RIV Capital’s new cryptocurrency is partly based on a liquid multi-asset fund with annual performance of approximately 20% and an average Sharpe ratio of approximately 4. The technological architecture structured by RIV Capital is an example of what the future of wealth management could be.
From its launch in October 2023 to the end of last September, it generated a total return of 33.9%, with a downside risk limited to just 4.48%, and a performance of as much as 27% over the course of 2024. This is the performance of the RIV Capital Sicav RAIF, a long-only model-driven multi-asset fund registered in Luxembourg. Its strategy, adopted through other previous investment vehicles, however, has a much longer track record, with a Sharpe ratio that has consistently been above 4 over the last 15 years, a level rarely seen in both traditional and alternative asset classes and well above industry benchmarks. These strong numbers demonstrate that RAIF will be used as a bridge between traditional, albeit alternative, finance and decentralized finance, given that it was chosen by RIV Capital to constitute the underlying asset that guarantees the reserves of RIV Coin, the new cryptocurrency that RIV Capital is preparing to market in the coming months (see here a previous article by BeBeez International and here the presentation slides).
The architecture structured by RIV Capital, as an example of what the future of wealth management could be, was illustrated in detail during the masterclass “The frontier of financial innovation on digital infrastructure” organized in partnership with BeBeez as part of WeWealth’s Wealth Management Summit 2025, on October 9th in Milan.
Massimiliano Marzo, the group’s chief economist, and Mario Mantovani, managing director of Investment Banking, described the strategy in detail after an interview with founder, chairman & CEO Roberto Rivera (see here another article by BeBeez International).
Click above to watch the video of the full masterclass.
The fund’s strategy is based on four pillars: a large debt component, an equity component, a portion of liquidity in ETFs and cash, and an algorithmic technology component, which governs the entire allocation. Unlike traditional alternative funds, RAIF adopts an extremely opportunistic and granular approach.
The fixed income component constitutes the predominant allocation within the portfolio, representing up to 70%, but never less than approximately 55%, of total holdings. Since the strategy’s inception in 2011, the debt portfolio has recorded zero defaults. The strategy invests in credit-related instruments, focusing primarily, but not exclusively, on private debt, corporate bonds, senior, mezzanine, and junior tranches of securities issued as part of trade receivables securitizations, originated by a diversified pool of US and European companies and organized by leading international investment banks. Essentially, the strategy’s objective is to achieve positive absolute returns by focusing on selected investments in liquid/illiquid credit-related instruments that are attractive compared to those in traditional equity and government bond markets. “In fixed income, we don’t just evaluate ratings,” Marzo clarified, “but also analyze the contractual relationships that bind the issuer to its ecosystem. An example is the Royal Bank of Scotland: when the market priced in extremely high risk, we purchased bonds at 50/100, knowing that the government would guarantee them in the event of default. This is the type of informational and contractual asymmetry we seek.” The goal is to generate stable and countercyclical interest flows, selecting bonds capable of providing returns even in highly volatile scenarios, without burdening the portfolio with systemic risk. This part of the portfolio also serves a stabilizing function, allowing it to resiliently weather drawdowns like those experienced in spring 2025, where the fund nevertheless maintained a positive balance.
The equity component, on the other hand, is selected with a proprietary algorithm that combines fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence, methods that have allowed the asset allocation to beat the annual performance of the S&P 500 index 79% of the time between 2011 and 2024. Fuzzy logic is a reasoning approach that mimics the human decision-making process, considering the degrees of truth between yes and no, unlike binary logic, which strictly returns true or false. Thanks to this approach, the RIV algorithm is able to select stocks based on a combination of parameters, each of which is assigned different degrees of attractiveness. This helps shape investment decisions in a more nuanced way, similar to how a human analyst might evaluate trade-offs and partial strengths between different stocks.
“We combine official financial statement information with statistical market signals to obtain a more complete understanding of the stocks’ potential,” Marzo explained, adding: “We have a very granular, highly diversified equity portfolio, constructed without rigid geographic or sector constraints.” The algorithm selects top-notch global stocks by combining price earnings, technical and fundamental signals, market sentiment, and qualitative indicators. However, the final selection remains in the hands of the investment committee, which filters the proposals based on decorrelation criteria, downgrade risk control, and consistency with the target risk-return profile.
