Fintech
Open Heart Capital, a Leading Crypto Hedge Fund, Devotes Profits To Highly Effective Charities
New York, New York–(Newsfile Corp. – October 27, 2022) – Open Heart Capital is a market-neutral, fully-automated, quantitative cryptocurrency hedge fund with a twist: the founders and GPs, David Hu and Aaron Mayer, have both committed a large percentage of the fund’s performance fee to highly effective charities.
Mayer and Hu met through the effective altruism community, a group of people who use evidence and data science to determine how to maximally benefit society through philanthropy. Much of the fund’s profits will be directed towards promoting global health via the Against Malaria Foundation, where a $2.50 donation can manufacture and distribute an insecticide-coated mosquito net that can prevent someone from contracting malaria, which is often deadly.
“Think of it as getting the best return on investment for charity,” says Mayer, who caps his salary at $70,000 in order to donate any income above that amount to the AMF. “The effective altruism movement is really just a bunch of nice nerds trying to figure out how to do the best they can to improve the world.” Some other cause areas that effective altruists focus on include poverty amelioration, farmed animal welfare, and protecting civilization from existential risks like nuclear war and bioengineered pandemics.
Mayer and Hu started Open Heart Capital in order to “earn to give,” and they apply their combined 15+ years of experience with blockchain technology and digital assets. The fund is almost entirely quantitative and algorithmic, blending a combination of arbitrage and mean reversion strategies to achieve risk-adjusted returns that contrast with the simple buy-and-hold approach of most retail investors. The fund is structured to withstand market fluctuations, and it has historically performed at its best during periods of high volatility and market uncertainty.
The algorithms were developed by Hu, an early bitcoin investor in 2011, alongside a team of quants at another New York-based trading desk who have a combined 30+ years of experience managing billion-dollar funds in the traditional equities markets. Hu is a gifted engineer who has won multiple AI competitions and was asked by the Obama administration to revive the healthcare.gov website after its failed launch in 2013. The team’s newest short-only algorithm makes intraday trades that are only exposed to the market for an hour at most, allowing for quick entries and exits as opportunities present themselves based on the relative strength of different signals.
“Running the fund with David has been extremely rewarding,” says Mayer. “It’s been a beautiful combination of the head and the heart.”
Contact:
Aaron Mayer
Open Heart Capital
aaron@openheart.capital
To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/142095
