Exclusive: Huobi Chief Investment Officer Sharlyn Wu will leave to continue exploring DeFi

Wu said author | Colin Wu

Editor of this issue | Wu Talks about Blockchain

Since last week, news about the upcoming resignation of Huobi Group’s Chief Investment Officer Sharlyn Wu has spread in the industry. Wu Blockchain has confirmed from multiple sources that Sharlyn has officially submitted her resignation.

An industry insider said that Sharlyn Wu is one of the most insightful cryptocurrency investors in China and is very passionate about and concerned about DeFi. It is reported that Sharlyn will explore promoting the development of DeFi in a more community-oriented way in the future.

Sharlyn Wu helped Huobi build a relatively international investment team and strategy during her tenure. After her departure, there are some doubts about whether Huobi can continue to maintain its international expansion investment route.

On August 3, 2020, Huobi announced that it was setting up a new fund to invest tens of millions of dollars of its own funds in DeFi. Initially consisting of four employees, DeFi Labs will focus on research, investment, and incubation of DeFi-related projects, hiring former banker Sharlyn Wu as chief investment officer to lead the program. In October 2020, Alex Pack, former managing partner of crypto asset venture capital fund Dragonfly Capital, joined Huobi's strategic investment department as an investment advisor.

Sharlyn Wu graduated from the University of Sydney and worked at UBS from 2005 to 2015. She worked at CMB International from 2017 to 2020, responsible for the blockchain investment department. She joined Huobi in 2020. CMB International is a subsidiary of China Merchants Bank, mainly engaged in Hong Kong listing sponsorship and underwriting, listed company placement and rights issue, bond issuance services, asset management, direct investment and other services.

In an interview with Decrypt, she said that both CeFi and DeFi have their own advantages. CeFi provides the basis for high-frequency transactions that require trusted entities; DeFi is very suitable for low-frequency transactions without credit risk.

In the half year since she joined Huobi, although not much information has been disclosed, she has invested in many mainstream DeFi projects. Huobi has successively established the Huobi Ecosystem Fund of US$200 million, the Filecoin Fund of US$10 million, and the Polkadot Fund of US$5 million. However, Huobi has not yet found any high-quality projects to invest in the Filecoin and Polkadot fields.

Huobi's investment projects disclosed so far include Cofix and Linear, and many projects have not yet been disclosed. Wu said blockchain learned that Huobi also focused on Layer2 projects such as Optimism and Zk Sync, DeFi project Pooltogether, and insurance project InsurAce; at the same time, it invested in many leading projects together with Coinbase.

Sharlyn Wu once said that when she decided to leave CMB International and join Huobi, her plan was to find 10 DeFi projects that could survive the bubble burst. It will take time to prove whether she has found them. (Image from Crypto Rand Group)