Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
The article is missing some critical details.<p>What does the fund do? The article suggests they do arbitrage. Those opportunities actually tend to increase when things are volatile. Also while you can lose money doing it you wouldn&#x27;t expect a precipitous collapse in NAV. If you discover you&#x27;re slower than everyone else you can shut down.<p>Volumes aren&#x27;t necessarily correlated to price either, so that isn&#x27;t entirely convincing.<p>I&#x27;ve also heard that plenty of arb guys are doing fine.<p>If he&#x27;s speculating and not just running arbs, what is he doing? If he&#x27;s just punting the cryptos that would seem more in line with what&#x27;s happened, but it&#x27;s not clear what he&#x27;s up to from this.<p>Also, with arbitrage it&#x27;s limited how much capital you need. A lot of HFTs use very little. If you&#x27;re getting money like a hedge fund you have to be sure it can be put to use.<p>Ex HFT and fund manager.