Greg King, Founder and CEO, Osprey Funds

Greg King has spent his career creating vehicles that enable investors to access complex risk exposures.  Part of the team from Barclays that designed the VXX ETP product in 2009, Greg went on to co-found Velocity Shares, a firm that was ultimately acquired by Janus and created both the TVIX and XIV, levered long and short versions of the VXX.  About the XIV, Greg shares his views on the manner in which the mechanical hedging requirements for inverse leveraged products can lead to a spiral in the price of the underlying asset.  Later, Greg would found Rex Shares, a platform that has brought a series of exchange-traded products to market.  Through our conversation, we hear Greg’s perspectives on the characteristics of products that attract considerable AuM versus the many that do not.  In this context, Greg believes that understanding the technicalities of how a product is built is important but so too is persistence and a little bit of luck.  We spent the balance of our discussion talking about Greg’s venture into crypto, a space he has been involved in for more than 7 years.  His Osprey Funds has launched OBTC, an access vehicle for Bitcoin, that seeks to lower both the costs and challenges associated with gaining exposure.  About the crypto space broadly, Greg sees lots of opportunity to develop tradeable, ticker-based trust structures that provide access to various digital coins and tokens.  I hope you enjoy this episode of the Alpha Exchange, my conversation with Greg King.