Finally, as mentioned, the RAIF also invests in ETFs and liquidity, used flexibly to optimize portfolio efficiency and manage tactical exposure. “Our goal is not to always outperform the index, but to maximize portfolio efficiency: our average Sharpe ratios are around 4, peaking at 5, and never below 3,” the professor emphasized. Precisely because of these characteristics, RAIF acts as a catalyst within a composite portfolio.
“We tested the RAIF within model portfolios and verified that it increases the efficient frontier, significantly improving overall performance,” added the professor, who explained: “More specifically, we simulated three mixed portfolios, with increasing exposure to RAIF. In all cases, the inclusion of our fund increases the expected return for the same risk or reduces the overall risk for the same return. This is only possible with flexible strategies, independent of rigid benchmarks, and with a robust and verifiable track record: ours dates back to 2010.” Marzo added: “Unlike most alternative funds, which operate on illiquid private markets, we offer wealth managers, family offices, and professional investors a liquid solution with weekly gates, designed to be included in a diversified portfolio with a catalytic return and risk stabilization function,” Marzo explained, adding: “The fund structure provides a weekly Net Asset Value and the possibility of weekly entry and exit, with a minimum access threshold of €100,000, in line with European regulations on alternatives.”
But, as mentioned above, RIV’s RAIF is not just an alternative fund: it is also the underlying asset that guarantees the reserves of RIVCoin, the new cryptocurrency that RIV Capital is preparing to launch in early 2026 (see here a previous article by BeBeez International). Mario Mantovani highlighted the link between RAIF’s investment strategy and the technological ecosystem built by its subsidiary RIV Technologies. “Oure RAIF is also the instrument that fuels the reserves of RIVCoin, RIV’s new digital currency, which will be based on a proprietary, quantum-resistant blockchain with decentralized governance and independent nodes,” said Mantovani, specifying that “RIVCoin is not a stablecoin: it does not aim for parity with a fiat currency, but is instead based on real reserves represented by RAIF assets. The coin’s value is validated in real time via the Zero Knowledge Proof protocol, which makes on-chain reserves auditable, without exposing sensitive data.
This structural link allows the technology underlying RIVCoin to evolve beyond the simple issuance of an asset-backed cryptocurrency: the proprietary blockchain was designed to support the tokenization of regulated financial instruments and interoperability with DeFi protocols. This means that, in the near future, the infrastructure developed for RIVCoin can also be leveraged to create new digital investment instruments (tokens based on structured portfolios, capital-protected products, or tokenized credit), while maintaining the compliance, transparency, and auditability requirements required by institutional investors. In this sense, RAIF is not just a reserve, but the first building block of a new digital wealth infrastructure, upon which to build a modular and scalable offering for the wealth management of the future.
RIV’s goal is to create a bridge between the CeFi and DeFi worlds: a native digital currency, based on regulated assets, that can gradually enter the portfolios of institutional investors and, thanks to tokenization, expected in the coming months, also open access to the retail public. “Current regulations, particularly in Europe, often end up penalizing those with limited savings capacity. With tokenization, even 5 euros can become an investment in a professional portfolio. This is the redistributive potential of blockchain,” Marzo summarized.
This is why RIV Capital also emphasizes educational aspects: a RIV Academy integrated into the wallet is available, offering free content, courses, white papers, and insights for investors, consultants, and bankers. “We need a new level of awareness,” Mantovani said, “because decentralized finance does not replace traditional finance: it complements it, challenges it, and renews it. But it must be understood, studied, and managed.”
According to Marzo and Mantovani, the issue is no longer whether CeFi and DeFi should coexist, but how to structure platforms, vehicles, and protocols that can leverage their complementarities. And this is where RIV Capital’s multilayer model comes in. The model, illustrated by RIV Capital founder Roberto Rivera at the opening of the same masterclass (see here a previous article by BeBeez International), combines the liquid and regulated Luxembourg RAIF, a proprietary blockchain infrastructure, a non-custodial-compliant wallet, and a cryptocurrency with real reserves and on-chain seigniorage distribution.
“The integration of these elements is what makes the RIV model scalable and replicable for other managers or family offices wishing to evolve towards wealth management on a digital infrastructure,” Marzo noted. “And it’s no coincidence that the private banking world is starting to show growing interest: because the demand for transparent, liquid, regulated yet digital solutions is growing.”
In conclusion, Mantovani reiterated: “The issue is not technological, but cultural. We need a new vision of the role of the wealth manager, who can no longer be just a fund selector, but must become an advanced interpreter of change, a builder of tailored solutions that combine regulatory solidity and decentralized innovation.”
