Other industry highlights:

• Portal VC Sees 75% in Hard Commits for $75M Fund II

• $15M Florin Digital Looking to Expand AUM After Early Success in the Liquid Token Space

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

Crypto VC Launches $130M Multi-Manager — Hypersphere Ventures has publicly launched Atlas Fund, a $130M multi-manager, from their own balance sheet. The fund is managed by Millennium and Bridgewater alums and was stealth launched back in January 2024.

Billionaire Quant Trader Establishes Personal FO!!!??? — Alex Gerko, founder of XTX Markets, launches Cromulon Capital to help manage his personal fortune. This firm is overseen by XTX executives and Nikolajs Smirnovs, who serves as the CEO for the family office.

$1.43T Pension Fund Actively Monitoring Crypto — Eiji Ueda, CIO of Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), says the firm is studying crypto assets to “understand further.”

Zug Based Digital Asset Manager Launches FoF II — Forteus, the asset management division of Numeus Group, launches Forteus Crypto Alpha Fund (AUM undisclosed). The bitcoin-denominated fund is designed to produce consistent and uncorrelated returns to traditional markets.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

Portal VC Sees 75% in Hard Commits for $75M Fund II

Portal Ventures, a pre-seed focused crypto investment firm that was launched by a former investor at Insight Partners ($90B global venture firm) has seen strong demand for its second fund. They have held first close with commitments for 75% of the fund's $75M hard cap. Founded in early 2022, Portal Ventures initially raised $40M for Fund I to invest in what it calls the emerging 'protocol economy'.

Fund II, like its predecessor, will make 30-40 investments and aims to be the first check investor of choice for emerging protocol businesses. Their strategy is built on three key pillars. First, a unique thesis-driven approach helps them identify trends before they take off. Second, over 60% of their deal flow is proprietary. And last, they focus on new market cap creation to play in truly positive sum "grow the pie" categories.

Evan Fisher, who previously helped invest over $500M globally in crypto, FinTech, internet, and software businesses for Insight Partners, founded Portal Ventures. He is joined by Catrina Wang, General Partner at Portal Ventures and former Investment Principal at Hivemind Capital, as well as operator at Protocol Labs and Apple.

Portal Venture's investor base impressively combines institutional capital pools, crypto GPs (managing $10B+ collectively), tech industry titans + many Midas list VCs, and Wall St execs.

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$15M Florin Digital Looking to Expand AUM After Early Success in the Liquid Token Space

Florin Digital, an early-stage liquid token fund launched in January 2024 and backed by a consortium of global investors, is looking to grow its capital base and expand on its success in liquid token markets. The fund recently added Florian Unger, a former venture capital investor with expertise in ZK and decentralized infrastructure, who joins the team as a Principal.

Florin Digital invests in early-stage but liquid markets, focusing on infrastructure, DeFi and AI protocols. The firm makes highly concentrated, catalyst- and fundamental-driven investments in liquid tokens with market capitalizations ranging from $50M to $500M.

Recent examples of their investments include Euler Finance’s EUL token at a significant discount to previous investment rounds and Dinero Protocol on the heels of their partnership with Galaxy and Nomura’s Laser Digital.

The firm is led by co-founders James Burkett and Feyo Sickinghe. The duo bring over two decades of technology investing and operating expertise, uniquely positioning them to help teams navigate the complexities of public markets. The firm’s liquid positioning is also benefiting from the industry’s ongoing reallocation of capital away from traditional venture funds towards crypto-adapted structures with more flexible terms.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Morgan Creek Digital seeks to raise roughly $500M for a new VC fund focused on AI and crypto— Morgan Creek has raised $440M raised since its inception (CryptoPotato)

• $11B AUM Polychain Capital accuses former GP Niraj Pant of a $13.3M backroom deal with Eclipse Labs (MSN)

• Swiss crypto bank Amina Group will provide investment advisory and banking services to $2.7B AUM CPIC Investment Management’s (HK) Digital Asset Fund I & II (Finews.Asia)

• Tommy Eastman, former Head of AI Engineering at Foundry, has joined Plaintext Capital as Research Lead — Plaintext Capital is a $30M hedge fund recently awarded Best Long/Short Crypto Fund of 2023 by Hedgeweek (Linkedin)

• MNNC Group’s restarted $400M crypto hedge fund sees the first +$5M raised for its Digital Asset Opportunities Onshore Fund

  (Edgar)

• Hivemind Capital, a +$1B multi-strategy crypto fund, looks to add an Investment Principal and an Investment Partner to the team after just recently bringing on a new Director of Capital Formation in June (Linkedin)

• Diameter Capital Partners’ $17B hedge fund sees a big win on FTX claims, with the current position exceeding $400M (Bloomberg)

• Bitrue’s investment and research arm opens a $40M fund to support Web3 startups, focusing on AI, RWA tokenization, GameFi, DePIN, and DeFi (Cointelegraph)

• Galaxy Digital announces the initial close of Galaxy Ventures Fund I, a $113M VC fund for early-stage companies in crypto protocols, software infrastructure, and financial applications. (Galaxy Digital)

• Neuberger Berman’s Hedged Cryptocurrency Volatility Fund sees nearly $30M in inflows, managing exposure through BTC and ETH futures and BTC ETFs (EDGAR)

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