Other industry highlights:

• Legacy DeFi Fund Eclipses $100M AUM — Now Preparing for Institutional Inflows

• $25M Oversubscribed Paper Ventures Completes Nine Deals Since Q1 Launch

• Lekker Capital Looks to Expand Team After Macro Hedges Boost Performance for the Newly Launched $5M Crypto Fund

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

$4.3B Fund Allocator Launches New Seed Fund — Stable Asset Management, announces the first close of Stable Seed Fund III. Stable is an investment firm focused on seeding top performing managers. The next opportunity to partner with Stable Seed Fund will be this October.

Hong Kong FO to Invest in US VC Funds — Da Wan Asset Management, a HK-based family office, is currently allocating to US based crypto VC pre-seed and seed funds. The firm has previously invested in DeFi protocols and blockchain infrastructure projects.

CoinFund LP Closes $3.3B Secondaries Fund — StepStone VC raises $3.3B for fund IV, the largest-ever raise for a VC secondaries fund. The fund will purchase interests in VC funds from limited partners and assist fund managers with structured solutions such as portfolio strip sales, tenders, and continuation funds. StepStone was one of the first LPs to back CoinFund’s $300M Web3 Fund.

Hedgeweek Announces Best Crypto FoF of 2024— Bentley Reid was recognized in Hedgeweek’s Digital Asset Awards as the Best Fund of Funds of the Year. According to RCM Alternatives, Bentley Reid’s Digital Assets Fund has over $8M in AUM.

$21B Alternatives Specialist Brings on new CIO — GAM Investments appoints Randel Freeman, a +30 years Wall Street Investment Professional, as Co-CIO to build out GAM Alternatives. GAM’s public crypto press includes a NFT report and denying rumors of their involvement with Terraform Labs.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

Legacy DeFi Fund Eclipses $100M AUM — Now Preparing for Institutional Inflows

Edge Capital is a DeFi-native Market-Neutral crypto fund that has been running since 2020 and consecutively generating positive annual returns, while navigating an entire crypto cycle and successfully mitigating black swan events. Notably, during the 2022 FTX/Luna events, Edge achieved about +7% return for the year. The strategy profile has low drawdown, high Sharpe, and historically close to 0 correlation to BTC.

In 2024, the fund experienced significant growth in AUM, increasing from $32M to close to $100M. The fund is up approximately +17% net YTD without a single drawdown day exceeding 10bps.

Edge Capital's flagship strategy involves rotating between Centralized Finance (CeFi) and Decentralized Finance (DeFi) markets to exploit inefficiencies. In Q1 2024, the fund's returns were primarily driven by funding rate arbitrage in CeFi. However, as the year progressed, the focus shifted to restaking and liquidity provisions in DeFi - a strategy not feasible within CeFi markets.

Edge Capital was founded in 2020 by Vadim Khramov Ph.D, who has an extensive and diverse TradFi background, including, Director of FI/FX at BAML, Board of the IMF, and PM at Trend Capital ($2B Macro Hedge Fund). Vadim holds a Ph.D. from UCLA and has been deeply involved in the crypto space, serving on the Genesis restructuring committee and working with the FBI and DoJ on high-profile smart contract hack cases.

The team has grown to 11 full-time employees, with the recent addition of Boback Khodadoost, a Pantera Capital alumnus, who joined as Business Development Director at the start of the year. Edge’s investor base includes US/Swiss funds of funds, family offices, and leading crypto foundations. With its impressive track record, the fund is now poised to welcome its first wave of institutional capital.

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$25M Oversubscribed Paper Ventures Completes Nine Deals Since Q1 Launch

In a highly anticipated launch, Paper Ventures raised a $25M Fund I in the first quarter of this year.

Identifying itself as a founder-forward, strategic investor in the crypto/web3 space, Paper Ventures aims to be the first check in or an early investor in companies. With an investor base of diverse LPs across the crypto ecosystem, Paper Ventures is able to help support Founders in numerous ways like in advisory, networking, PR, listings, recruitment and more.

Taking a generalist approach, Paper Ventures has multidisciplinary expertise in most verticals within the web3 space owing to the experience of its founding team. The firm emphasizes founder-friendliness, network accessibility, and transparency. According to its website, Paper Ventures has completed nine deals this year, which include SAFEs, SAFTs, and node deals.

