cory on Nostr: I hear Matt @odell claims people think his VC firm, Ten31, is closely tied to Swan ...

I hear Matt @odell claims people think his VC firm, Ten31, is closely tied to Swan and that some people may be influenced to use Swan or invest in Swan because of Ten31's involvement. Let me state very clearly that Ten31 has no influence on Swan, and no information rights. Ten31's biggest investment by far is in Strike, they sit on the Unchained board, and Matt and Marty's podcast is sponsored by River.

Matt was a very early advisor to Swan, specifically focused on privacy, and we very much appreciate his contributions. He owns some advisor shares in Swan, but has never been asked to invest.

Jonathan and Grant from Ten31 each cut angel checks into Swan very early on, and rolled them into their first fund. They also cut a small check into our A round from Ten31, which was a party round (lots of small checks) in Fall 2021. I don't think we ever received an investor referral from Ten31, nor do I remember ever hearing someone mention Ten31 when getting in touch about a Swan investment.

In summary, as @Odell himself said, Ten31 invested a tiny amount in Swan, long ago, and has no information rights. All large investors in Swan do extensive diligence, and they are not concerned with the names of seed funds from early rounds.

Regarding Swan's small hedge fund that we created for a couple of our institutional investors, which seems to have triggered the latest outburst from Mr. Odell:

We needed a head of trading for institutional clients to execute trades with VWAP / TWAP etc and tight spreads from multiple OTC desks. He happened to have a great track record of asset management, and a strong desire to continue managing money. A couple of our investors wanted a lower-vol Bitcoin strategy (sit in cash during drawdowns, ok with losing a little upside by missing part of some pumps), and decided to seed him in a Swan-managed fund. The fund is already at capacity and we are not marketing it.

My advice to retail investors remains the same as it's always been: DON'T TRADE UNLESS YOU WERE ALREADY A PROFESSIONAL TRADER. 99% get rekt, and it's even worse in "crypto" because that game is rigged even worse than tradfi. Much better to stay humble and stack sats, ideally with a Bitcoin-only company like Swan (we don't even have a sell button! and we have still have FREE automatic withdrawals).