transparent and global platform for investors to trade securities of all kinds. Security tokens have a significantly large addressable market, with the equity and bond markets constituting $70 trillion worth of assets in the US alone. Some investors may be more comfortable buying a token that is backed by real-world, tangible value.
- Maturity of crypto-investment infrastructure continues to develop, from custodian offerings, to more regulatory clarity, to a better educated and informed investor community, to institutional investors introducing valuation models that brings sanity into the market, to a more developed crypto derivatives and funding markets…. all these we should see in the coming years.
- With that said, anticipating for the future of crypto-investment space; we are here to be a leader and standard as an crypto-asset management firm. Orichal Partners has world-class capabilities designed for institutional investors’ and partners’ greatest needs, with comprehensive range of products and services across this asset class.
The cryptocurrency market-cap is at $210bn USD today, it is possible for us to head back to $800bn USD within the next 12 months, once we start to see more institutional flows and more understanding of custodian usage. Regardless where we are in the investment cycle, you need the best vehicle to give the right exposure, if you believe digital-asset and blockchain technologies are here to stay. To us, this is the time to dabble in from an investment perspective, not when it becomes a consensus.
6) At what stage of development is your business and what is next on your roadmap?
Established just over a year ago, we have grown to 13 staff, of which 3 Managing Partners, across the 2 offices in Hong Kong and Korea. As mentioned, our team consist of experienced financial, programming, and legal professionals.
We continue to build out our Asset Management side of the firm, aside from product and investment strategies development, partnering with an experienced law-firm (Henry), it allows us to work at a higher calibre, to Tier 1 standards supported by proper legal and compliance practice. Our portfolio management and trading execution algos are all in house built as well. Many of these technologies we take for granted in the old investment banking days, are real technology asset of the firm.
It is our collective background, resources and our vision to build a long-term financial institution with utmost professionalism that set us apart. We are expanding are hiring now.
Next on the roadmap.
- Multiple institutions are speaking with Orichal on collaborating opportunities.
- Continue to sharpen our 3 investment strategies, especially with our “Quantitative” capabilities and further enhance our in-house portfolio management technologies.
- Orichal Partners to be a trusted name globally.
- Continue to provide good advisory work, maintain a good reputation as an valuable player in the blockchain industry.
7) Any investment and partnership opportunities you will like to share with us from Orichal Partners?
We are fortunate to be speaking with multiple traditional financial institutions – evaluating the right partnership, more details to come.
Within the crypto-space, Orichal Partners have strong relationships globally, especially in Hong Kong and Korea.
For more updates, visit : https://www.orichal.io/
