How MAV Capital, a Top 10 Trader on Iconomi, Leverages Their Unique Background to Generate Alpha — Set Social Trader Spotlight

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Set Labs

4 min readJun 17, 2020

Welcome to the Set Social Trader Spotlight Series. In these posts, we give you insight into exciting new traders that are on the Set Social Trading platform. If you want to get primed on Set Social Trading, you can click here.

Today, we‘ve got an interview with Mountains and Valleys Capital, a new trader on the platform and creator of the Mountains and Valleys ETH/BTC Set, for all of you to enjoy.

Their Set is currently live on TokenSets — you can check it out here.

Hi Mountains and Valleys Capital, nice to have you. Both of you guys have really unique backgrounds in microengineering and sociology. Can you give us an intro of yourself and what you do?

Like so many crypto journeys, this one started with two comic characters meeting in a forum created by yet another comic character. Over time, we discovered that we shared similar obsessions, but worked with different, complementary approaches. The deal was sealed when we saw that the real persons behind those comic characters were more than serious enough to start a Crypto Strategy.

Both me, Chris Lüscher, and my partner, Davide Rivola, discovered Bitcoin very early on and remained obsessed with the potential of crypto ever since. While Davide put more emphasis on the market and all things measurable, I developed a rabid appetite for whitepapers, protocol analysis, mining, node running, and general tinkering with this new technology.

Can you go into more detail about your Set, its strategy, and any back tested data?

In hindsight, crypto prices move in all too obvious cycles. In the heat of the moment, leveraging these cycles for successful trading isn’t easy.

In a nutshell, our strategy is based on the observation that two major cycles dominate crypto prices: 1) the crypto bull-bear cycle: hope and fear for crypto in general, and 2) the maximalist cycle: the somewhat ridiculous assumption that Bitcoin is the only valid cryptocurrency, vs. hope for a bright future for a variety of alternative cryptocurrencies.

In a true crypto bear, there is little respite from the relentless price declines. Being out of the market is the best option. In a crypto bull, it is sometimes better to have a higher exposure to Bitcoin, or to altcoins.

Our first Set is a limited implementation of our strategy. It does not yet support an exit into stablecoins, and it takes Ethereum as a proxy for the altcoin market in general (which has historically proven to be the case, in spite of Ethereum’s obvious importance and maturity). In that sense, this Set has to be considered an MVP — some assembly might be required — and we are looking forward to TokenSet’s future support of sets with more than two tokens.

Detailed backtests for the Set are still in the works, but we can for now point to the fact that our strategy consistently remained in the top 10 on Iconomi over the past year.

Do you feel like your non-financial backgrounds contribute to how you think about trading and generating alpha?

Cryptocurrencies are unique beasts of technology, social mechanisms, and money. While we had to acquire some trading know-how, we already brought along the know-how and curiosity required to comprehend this unique market. All markets are shaped by human fear and greed, but the actual expression of these sentiments in a 24/7 global retail market is different enough to merit an unencumbered look.

You mention that you look at the macroeconomic landscape, how do you think crypto is going to be affected by what’s going on with the chaos in the financial world today?

Social change takes a long time. Most of the early web efforts were poor translations of existing ideas from the analogue world. Only in the decade after the burst of the .com bubble did we learn how to truly exploit the potential of a global, unlimited flow of digital information.

The same is happening now, but with money. It will take us a long time to implement the true potential of digital money, but it is our firm belief that this nascent revolution will eventually change the macroeconomic landscape and, hopefully, lead to a healthier financial world. While we figure things out, crypto will remain a risky, volatile asset class with a high correlation to other risky, volatile asset classes.

Where can people find you online?

Additional info under https://mav.capital/.

Anything else you’d like to tell us or your potential followers?

Crypto is a wide-eyed wonderland for us. We are under the spell of the incredible promises it holds. Yet we shouldn’t forget that the exact path into a new financial future hasn’t even been mapped out yet. Crypto in five years from now is likely to look very different and unexpected relative to our current knowledge. That’s why we use discretion when applying our strategy, periodically asking ourselves whether our ideas derived from the past still have predictive power for the future. Every single person investing in crypto should do the same.

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed reading this interview! You can view Mountains and Valleys ETH/BTC Set here. If you’d like to be notified of any future product updates, head here to sign up to email notifications!

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