Leadership Team
We are curious. We're students of economy,
culture, technology and currency.
Our founders are three friends, colleagues, and business partners who are
passionate about and dedicated to being the best in the cryptocurrency
space. With a combined 60 years of professional experience across
investing, technology, and cybersecurity, we create investment strategies
in the cryptocurrency space which seek to generate asymmetric
risk-adjusted returns.
Our mindset in focused on anti-fragility, meaning we like volatility.
Markets are not linear; in our view, they're typically elastic. To us,
these are opportunities, not challenges. With our battle-tested fund
we seek to bring predictability to an expanding
market plagued by high volatility.
The People
Ryan DeMattia
Founder & Managing Director
Ryan is a tech expert, cryptocurrency early adopter and quantitative analyst, originally published on Bitcoin in 2011. He has bootstrapped previous startups and has 10+ years trading and modeling emergent and exotic markets, with a statistical background concentrated on simulation modeling.
Ryan holds an MBA from Clemson University and is based in Atlanta, GA.
"In the years I’ve spent in the markets I’ve learned that there’s always risk in every system. As a result we’re built on a vision of risk consciousness and capital preservation. Easier said than done in crypto markets. But our vision is to be a real, true-to-nature hedge fund whose original technology began in 2016. We developed our systems for five years and the funds went live in May of 2021.
To me, the original great hedge funds of the past were designed to hedge risk and provide uncorrelated returns. I’m obviously biased – but I believe that with us, investors put their money in a vehicle unlike what they’d typically find in the crypto space, and more like what existed back then. The strategies we have created are designed to be less sensitive to market shocks and seek to remove the dependence on human elements of emotion and intuition, making the process as market-agnostic and sentiment-agnostic as possible."
Shareef Abdou
Co-Founder & Director, Strategy
and Finance
Shareef is a veteran strategy, operations, and proprietary trading expert. He has a background innovating within institutional finance and brings key expertise in risk management, portfolio construction, process improvement and developing operational strategies.
Shareef holds an MBA from UCLA and is based in Los Angeles, CA.
"I’m a financial guy who’s always been fascinated by patterns, economics, and figuring out how things relate to each other. And I don’t like routine. Crypto is a dynamic space, constantly evolving, with so much to learn every day. As a former banking executive and a proprietary trader, I’ve been through the dot-com bubble, the mortgage crisis, the global financial crisis, and the COVID market volatility. In 2019, I told Ryan, “Show me what this AI can do.” After some due diligence, I saw that Ryan and the team had created a compelling technology. I gave him increasing amounts of money, as I was pleased with the results. We eventually partnered up in 2020 at that finance-technology intersection with our respective skills, and now Coindex Cap is our baby. Our target investors include individuals, institutions, pension funds, and endowments. It’s the biggest risk I’ve ever taken, but it’s the most exciting and expansive part of my career."
Matt Rahman
Co-Founder & Director, Operations
and Cybersecurity
Matt is a veteran technologist, cybersecurity and SaaS entrepreneur. He has 20+ years’ experience running cybersecurity projects for extremely sensitive government and financial clients, scaling VC backed technology companies, and managing M&A and turnaround deals.
Matt holds an MBA from NYIT and is based in Atlanta, GA.
"Ryan and I have been friends and business partners for more than a decade. I consider him one of the brightest early adopters of crypto. We bootstrapped Coindex Cap with our own money because I believe crypto is the future of commerce and currency. Shareef’s an amazing partner and friend. I’ve known him as an investor, financial risks management leader, and trading strategy savant. I believe that what makes our funds special is bringing together the right technology and the right team at the right time. Me, I got into technology and cybersecurity when the early adoption of the internet started to explode, chasing bad actors and criminal syndicates all over the world. In my opinion crypto and blockchain make the internet much more interesting.
I think, “How can bad actors gain unauthorized access?’ I look at motives, tactics, tools, and always follow the money and crypto trail."