Other industry highlights:

• Largest Universal Exchange to Allocate $100M to Market Neutral Strats

• Key Departures Hit Two +$100M Crypto Fund of Funds

• $30M Market-Neutral Factor Fund Posts 50%+ Annualized Return, Targets $100M AUM by Year-End

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

Largest Universal Exchange to Allocate $100M to Market Neutral Strats — Bitget has launched Project Archimedes, a $300M capital initiative targeting quantitative trading firms, asset managers and market makers. The program includes $100M for emerging and growing quantitative firms pursuing market-neutral strategies, with Bitget providing capital under agreed return-sharing and risk frameworks. An additional $200M will provide interest-free financing to established institutions with mature strategies and existing trading scale, subject to defined trading volume or position requirements.

Multi-Manager Launches Bitcoin Treasury Program — Annamite Capital has launched a treasury management platform for publicly traded Bitcoin holders, offering separately managed accounts that seek Bitcoin-denominated returns through market-neutral strategies while clients retain ownership of their assets. The platform also supports Ether and XRP mandates. Annamite formally launched in January 2025 after investing more than $4M in its technology infrastructure and deploying over $7M of proprietary capital to external investment teams.

Key Departures Hit Two +$100M Crypto Fund of Funds — Shu Duan, formerly Head of Capital Markets and CTO at Aspen Digital, has joined Flop Labs, Arthur Hayes’ new crypto project, as Chief Strategy Officer. When CFW last reported on Aspen in September 2025, the firm managed approximately $150M across its liquid fund-of-funds platform and served a network of 1,500+ family offices, HNWIs and crypto firms.

Separately, Julien Bittel is stepping away from Global Macro Investor and Real Vision to launch his own macro research platform. Bittel also served as Head of Asset Allocation at Exponential Age Asset Management (EXPAAM), a $125M digital asset fund-of-funds focused on long-only and market-neutral strategies. EXPAAM returned 61.87% net of fees in 2024, topping HSBC’s 2024 fund rankings.

$1B Multi-Family Office Launches Systematic XRP Strategy — Digital Ascension Group (DAG Wealth), a multi-family office managing approximately $1B in digital assets and founder of SEC-registered investment advisor Digital Wealth Partners, has partnered with Parataxis Capital Management to launch the Parataxis Systematic Trading Strategy. The separately managed account allows XRP holders to pursue returns while retaining assets in their name at qualified custodian Anchorage Digital, with XRP serving as collateral for trading conducted by a third-party manager.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

$30M Market-Neutral Factor Fund Posts 50%+ Annualized Return, Targets $100M AUM by Year-End

Newly launched quantitative investment firm Unsquared is gaining traction with a differentiated approach to systematic crypto investing, applying traditional-finance factor research to alternative datasets rather than competing over the funding-rate and cross-exchange arbitrage strategies that dominate much of the crypto quant market. Since beginning live trading in 2025, the firm has grown assets under management to over $30M and is targeting $100M by year-end.

At the center of Unsquared’s approach is a belief that meaningful sources of alpha remain in data the digital asset market has yet to efficiently price. Its models analyze signals ranging from derivative positioning and order-book liquidity dynamics to proprietary behavioral data, seeking to identify return drivers beyond price movements and commonly traded arbitrage opportunities.

Supporting that approach is an expansive quantitative research infrastructure that processes more than 10M data points each day across more than 100 sources. Potential factors move through a systematic and alpha research pipeline and must demonstrate both statistical significance and a clear economic rationale before being incorporated into the strategy. More than 25 factors currently contribute to portfolio construction, with correlated signals downweighted to limit concentration in any single return driver.

The resulting market-neutral strategy takes long and short positions across the most liquid digital assets, typically holding 40 to 60 positions with a median holding period of approximately three days. Beta neutrality is maintained as a hard constraint, while the portfolio can tilt its long and short exposures based on relative factor signals. Risk is further managed through volatility-adjusted position sizing, exposure limits, continuous monitoring and automated drawdown safeguards.

Since inception, Unsquared reports a return of approximately 75%, an annualized return of roughly 50% and a Sharpe ratio above 2, while limiting maximum drawdown to 9.9%. The performance has coincided with rapid asset growth, with the firm scaling to over $30M in AUM as it works toward its $100M year-end target.

Behind the strategy is a five-partner team spanning quantitative research, applied mathematics, technology, institutional asset management and digital assets. The group includes Dr. Alexander Nestor-Bergmann, who holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics and previously served as a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge; Mark Aron Szulyovszky, who has six years of experience running systematic strategies through his family office; and Bo Zhang, who has helped allocate more than $2B across CeFi and DeFi strategies and previously managed multi-asset portfolios within JPMorgan’s Chief Investment Office. Partners Daniel Szemerey and Charles Fried round out the team, bringing backgrounds in statistical research, data-driven businesses, systematic strategy development and institutional-grade execution.

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Private Credit Fund Nabs 14% Annualized Return Ahead of Onchain Vault Launch

RWA Professional Fund I LP, which operates the Kamui Partners Credit Fund strategy, has reported an approximately 14% gross annualized return since launching in December 2024, as the team prepares to bring its private credit investment approach onchain through Kamui Finance. The independently audited, institutionally managed fund is registered with and regulated by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA).

The fund invests in credit securities and loans issued by companies deploying blockchain technology in production, combining traditional credit underwriting and legal structuring with blockchain-based protections. These include smart-contract-automated priority payments, collateral locking, onchain cash-flow monitoring and enhanced accounting transparency. Since inception, the strategy has recorded no defaults and has delivered six consecutive quarters of high annualized returns with controlled volatility, while making monthly distributions to investors in stablecoins or fiat.

