Silentist Q1 2026 Performance Review
Roy Kim6 min read·Just now--
This report summarizes the actual trading performance of Silentist, a quantitative crypto asset manager, during Q1 2026.
We review how our strategies behaved under the prevailing market conditions, what adjustments were made, and how we are preparing for Q2 2026.
Market Environment in Q1 2026
Q1 2026 unfolded in three phases: (1) brief upward momentum at the start of the year, (2) a sharp drawdown exceeding -30% over approximately 20 days starting in mid-January, and (3) sideways trading from February through the end of March, marked by significant volatility amid the US–Iran war.
From a broader perspective, the market resembled Q4 2025. It was a quarter where diversified strategies and rigorous risk management were essential to navigate intensified market chop.
Silentist Strategy Overview
From 2025 to the present, Silentist has been operating the following three core strategies:
BALANCE Strategy: A versatile long-short strategy centered on BTC, ETH, and blue-chip altcoins. It blends a technical trading portfolio — combining trend, mean-reversion, and market-neutral sub-strategies in balanced proportions — with a fundamental long-short portfolio based on on/off-chain data.
BALANCE-SPOT Strategy: A long-only version of the technical trading portfolio within BALANCE, designed for stable spot exposure to BTC, ETH, and blue-chip ALTs.
ASSEMBLE Strategy: Shares the same essence as BALANCE, but optimizes the sub-strategy weights for managing crypto-denominated principal (e.g., BTC, ETH).
Q1 2026 Live Trading Performance
In Q1 2026, every Silentist strategy outperformed simple BTC holding.
The performance based on live accounts from January 1 to March 31, 2026:
- BALANCE Strategy: +1.3%
- BALANCE-SPOT Strategy: -6.3%
- ASSEMBLE-BTC Strategy: -21.0%
- BTC Buy-and-Hold: -22.1%
The ASSEMBLE-BTC strategy, which uses BTC as principal, grew by +1.3% in BTC terms. However, due to the BTC/USDT price decline, its USDT-denominated return was -21.0%.
BALANCE Strategy Exposure Changes
From mid-January, we rapidly shifted to short positions, capitalizing on the -30% market drawdown. As the market subsequently entered a phase of sharp, repeated volatility — alternating quick drawdowns and rallies — we frequently adjusted exposure levels to optimize responsiveness. This process inevitably resulted in small accumulated losses from long-short transitions.
As of early April, when this article is being written, the downside support line that has held over the past two months remains intact, and as upward momentum begins to reemerge, we are reducing short exposure.
Operational Transparency
The real-time performance of BALANCE, our flagship strategy, can be transparently verified at the following links:
Cumulative Performance (Jul 1, 2025 — Mar 31, 2026)
The cumulative performance since July 2025 — when the foundation of our current operational system was established — is as follows:
Strategy Changes for Q2 2026
A New Strategy in the Algorithmic Portfolio (from Q1 2026)
We added FACTTO, a long-short strategy that builds portfolios through fundamental quantitative scoring based on on/off-chain data.
FACTTO collects on/off-chain data daily across approximately 90 projects and conducts fundamental evaluations through quantitative scoring. It synthesizes over 300 individual signals to derive the final fundamental assessment for each project.
Based on these fundamental scores across 90+ projects, the strategy takes long positions in the highest-scoring tokens and short positions in the lowest-scoring tokens, rebalancing daily.
While the technical trading portfolio in BALANCE generates signals by segmenting raw market data into dozens of intervals, FACTTO converts a broad and diverse dataset into simple, decisive signals. As a result, the two portfolios exhibit low correlation and operate in a complementary manner.
Q2 2026 Trading Universe Update
Q2 2026 Technical Trading Portfolio Universe
Silentist’s technical trading portfolio begins with selecting suitable instruments through a multi-dimensional screening process.
Starting in Q2 2026, the evaluation is based on recent-period scores rather than full-period cumulative scores.
Total of 15 tokens selected:
Quadrant 1 — Blue-chips strong on both fundamentals and technical trading performance:
- ETH, BNB: Major Layer 1
- AVAX, SUI: 2nd-generation Layer 1
- ADA, XRP, ICP, ALGO: Old-school & Tier 2 Layer 1
- ARB: Layer 2
Quadrant 2 — Strong fundamentals, but recent technical trading performance has weakened:
- BTC, SOL
Quadrant 4 — Weaker fundamentals, but strong compatibility with technical trading strategies:
- TAO, ZEC: AI and privacy theme tokens currently drawing narrative attention
- PEPE, DOGE: Major memecoins with the longest histories
Unlike Q1 2026, the technical and fundamental portfolios are now clearly separated. Accordingly, the technical trading portfolio is selected primarily based on its compatibility with technical trading strategies. The universe was narrowed to 13 tokens this quarter (down from 18 last quarter).
Q2 2026 Fundamental Portfolio Universe
The fundamental portfolio constructs long and short positions from the top 5 and bottom 5 tokens by fundamental strength within a broader universe.
While the 10 daily positions are rebalanced from a wider pool, this pool is defined quite broadly. Considering market capitalization, listings on major exchanges, and the availability of diversified on-chain data, we operate a total universe of 91 tokens.
Our Perspective Heading into Q2 2026
1. Hedging Silentist Itself
The emergence of perp DEXs such as Hyperliquid has dramatically expanded visibility into on-chain trader behavior. As the size of the meaningful sample population grows, we believe that mining information from less publicly known on-chain smart traders can serve as a hedge for Silentist’s own strategies.
2. A Future Where Humans No Longer Invest
Quantitative trading research is fundamentally a form of digital labor. Historically, the entry barriers were the ability to handle data and the effort required to construct and test data-driven strategies. Idea research and validation demanded substantial digital labor.
The quality of research is, in fact, proportional to how accurately and extensively one can perform data-based digital labor. AI Agents can streamline and accelerate much of this work. Silentist is dedicating itself to building an AI Agent-based research infrastructure on top of our existing research pipeline.
Silentist’s ultimate goal is to construct a multi-strategy portfolio built on four pillars:
- Technical trading strategies built by human quants
- Fundamental trading strategies based on on/off-chain data
- Trading strategies sourced from third parties (outside of Silentist)
- Comprehensive trading strategies generated purely by AI Agents
