Why NYCQ is the Smart Money

We’re excited to highlight a new interview featuring Rob Paone — a.k.a. Crypto Bobby — interviewing Nikhil Kalghatgi and Ateet Ahluwalia. The three are all investment partners in CityBlock’s first fund, NYCQ. Their conversation makes it crystal clear why they’re a perfect fit to invest in what Nikhil calls “the most important subsector of crypto venture today”: the infrastructure behind security tokens and digital assets.

Nikhil and Ateet are elite investors. They spend their days deeply immersed in the fundamentals of crypto assets, blockchain projects, and fintech startups more generally, as they hunt for opportunities at every level of the crypto world. Nikhil and Ateet tell Bobby that in that search, they’ve become (painfully) aware of the current shortcomings of trading technology and data.

For instance, to make good decisions for their own quant fund, they describe the need to be hyper-aware of the prevalence of wash trading and other kinds of fake volume on exchanges. They’ve learned to see through widespread hype and distortion around things like market cap — in part by actually building their own, trustworthy data feeds.

That shows just how seriously these guys take their mission — as Nikhil puts it, CoVenture Crypto wants to be “the most well-respected, institutionally-oriented asset management platform for crypto.” But as the blockchain industry diversifies, not every new digital asset fund manager will be able to go to such an extreme. That’s why Nikhil, Ateet, and Bobby are partnering with NYCQ to foster companies that will offer trustworthy, verifiable data and services to the entire ecosystem. As Nikhil puts it, building “the picks and shovels of the industry” will make it easier for new players — including institutional money — to invest in blockchain.

Another theme that runs through the conversation is that, however much newcomers might feel like the Great Bull Market of 2017 was crypto’s last hurrah, we’re still shockingly near the beginning. One major implication, Nikhil tells Bobby, is that VCs in the crypto space should be investing in teams — that is, particular people and their creativity, energy, and adaptability — not business plans, or even technology.

For us at CityBlock, that definitely applies to building our own team. We chose to work with Nikhil and Ateet because their passion for building CoVenture into one of the world’s top crypto firms is palpable when you hear them talk. And you can hear that passion yourself thanks to Bobby’s ability to connect professional insights with broader questions swirling in the crypto community.

NYCQ is proud to be at the center of the debate about innovation in crypto — and we’re just getting started. If you enjoy conversations like these and haven’t gotten on board yet, request a fund allocation now, while the 25% bonus is still available.

Originally published at CityBlock Capital.