Kamui maintains a selective underwriting process, rejecting approximately 90% of opportunities reviewed based on assessments of credit quality, structural enforceability and technology risk. As of Q2 2026, 66% of the portfolio was allocated to asset-backed and secured credit, 30% to senior unsecured credit and 4% to government-backed credit, with approximately 80% of investments carrying remaining maturities of less than two years. The portfolio spans corporate and SME lending, new media and the creator economy, telecommunications and infrastructure, gaming, commodities and government credit.

The investment team brings institutional asset management and blockchain experience, including more than 20 years of investment experience and over 12 years at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. That private credit expertise also underpins Kamui Finance, an institutional real-world asset platform backed by EMURGO.

Kamui Finance is scheduled to launch three actively managed, Ethereum-based, USDC-denominated vaults in September 2026. The Stable Vault targets a 4.2% APY through tokenized U.S. Treasuries and money-market funds, with estimated redemptions of up to one day. The Balanced Vault targets a 7.8% APY through investment-grade credit exposures including CLOs, receivables finance, corporate bonds and commercial paper, with estimated redemptions of up to seven days. The Boosted Vault targets an 11.5% APY through a diversified mix of private credit, fixed income, property catastrophe and specialty reinsurance strategies, with estimated redemptions of up to 35 days.

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$30M Fund of Funds Extends Positive Streak to 44 Consecutive Months

ZeroBeta, Q21 Capital’s market-neutral digital asset fund, has closed its 44th consecutive positive month, approaching four years without a single negative month. Since launching in January 2021, the strategy has recorded annualised volatility of 6.1% and a Sharpe ratio of 1.5, targeting steady absolute returns with minimal exposure to crypto market direction.

The fund was also recognised at the Hedgeweek Global Digital Assets Awards 2026 as Fund of Funds of the Year: Sustained Excellence. With a five-year track record established, Q21 is now opening the strategy to a wider institutional and professional investor base as it looks to substantially grow ZeroBeta in the coming years.

ZeroBeta is a multi-manager strategy allocating to digital asset managers across basis and funding-rate arbitrage, market making, relative value and other market-neutral approaches. Manager selection, ongoing due diligence and portfolio allocation are handled in-house by Q21.

Based in Münster, Germany, Q21 Capital is led by founding partners Dr. Maximilian Bader, Chief Investment Officer and Chief Sales Officer, and Pascal Tilgner, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Risk Officer. They are joined by Founder’s Associate Maurice Föhr, who supports fund development, investor relations and operations. The team is further supported by an advisory board spanning German finance, digital assets, tax and regulatory expertise.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Ripple backs a new institutional credit fund with Clearpool and Cicada Partners that will provide RLUSD-denominated working-capital loans to fintech and payments companies on the XRP Ledger. Cicada will manage underwriting and credit risk, while Clearpool will provide the lending infrastructure and Ripple will invest alongside other institutions; the size of the fund and Ripple’s commitment were not disclosed (Coindesk)

• Digital Asset Funds Management’s market-neutral Digital Income Class recorded its 62nd positive monthly return in its 63-month history. Founded by algorithmic trading and software development veterans, the specialist digital asset manager oversees approximately 21M AUD in AUM (DAFM)

• Azpire Capital launched its first crypto fund with approximately $2M committed and a target of roughly $16 M in AUM within 12 months. The Aarhus-based firm’s systematic strategy trades among the 50 largest cryptocurrencies and returned 25% from April 2025 to July 2026, with a -0.04 correlation to Bitcoin (Azpire Capital)

• Kamino Management appointed Factor6 Capital founder Ralph Achacoso, CFA, as Partner and Chief Investment Officer. Achacoso joins the investment manager after five years leading Factor6 and will focus on public and private investments across crypto and other emerging technologies (Ralph Achacoso)

• Qapture Investments established a regulated investment manager and acquired Hermetik Trading Technologies’ DeFi strategies, appointing founder Brendan MacNeil as Head of DeFi. The deal adds Hermetik’s three-year on-chain yield track record to Qapture’s eight-year digital asset track record, strengthens its yield optimization, risk management and automated execution capabilities, and authorizes its BVI entity to manage up to $400M (PR Newswire)

• RockawayX acquired crypto hedge fund Relayer Capital and launched the RockawayX Liquid Opportunities Fund, with Relayer founder Austin Barack joining as CIO. The directional long/short strategy has returned approximately 70% net YTD in 2026, while the acquisition adds a liquid fundamental strategy to RockawayX’s roughly $2B investment platform (Forbes)

• Block Bits Capital co-founder Japheth Dillman was convicted of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for defrauding more than 20 investors of nearly $1M through false claims about the crypto fund’s automated trading capabilities and profitability (DOJ)

• Three Arrows Capital’s liquidators are seeking approximately $40M from co-founder Zhu Su’s wife, Evelyn Tao, over proceeds from the sale of a Dubai property allegedly purchased using funds loaned by the fund. Once one of the world’s largest crypto hedge funds, Three Arrows collapsed amid the 2022 crypto market downturn and was ordered into liquidation that June (The Business Times)

• SPEAR Digital completed its first 12 months of live performance, returning 25% over the period and 5% in August 2026, while posting six consecutive positive months despite a challenging digital asset market. The fully systematic, market-neutral long/short crypto strategy reports a 3.2 Sharpe ratio, 9.2 Sortino ratio and 45% average annualized return (Lucas Kiely)

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