Edith Widder said that “Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth. So let’s all go exploring.” This also applies to the crypto world and token economy, and Columbus Capital is definitely one of the explorers.

So the main purpose of Columbus Capital is to build a bridge for traditional investors. How is Blockchain.one moving forward? Any known future dates? How will it work, and what will it look like?

One of our top priorities is to bring traditional institutional investors into the crypto space.

Blockchain.ONE will be the first fund with a listing providing diversified exposure to a range of crypto assets.

It is going to be a registered Cayman fund with a structured instrument on the fund’s assets. The instrument will be listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, which is one of the largest exchanges in the world for listing funds. We chose this structure because we want to offer the product to a wide range of international investors. It is in our interest to set up the fund as soon as possible, but we cannot state any specific date.

New and different ICOs are coming into the market. Do you see any specific opportunities? Maybe some niche that will develop faster than others?

We are certainly seeing an interesting story unfold with regard to ICOs and the emerging token economy. These newcomers to the capital markets have brought some of the most groundbreaking innovations to market through the use of smart contract platforms like Ethereum, which we believe allows for decentralized business models to take hold, with the concept of ownership being replaced with the concept of stakeholders. The most interesting projects that harness decentralized business models are projects that could potentially serve as underlying infrastructure for a decentralized economy and internet. ICOs and tokenization have also allowed us to reframe existing asset classes, such as equities, commodities, and other real assets, potentially leading to more liquidity for these assets, among other benefits. We are looking closely at how both types of opportunities are evolving and will be launching a new fund called Columbus Capital Nina to trade on these opportunities. Speaking of new funds, we will also be launching a new DAA very soon called the Blockchain Infrastructure Fund. This DAA will exclusively invest into pure cryptocurrencies, smart contract platforms, and other assets with their own blockchain, as we believe this class of assets is the most resilient investment in the space, historically displaying less volatility.

Levi: Where is your focus right now, and are you relating this to your potential clients?

Currently, we have two main objectives. First, our focus is building up our research function and collectively gaining a better understanding, both on a top-down and a bottom-up basis, of what is still an emerging asset class. This is important primarily so that we can invest wisely and profitably in what is still a volatile and fast-changing market. This also leads into our second focus, which is building the assets under management across all our funds, which will come hand in hand with educating our potential investors about the scale and nature of this investment opportunity, which will again come hand in hand with building a good understanding of the market.

Marko: You are analyzing different coins. What tools are you using? Where do you look?

Currently, the crypto market is in a very inefficient state, with prices far removed from fundamentals. We have witnessed extremely inefficient capital allocation with the ICO bubble over the summer, which then led to a collapse in many token prices to below their book value. When analyzing a specific asset, you must first understand the current state of the ecosystem so you are able to place new findings into the big picture. The first important distinction between assets is that some of them are native to a blockchain, enabling decentralized applications like Bitcoin, and some of them are tokens, which are non-native and usually have some utility in a decentralized application. This difference is very important, because one represents an investment in blockchain technology and the other an investment of sorts into a start-up company or a right to future consumption of a company’s product.

For these reasons, the approach to analysis is different. When analyzing native crypto-economic protocols, we try to understand the technology and the network, economic incentives, and what the infrastructure enables and how it can be utilized. Analyzing a token or an upcoming ICO project is much more difficult, because you need to understand their business and the industry they are trying to disrupt as a whole. Many ICOs have very interesting ideas that are utilizing new infrastructure that was previously unavailable and are building new economic and business models, while some of the projects have nothing to do with blockchain itself other than the utilization of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain for crowdfunding purposes. The team behind the project must have members that are extremely knowledgeable and experienced in their field of business, because not everyone can execute an idea, especially when the idea is something no one has done before. The last thing I would like to point out when analyzing an ICO project is the amount of money the company is gathering. There is no reason for gathering huge amounts of money for project development we have witnessed during the ICO hype. Most of these funds are just sitting in wallets, while the whole purpose of investing into a project is for the money to be invested into the company’s operation. If those projects produced similar balance sheets to traditional companies, 99 percent of their assets would be in the investments category.

Resources are all over the Internet, from official whitepapers to social media and forums. There are many useful websites: blogs from companies and individuals, fundamental data about blockchains, lists of upcoming projects, historical market data, etc. As I said before, the crypto market is very inefficient, which means that behavioral finance plays a huge role.

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