Quants Space
Sharpe of four,
and a story about this time.
Every week, someone sends me a backtest with a Sharpe of 4 and a story about why this time is different. Most of them aren't lying to me. They're lying to themselves. Finding out which ones are is what I do for a living.
Maxim Shilo
Co-founder & CEO, Quants.Space
Institutional discovery & verification for quant and discretionary trading teams
I traded for seven years before I built anything. Mostly learning what doesn't work: too many parameters, too much time spent on entries, not nearly enough on exits. The market charged me tuition, and I paid it in full.
That's the part most platform founders skip. I've sat in the chair. I know what a flat equity curve does to your sleep, and I know what it feels like to pitch capital with three months of numbers and a lot of hope. So I built what I wish had existed.
Quants.Space is an institutional discovery and verification platform. More than 130 vetted quantitative and discretionary trading teams, a dedicated Emerging Managers sector, and allocators who access them directly through a Separately Managed Account framework. Performance, where possible, is verified through read-only exchange keys directly on the platform. It's not a database. It's a trust layer — with intelligence and consultancy on top of it.
130+
Vetted quantitative and discretionary trading teams, plus an Emerging Managers sector
1,000+
Telegram group chats: hundreds of teams and allocators, talked to constantly
The seat I sit in
Teams tell me their real drawdowns, the ones that never make the tearsheet. Allocators tell me the real reason they passed, the one they never put in the email. I see both sides of every conversation. That's rare, and a unique position to be in. It's the whole point of this newsletter.
"This industry is a mycelium network. Reputation travels faster than PnL. The room is small, and the memory is long."
Maxim Shilo
Quants Space Newsletter
For years, the story was that the machines won. Codify the edge, scale the signal, remove the human. Then everyone ran the same code. Spreads compressed. Strategies that did 15-20% started scraping 4-6%. The funding arb became less attractive than a savings account.
What survives alpha decay? Judgment. Verification. Trust. The handshake behind the SMA. That's what this newsletter is about.
What you'll find here
01
What allocators actually check in due diligence, and what kills a raise before the first call.
02
Alpha decay, regime shifts, and which edges are quietly dying.
03
Verification: backtests versus live, and why "trust me" no longer clears the bar.
04
Market structure and macro, with the attribution done properly, not the Twitter version.
05
Stories from the conference bar at 11pm, when the real numbers come out.
06
Thinking in BTC terms, because one BTC is always one BTC.
Who this is for
Trading teams
If you run a quant or discretionary crypto team and you're raising capital, this is written for you.
Allocators
If you're an allocator deploying into digital asset strategies, you get the other side of the table: what teams are really thinking, and how to tell the real ones from the well-marketed ones.
TradFi desks
Wondering whether to cross over? Read this first. Crypto doesn't forgive the mistakes it has already seen a thousand times.
Quants, researchers & PMs
If you build models, research markets or manage a book, this is where you hear what the rest of the network is actually doing — and what allocators are asking for.
What this isn't
No signals. No price targets. No shilling. Nothing here is financial advice. Just what I see from the middle of the network, written plainly. It's free. It lands every Monday, early London time — written every Sunday after sun sets.
Join 4,000+ readers
Return of the Human. Every Monday.
Free, early London time. Written every Sunday after sun sets.
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Allocator looking for a curated pipeline, or a team that wants to be verified? Write to [email protected]
