Messari Daily Brief Jan. 26, 2021 - Show me your portfolio

There’s something to be said for minimizing conflicts of interest as a researcher, and minimizing distractions as an entrepreneur. That’s why for the past three years, I paused angel investing (and most trading) to focus on the build-out of Messari and stuck to a handful of long-term holds in my crypto portfolio (BTC, ETH, FIL, ZEC) instead.

"There’s more enterprise value in my company stock than there is in trying to beat the bellwethers” is pretty straightforward logic to follow.

But at some point late last year - DeFi’s late summer boom, and the aggressive rebound off the November lows - it started to become a liability to *not* invest. Not necessarily from a cash returns standpoint (though there’s certainly some FOMO there), but because I started feeling behind the innovation curve for the first time in a long time: with new Layer1's, DeFi markets, Web 3 apps, and more. That’s a dangerous feeling for someone running a niche information business. There’s no good reason to submit to self-imposed, counterproductive restrictions when conflicts can be managed.

Since August, all Messari research team members have been required to disclose crypto holdings that represent >5% of their portfolios, and have done so in this document that’s updated monthly. It doesn’t eliminate conflicts, but it highlights them without being overly punitive to our in-the-weeds team. We also rolled out “watch lists” on the home page that cover all assets our individual analysts think are interesting.

Neither disclosures nor watch lists are investment advice. Still, users might benefit from the “don’t show me what you think, show me your portfolio” default, which balances transparency and accountability.

For my part, BTC and ETH are the only 5%+ positions I hold today. I own some other liquid cryptos (DeFi blue chips, FIL/SIA, ZEC, etc.), but my bigger goal is to deploy a good chunk of my portfolio into 30-40 seed deals this year.

I’ll be sharing my first handful of investments Thursday, and updating that list monthly as the portfolio companies allow. If you’re a seed stage fund, and think-i-can-be-helpful^tm, keep me in mind for your syndicates! Investing as an angel vs. GP allows me to deploy smaller checks and punch above my weight in cap tables. I'm backing data infrastructure plays, marketplaces, and defi apps (duh).

Headlines that matter:

• INTEL: Decred, Stellar, NEAR software releases; Terra, Maker governance updates; $100M USDT chain swap
• Big university endowments have been buying BTC (CoinDesk)
• Janet Yellen confirmed as Treasury Secretary (The Block)
• Vitalik explains zk-SNARKs
• The revolution will not be reported quarterly (Dune)
• Genesis outstanding loans swelled to $3.8 billion in Q4
• a16z is creating its own media subsidiary
• Daily Shade: Dan bought 860 boxes for Mr. Thinny Thin Mints