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Please give a warm Origin welcome to Kelly Hwang, my lifelong friend of 20+ years and seasoned crypto and traditional finance investor. Kelly recently joined Origin as Head of Investments and Treasury. His primary objective is to grow the Origin Foundation’s balance sheet, so that we will have many years of operating capital to scale Origin Story, Origin Dollar, and any other future Origin business units. As our treasury grows, we will have the ability to hire more aggressively, acquire new users and partners through marketing, and other initiatives that drive value to OGN and our upcoming new token, OGV. In addition, under Kelly’s leadership, Origin will be selectively investing in new startups that share our web3 ethos and/or have strategic synergies with our protocols and community.
After just a couple weeks on the job, Kelly has already implemented new treasury strategies at Origin. In turbulent market times, it’s essential that protocols de-risk their exposure to violent downside price action. To that end, Kelly is managing our portfolio exposure between fiat (USD), stablecoins, and large-cap cryptocurrencies. He has begun writing and buying options at different strike prices and tenors to manage our risk while earning yield. He will also be implementing delta-neutral high-yield strategies to grow the treasury while minimizing market risk.
Kelly has been a member of the crypto community since the beginning, having read the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2011 and gradually increasing his exposure over time. In the last market cycle, beyond being one of the first checks into Origin, he was quick to invest in Filecoin and Tezos. Today, he is a very active participant in DeFi protocols such as Compound, Curve, Convex, Abracadabra Money; his staking/yield farming experience spans across multiple chains including Ethereum, Avalanche, Solana, Fantom, and Layer 2s (e.g. Arbitrum). Beyond DeFi, Kelly is also an NFT degen. He is an early holder of Azuki, CloneX, MAYC, and many other collections.
I first met Kelly the summer after we both enrolled at Stanford University. In the next four years, we developed a strong friendship across mutual interests of investing, understanding the macro markets, and entrepreneurship. After college, Kelly honed his investment expertise in several industries. First, he was an investment banker at Jefferies covering technology companies. At Upfront Ventures, he helped lead multiple investments, including several deals at the forefront of the creator economy. Between his venture and angel deals, Kelly has invested in over 100 companies and seen hundreds more. Later, Kelly scratched his entrepreneurial itch by co-founding, scaling, and successfully selling his own consumer e-commerce company.
I’m extremely excited to be partnering with Kelly to raise the Origin Foundation’s capital reserves, so that we can most effectively deploy our resources to the benefits of our token holders and broader community.
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