Show notes
Eric Ervin has a successful Crypto hedge fund and a background creating and selling ETFs, but his newest endeavors to bring Financial Advisors into crypto is a massive opportunity for the entire space with a group of people managing over $100 trillion. It is a big play and after years of work, the platform is integrated with tradfi systems and advisors are joining.
They are now taking it to the next level to offer DeFi along with custody solutions to advisors.
Name of Guest: Eric Ervin
Name of Projects:
BlockForce Capital
OnRamp Invest
Twitter URL of Guest: https://twitter.com/eervin1
Project Twitter URL: https://twitter.com/Blockforcecap
https://twitter.com/OnrampInvest
Project URL:
https://defi.blockforcecapital.com/
https://blockforcecapital.com/
https://www.onrampinvest.com/
Bridging Traditional and Decentralized FinanceHis background as a quant and manager in trade for wealthy individuals and then his move into ETFs.
Left Morgan Stanley in 2012 to build his own company.
Created a dividends swap market for S&P 500 based entirely on dividend value and not price.
Called it regulatory Tetris
Regulators couldn’t agree how to regulate.
He convinced them to see it as an ETF and got that product approved after 2.5 years.
Gave him an understanding of the process, but learned that the ETF market wasn’t right market for a product like that.
Then he started realizing that crypto and blockchain were perfect for what he was trying to do.
Start a quant hedge fund using their own money and others to actually make money. Started with their money first in order to learn more and be in more.
Was for people not going to manage it themselves.
Started Blockforce capital in 2016 with his own money and then in 2019 took on outside money.
Relates how they invested and managed money. Not a portfolio building fund. More about actively trading and leveraging all kinds of metrics in the market.
Truly wanted to offer a hedge fund like return rather than just a portfolio strategy.
What it was like when he made the move out of trade into crypto in 2016. They did it all in stealth mode. “How can we get ourselves out of the ETF business as fast as possible”.
Why he thinks the idea of a Bitcoin ETF is as silly as an IBM ETF and is completely unnecessary when direct access or via a fund is superior.
Access for all is his mantra.
ETF industry takes a couple of billion to break even and then in a hedge fund about $30 million.
Discussed how they tried to do an acquisition to ramp up faster and it failed at the last minute.
Didn’t market the hedge fund. Just had word of mouth spread the word. At the end of 2020 they rebooted onramp as a stand alone firm.
Major investors like Softbank, Coinbase, & Gemini all investors.
Sizable fund with great performance and gives them an opportunity to try new things, etc.
How they came up with and built a platform for onramping financial advisors.
No way to easily create accounts for clients. Coinbase asked him to build it.
How May of 2021 was the iPhone market for crypto and they were able to now let anyone create via their system and access it via their existing investment accounts at TD, etc.
How they are now going to move into DeFi projects with self-custody, but allowing advisors to manage for them.
Providing EAT - Education, Access, and Tools
We discussed what it is like for advisors to see what is available in crypto and how powerful it can be.
His thoughts on where we are with regulators and the btc ETF.
How amazing the process was integrating what they offer with a DAO as a product to launch.
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