The man once known as the "world’s top NBA gambler" has invested $2.5 million in an Atlanta startup.
Digital Opportunities Group, founded by entrepreneurs Dalton Cole and Phillip Moran, is a financial technology company that builds portfolio management technology and runs a hedge fund for accredited investors in the web3 space, an iteration of the internet based on shared ledger systems used by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether.
The startup's service aligns with past efforts of Haralabos “Bob” Voulgaris, a former professional gambler and director of quantitative research and development for the Dallas Mavericks, whose career has focused on quantitative analytics.
In 2005, Voulgaris partnered with an anonymous math whiz to use the NBA’s play-by-play stat publication system to make a program predicting NBA game results called Ewing. The model found about 1,000 bets per season and in the 2010-2011 NBA season, Ewing produced a 6% return on investment.
The seed investment comes months after Voulgaris’ three-year career with the Mavericks organization ended in controversy.
In June of last year, the Athletic reported that Voulgaris had a large influence on the organization’s decision-making. Multiple sources told the outlet that he was the most influential voice within the team’s front office. Some referred to him as the Mavericks de-facto co-general manager.
Voulgaris' notoriety began in the late 1990s thanks to sports betting. During that time, there were reports that he was regularly flipping $1 million a day on NBA games. Some in the gambling community knew him as “the world’s top NBA gambler."
Voulgaris and his team learned about the DiggOpp platform and believed in its mission to build out institutional and technological quality in the web3 space, said Moran.
The mission of the fund, called Decentralized Dollar Alpha Fund, is to deliver a return stream using web3 markets that are unrelated to the stock market or crypto value fluctuations.
“The market has been pretty frothy this year, especially for digital assets,” said Moran. “As this world of [decentralized finance] opens up, returns uncorrelated to the stock market will become more attractive for traditional investors.”
DiggOpp adds to Atlanta’s growing cryptocurrency and digital asset industry. Blockchain payment provider BitPay has a growing list of partners that accept cryptocurrency, and digital asset startup Bakkt went public last year. This month, the Atlanta Blockchain Center, a startup incubator, is set to open in Buckhead.
Prior to co-founding DiggOpp, Kennesaw State University classmates Cole and Moran spent just under a decade working in finance and technology.
Cole held several leadership roles in tech startups including fundraising platform Softgiving and social organization Movement Forward. Moran had previously managed $3 billion in assets as the head portfolio manager for hedge funds at UPS Group Trust.
Around four years ago, the two discussed running a trading strategy, but the technology or industrial support wasn’t ready. Now that the industry has matured enough for them to be able to raise capital, Cole and Moran have launched their crypto management platform.
As the company launches, it will be bringing on Roxton McNeal, head of multi asset investment strategy and allocation at the UPS Group Trust, and Johnny Wu, CEO of financial consulting company Quartzy Capital Advisors, as senior advisors.
“[McNeal and Yu] have a broad view in terms of what’s going on in traditional markets,” Moran said. “Being in the crypto space, we can lose sight and it's helpful to have an outside perspective.”
Although the company currently operates as an asset manager, it also views itself as a tech startup. It has the long-term goal of licensing its own asset management software platforms, Spike and Spot, to institutional investors.
Spike is a data aggregation platform and research engine that looks across 16 blockchains and 1,500 sources of returns in decentralized financial markets. Spot is a portfolio risk management platform and tracks the historical performance of funds.
“What sets us apart from other crypto funds is our focus on tech,” Moran said. “There's not much portfolio management technology for Defi, which allows us to access opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t be accessible.”