Notable investments in Paper Ventures’ portfolio include: Renzo Protocol, a Liquid Restaking Token (LRT) and strategy manager for EigenLayer, Sophon, gaming and entertainment hyperchain, and QED Protocol, a zk-Native blockchain enhancing trustless computation and privacy.

The firm was founded by Oliver Blakey, a former high-stakes poker player and founder of Ascensive Assets; Danish Chaudhry, with a background in tradfi having spent years in the equities/multi asset team at BlackRock and former founder CEO of crypto exchange Bitcoin.com Exchange/FMFW.io; and Ivailo Jordanov, an entrepreneur, seasoned venture investor and active angel.

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Lekker Capital Looks to Expand Team After Macro Hedges Boost Performance for the Newly Launched $5M Crypto Fund

Lekker Capital, a liquid crypto fund with $5M AUM, has achieved respectable performance since launching in May and is now looking to expand by adding a research analyst to the team.

Founded by Quinn Thompson, former Head of Capital Markets at Maple Finance, the firm primarily invests in cryptocurrencies, but its scope also includes crypto securities and macro assets to hedge the portfolio. Lekker Capital operates under a discretionary mandate, with the ability to express both long and short positions and opportunistically hedge during sideways and bear markets. The investment strategy seeks to capitalize on near-term market movements, with an average holding period ranging from two weeks to three months.

Similar to traditional macro strategies, the portfolio is often concentrated around a select number of themes and allocated across a number of supporting positions. Recently, Lekker Capital's macro hedges have proven effective. About a third of the firm's portfolio has been allocated to traditional instruments and hedges during the recent market downturn, allowing it to post returns comparable to Bitcoin while alt markets declined significantly.

Lekker Capital's current LP base, including UHNWs, FoFs, and small family offices, is expected to help the fund scale to $10M in the coming months. The firm's goal is to cap the fund between $15M and $20M for the time being.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Auros, a leading crypto market maker, launches $50M VC arm to make concentrated bets on crypto startups — The firm has already invested approximately $20M in several projects (Coindesk)

• $1.5B multi-strategy crypto fund, Hivemind Capital, continues to expand team seeking a new Investment Partner, following last months hire of Matthew Miller as Director of Capital Formation (Hivemind Capital)

• Digital Asset Funds Management, the Sydney-based digital yield-focused fund, celebrates its three year anniversary returning an impressive +15.47% YTD (+90% since inception) in its market neutral strategy (DAFM)

• Franklin Templeton, the $1.5T asset manager is rumored to be launching an institutional crypto-focused fund with an emphasis on tokens outside of Bitcoin and Ether (CoinDesk)

• Paradigm, a $4.2B crypto VC fund which launched in 2018, closes $850M for third crypto fund to focus on early-stage opportunities (Yahoo Finance)

• Anton Pismenyuk, 13+ year oil & gas investment banking veteran, launches Chain-Gain Digital Assets Fund I (SEC)

• CMT Digital, which first began investing in crypto in 2013, is targeting $150M for its fourth fund, which it began raising behind in early May — The firm successfully closed three previous funds at $25.5M, $130M and $100M (The Block)

• 💼 Career Moves 💼 — Stuti Pandey was promoted to Partner at Kraken Ventures (Stuti Pandey), Adam Okin joined the board of Plaintext Capital (Adam Okin), which was named Hedgeweek’s best long short fund, and Jonathan St. Jacques, former Senior Advisor to Hilbert Group, was named Head of Investor Relations at $1B AUM Bitkraft Ventures (Jonathan St. Jacques)

• Buen Asset Management, launched by the founding partners of Buen Crypto Consulting and T2 Capital Solutions, officially goes live — The firm plans to offer SMA and fund vehicles employing advanced quant strategies and proprietary low-latency execution software (Buen Asset Management)

• Druk Holding and Investments, the $3.2B sovereign wealth fund of Bhutan, is open to strategic partnerships with investment firms and crypto firms (Asian Investors)

• Delfos Machado Neto, Managing Partner at Dunamis Trading Group, an equities prop trading firm, successfully closes the first fundraise for Redriver Digital Trading, securing $6.8M in inflows (SEC)

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