Our team consists a mix of early adopters in the digital assets space and experts in the fields of systematic trading, low-latency engineering, quantitative research, and portfolio management.

We believe there will be substantial global impact, unfolding over the next decade, as the transformation of this disruptive sector and underlying technologies continue. We also deeply understand the high degree of structural inefficiencies, volaility, counterparty risks, and the unique regulatory landscape that exist in this nascent space.

Meet the Team

  • Seattle Smith

    Founder | CIO & CEO

    Mr. Smith is the CEO and CIO of Baus Capital. With over a decade of experience as a portfolio manager and researcher, Mr. Smith has demonstrated expertise in trading high-vol liquid assets, including digital assets since 2017. His leadership at Baus Capital is best characterized by an unwaivering commitment to strategic growth opportunities and performance-driven results.

    He began his trading career at a young age, quickly honing his skills as a proprietary trader in U.S. equities and derivatives markets. His focus on microstructure research in small and micro-cap equities in emergent sectors is what naturally led him to the digital asset space. Prior to founding Baus Capital, Mr. Smith was a cryptocurrency trader at BlockTower Capital, an institutional crypto asset manager.

  • Chris LeClerc

    CTO

    Mr. LeClerc is an accomplished leader with over 25 years of experience in technology and research, serving in various leadership roles. He was most recently the Chief Technology Officer at First Quadrant, a systematic macro hedge fund with $20B in AUM at its peak. Prior to his time at First Quadrant, Mr. LeClerc was on the statistical arbitrage and electronic market making desks at UBS Investment Bank.

    Other past roles includes; Officer in The US Navy, Researcher, and Head of Research Technology at First Quadrant.

    Mr. LeClerc holds a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics from UC Berkeley and a Masters in Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago.

  • Matthew Tweed

    Head of Engineering

    Mr. Tweed is a senior engineer with extensive experience in digital asset markets and low latency trading systems. His involvement in digital assets dates back to 2015, and at some point he accounted for ~2-3% of Deribit’s daily derivatives volume.

    He formerly founded Pine Financial, a UK-based crypto trading firm focusing on ultra low-latency arbitrage trading. At Pine he was responsible for the buildout of their ultra low-latency single exchange and cross exchange market making technologies.

  • Stefan David

    Senior Quantitative Researcher

    Dr. Stefan David is a highly accomplished quantitative researcher with deep expertise in systematic trading and financial research. He most recently served as a Senior Quantitative Researcher with PM attributions at Millennium Partners' Dubai office. There, he built the team's US trading strategy from the ground up.

    Prior to Millennium, Dr. David worked in Quantitative Research for WorldQuant and Two Sigma, where he contributed to equity stat-arb and HFT trading strategies across global markets.

    Dr. David holds a PhD and a Master’s in Pure Mathematics from the University of Cambridge, specializing in combinatorics.

  • James Thompson

    Head of Quantitative Research

    Mr. Thompson is a veteran quant researcher and trader with extensive experience in cryptoasset markets. He most recently served at CMT Digital, a nine-figures aum crypto prop fund, where he held the positions of Head of Quantitative Research and Quantitative Researcher.

    Prior to his time as Head of QR at CMT, Mr. Thompson was the CIO at Canonical Alpha Capital Management, a liquid hedge fund which focused on high-frequency trading and statistical arbitrage in cryptocurrency markets.

  • Edgar Dominguez

    Senior Software Engineer

    Mr. Dominguez has several years of experience in C++ engineering and low-latency systems. Previously, he worked as a backend engineer for a low-latency cryptocurrency trading firm.

    He received his Masters Degree in Particle Physics and his PhD in High Energy Physics at UNAM, working in experimental detection, data analysis, phenomenology and thermodynamics.

  • David Zwetzich

    Quant Researcher

    Mr. Zwetzich is an experienced quantitiative researcher, specializing in forecast modeling. Most recently, he served as a researcher at CMT Digital, primarly working on mid-frequency systematic strategies.

    He posesses over 5 years of reseatch experience in digital asset markets.

  • Daniel

    Operations

    Daniel has almost two decades experience spanning strategy, banking, fintech and quant finance. He worked both at Bridgewater and AQR as portfolio specialist. He has helped grow three highly successful fintech startups and advised several others.

    He started his career at McKinsey’s risk management practice and leverage finance at HSBC. He holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.