Fund Forum and WAIB 2025 Reflections
Panthera on the road.
Read Michiel Kuhn’s and Markus Schuller’s critical reflections on the key takeaways from the 2025 IMpower, FundForum and WAIB Summit.
TLDR > A brave new tech-world in search for purpose, while triggering massive legacy issues.
Stay safe and in good spirits.
Your Panthera Team
Fund Forum and WAIB 2025 Reflections
At the end of June 2025, the Principality of #Monaco played host to two notable conference highlights. The IMpower FundForum 2025 brought together the established global investment community, while the WAIB Summit 2025 showcased the emerging voices shaping the future of Web3 and AI — now recognized as the world’s largest summit in its domain. Together with the recent impressions from Viva Technology, one is reminded of a timeless truth: perspective is shaped by position.
Had one attended only VivaTech or the WAIB Summit, one might have concluded that Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain applications are now at the centre of investment decision-making — whether as thematic allocations or internal enablers. However, bringing in the perspective from the Fund Forum paints a more nuanced picture: private markets and global macro considerations continue to dominate the agenda, with AI largely confined to middle- and back-office optimization.
This contrast reveals a striking duality — almost as if two parallel universes are at play. One is fuelled by an almost boundless optimism about the transformative potential of new technologies; the other remains preoccupied with navigating a complex macro environment, focused more on incremental operational efficiencies than disruptive innovation. The disconnect between these worlds is sustained by fragmented communities, a lack of compelling, implementable use cases, and the persistent challenge of behavioural inertia within corporate structures.
Let us now examine the dominant themes and key lessons emerging from both conferences.
IMpower Fund Forum 2025 Reflections
Private Capital is the new black > Over the past decade, private markets have leapt from boutique diversifiers into indispensable components of portfolios. After public-market returns compressed in 2022–24, many investors shifted into private equity and credit seeking higher yield—driving private-market assets under management to record highs. Yet as more capital floods these strategies, industry-wide margins are shrinking: outperformance over public benchmarks, while still positive, is tapering off. For example, in Q1 2025 MSCI’s Global Private Credit Closed-End Fund Index returned 2 percent—solid, yet only marginally ahead of high-yield corporate bonds—while private equity gained 1.8 percent.
Herd Mentality, “Evergreen-washing” and Alpha > A potent cocktail of cognitive bias and marketing spin is at work. “Fear of missing out” drives investors toward the hottest strategy du jour—often without regard to fundamental fit—while some fund managers hastily launch private funds to capture asset flows. This “Evergreen-washing” effect obscures the fact that true outperformance in private markets has historically stemmed from deep sector expertise and disciplined sourcing, not from trend-following. Furthermore, although private credit has delivered positive vintage-year IRRs for more than two decades there seems to be an industry-wide divergence from Investing 101: Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Scale, Liquidity Engineering and the Risk of GFC 2.0 > Evergreen vehicles promise seamless exits and perpetual capital, but only managers with genuine scale, robust NAV processes, and sophisticated liquidity facilities can deliver on these commitments. Yet the proliferation of small or inexperienced managers raises a critical question: are we being led blindly into a second “GFC” by firms chasing market share without the operational backbone to support redemptions? While some industry voices argue that locked-up capital prevents panicked selling in downturns, that view discounts the risk of illiquid traps—what if markets stay depressed and investors cannot access their gains? What is the value of a 20 percent internal rate of return if you can’t withdraw your principal for years?
Trump Shock and the Global Monetary Reckoning Tariff-Driven Dollar Devaluation to “Reshore” Manufacturing > Colorfully renowned economist, Yanis Varoufakis, posits that the Trump administration’s tariffs are not mere trade skirmishes but a strategic lever to weaken the dollar by up to 30 percent—aiming to revive domestic factories and reclaim U.S. manufacturing capacity over the next decade. This “anti-Nixon shock” trades multilateral accord for unilateral force: a reminder that currency power can be wielded as ruthlessly as any sanction. Yet if cheaper exports fuel inflation at home, who ultimately pays the price? And can reshoring really compensate for decades of lost supply-chain know-how? The real takeaway: dollar dominance is pliable, and geopolitics now dictates exchange-rate policy as much as interest-rate cuts.
Stablecoins as the New “Link” of Currency Collusion—and Europe’s Counterpunch > In Varoufakis’s view, stablecoins represent the Trojan horse of financial privatization—outsourcing money creation to “technolords” who answer to shareholders, not voters. By preemptively banning both central-bank and private stablecoins from core payment rails, Washington isn’t safeguarding stability so much as carving out a digital-dollar duopoly for Big Tech. Is this regulation—or regulatory capture? If money can be coded, control shifts from Treasuries to tech boards, and geopolitical influence becomes a matter of API access rather than diplomacy. Europe’s draft law aims to lock out foreign stablecoins even as the ECB races to issue a fully backed digital euro. But bankers—haunted by the specter of deposit flight—push back, exposing the euro’s identity crisis: “federal money without a federation.” Can a digital euro unite 27 markets if its own financial guardians distrust it?
Fragmented Payment Rails and the Demise of SWIFT’s Monopoly > Sanctions have fractured global payments: Russia’s SPFS and CIPS, Iran–UAE hawala networks, and emerging rails in Brazil, India, and Turkey all chip away at SWIFT’s once-unassailable grip. For asset managers this isn’t just a compliance headache—it’s a strategic fork in the road. In tomorrow’s world, “Can I pay you?” will eclipse “Where are you?” as the defining criterion for financial inclusion.
WAIB 2025 Reflections
Agentic AI Takes the Helm > Agentic AI—fully autonomous, goal-driven software agents—has rapidly eclipsed traditional assistive tools. These agents conduct self-directed research, execute on-chain transactions, and make real-time decisions without human prompts. Use cases span Microsoft’s Copilot-style assistants to “brand agents” that are AI-powered brand representatives. Crucially, token-and smart-contract-based governance layers are emerging to align agent incentives with user interests and ensure transparent, auditable behavior.
Web3 & Digital Sovereignty: The Trust Fabric > By combining decentralized identity, programmable money, and immutable ledgers, AI agents can log every action on public blockchains—creating tamper-proof “proof trails.” Self-sovereign, revocable blockchain IDs are essential before entrusting agents with custody or voting rights, laying the groundwork for decentralized finance, AI-driven supply chains, and other agent-to-agent economies.
Fund Forum and WAIB Conclusions
The flood into private markets has turned niche diversification into systemic vulnerability, as ever-larger pools of capital erode alpha and expose fragile liquidity under stress. At the same time, tariffs, stablecoin crackdowns and the digital-euro sprint aren’t isolated skirmishes but frontlines in a new sovereignty war over code-based money—where fractured rails mean access, not borders, will define finance. And as autonomous AI agents gain real-world agency, trust will hinge on self-sovereign identities and immutable ledgers to govern a burgeoning agent-to-agent economy.
Altogether? A brave new tech-world in search for purpose, while triggering massive legacy issues.
