Podcast Notes: How Institutions Invest in 2023?
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Podcast Notes: How Institutions Invest in 2023?
Hal Press, founder of North Rock Digital, shares his investment transition from stocks to cryptocurrencies, as well as insights on identifying investable narratives and planning trades.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Revelo Intel
Compiled by: TechFlow
In the latest episode of The Blockcrunch podcast, we welcomed Hal Press, founder of North Rock Digital, to discuss his investment journey from equities to cryptocurrency, identifying investable narratives and planning trades—an area Hal is currently focused on.
Read the podcast notes below for more details.
About Hal Press
-
Founder of North Park Digital.
-
Well-known on Twitter for timely market commentary.
-
Previously worked at Morgan Stanley for five years, then became a long/short tech investor at Maverick Capital.
North Park Digital's Perspective
-
Blockchain innovation is a step-function technological advancement with significant future potential.
-
The crypto market is currently the least efficient liquid market in the world.
-
Views equity investors as specialists, preferring instead to compete in the inefficient space of crypto.
-
Shorting requires specific capabilities that are not as straightforward as in equities.
-
In equities, long or short positions are primarily driven by fundamentals. In crypto, fundamentals play a role but are clearly less dominant than in equities.
Equity Investing vs. Crypto Investing
-
The value of an asset is the present value of its future cash flows.
-
Does not believe earnings directly drive prices and stocks.
-
Whether a company earns more or less money doesn’t directly create buying or selling pressure; it’s investors’ decisions—based on whether the company is earning or losing money—that generate such pressure.
-
Price is ultimately driven only by the actual supply and demand for the asset.
Identifying Investable Narratives
-
Crypto investing is about positioning ahead of narratives.
-
A narrative is the rationale for expected future price appreciation.
-
No one buys or sells because they believe something positive is happening right now; people trade based on expectations of the future. Concern about future price movement defines a narrative.
-
You must understand broad market conditions, as certain narratives may hold during bull markets but collapse in bear markets.
-
You must assess how an asset is positioned at the current moment.
How Hal Press Approached the Ethereum Merge
-
One core principle of their fund is 90:10—90% of investor effort involves doing nothing, while 10% is dedicated to optimizing positions and monetizing through concentrated holdings.
-
They studied everything related to the Merge.
-
They built extensive connections to gain the best possible sense of the Merge timeline.
-
They analyzed all relevant assets to determine which would benefit most from the Merge.
-
They sought a narrative with real pricing impact.
-
Any factor capable of directly influencing tokenomics is powerful—which is why the Merge was so compelling.
View on Shorting BTC and Going Long ETH
-
The core reason behind this view is a strong focus on tokenomic structures—ETH and BTC have fundamentally different tokenomics.
-
ETH has $5 million in buy-side flow, while BTC has approximately $10 million in unit flow.
-
All else equal, BTC needs to attract $15 million more in daily buyers than ETH, otherwise the ETH/BTC pair will rise.
-
In terms of its position as the leading L1 in the space, ETH holds a significant advantage.
-
ETH will directly compete with Bitcoin as a store of value.
-
ETH is a far superior store of value compared to Bitcoin.
-
Some activity will shift from L1 to L2.
-
If fees are very low, the additional benefits of L2s diminish.
Position Sizing and Trade Exit
-
There's little value in choosing beta direction; capturing alpha offers greater value.
-
Many believe year-end is a good buying opportunity.
-
Look for convergence points—when everyone has different views but suddenly agrees, events are unlikely to happen; but when they do occur, it signals a strong move.
-
They use a framework where bet size, timing, and type vary. They have benchmarks for different types of bets and adjust them based on conviction and perceived risk-reward.
-
Be cautious with sizing—because they have high confidence in their edge and are right more often than wrong.
-
Properly monetize gains, but never expose yourself to material loss—this balance is delicate.
-
Make fewer trades.
-
Exiting is much harder than entering. Both require discipline, process, planning, and resolve.
A Vertical Hal Press Is Watching
-
Their strongest call is on liquid staking derivatives. They had planned ahead even before the Merge occurred.
-
The challenge lies in exit timing, which is hard to predict accurately due to evolving circumstances.
-
There is currently no predefined exit plan.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
Revelo Intel
