Industry highlights:

• From Leaderboards to Launch: Top Ranked Bybit and FTX Traders Behind New +$75M Crypto Fund

• Private Credit Fund Targets $10M Raise to Scale Onchain Lending Infrastructure

• Raleigh Based DeFi Fund Seeks to Expand $3M Stablecoin Fund

…but first, let’s raise a glass to CFW’s official sponsor for 2025 🥂

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ML Tech has advanced its commitment to integrate AI into institutional wealth management for digital assets with the public release of an ML Tech.AI Advisor.

ML Tech has unveiled a powerful new addition to its investment management platform: an AI Advisor engineered specifically for institutional investors navigating the digital asset market. The AI Advisor is seamlessly embedded into the user experience on ML Tech’s platform, delivering real-time intelligence and personalized insights that drive smarter investment decisions.

Now more than 350 institutional and qualified investors on the platform can gain insights into portfolio details such as tailored breakdowns of positions, exposures, and asset allocation, compare ML Tech’s portfolio of quantitative crypto strategies, and explore trading strategy insights across different trading systems and venues.

ML Tech’s AI Advisor functionality is part of ML Tech’s broader mission to empower institutional investors with world-class technology in digital asset markets. It bridges the gap between human decision-making and machine learning precision. Interested? Below are ways to explore ML Tech’s AI Advisor.

📩 Sign up via app.mltech.ai or request a platform walkthrough at [email protected]

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

$970M Family Office Expands Venture Fund of Funds Team — Lennertz & Co., an owner-managed family office with three dedicated blockchain fund of funds, has appointed Hans Koenig as Head of U.S. Venture & Blockchain. Koenig was previously a Managing Partner at ONRAMP Capital, a crypto-native venture fund of funds. In his new role, he will oversee Lennertz’s U.S. venture funds portfolio and blockchain investments.

Multi-Manager Joins Bullish as Judge in $14M Trading Competition — Annamite Capital, a $25M multi-manager hedge fund, has joined Bullish as a judge for its International Trading Competition, a global initiative launching in Q3 2025 to identify emerging investment talent in crypto. Participants will compete for up to $14M in SMA allocations—$10M for first place, $3M for second, and $1M for third.

$4B Hong Kong MFO Allocates $10M to DeFi Hedge Fund — VMS Group, a Hong Kong-based multifamily office managing just under $4B in assets, has made its first crypto allocation by committing up to $10M to Re7 Capital, a London-based DeFi hedge fund managing over $600M.

World’s Second-Largest Crypto Exchange Reaches $150M AUM for Private Wealth Platform — Bybit Private Wealth Management (PWM) reported over $150M in AUM for May 2025, alongside a 77% surge in client subscriptions. Targeting high-net-worth and professional investors, the platform specializes in highly customized wealth solutions and external allocations to private crypto hedge funds. Its top-performing fund delivered 12.66% APR in May, with the USDT strategy—representing 69% of AUM—leading returns at an average of 8.41% over 30 days.

Swiss Based Fund of Funds Marks Two-Year Track Record, Hits $140M AUM — Forteus, the digital asset arm of Numeus Group, is celebrating the two-year anniversary of its first fund launches, which debuted in June 2023. Since then, the firm has grown to $140M in AUM, offering three institutional strategies, including an absolute return fund with a Sharpe ratio of 2.5, a BTC-denominated alpha strategy, and an actively managed altcoin product.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

From Leaderboards to Launch: Top Ranked Bybit and FTX Traders Behind New +$75M Crypto Fund

Third Eye Ltd. is set to launch a new discretionary hedge fund on August 1, with a target raise of $75M to $100M. The fund will combine directional and market-neutral strategies, aiming to bring a more institutional and diversified approach to crypto trading.

Led by Tian Zeng—CEO and Co-CIO—the team blends deep macro pedigree with quant trading expertise. Zeng previously held senior trading roles at Citi, Deutsche Bank, and Citadel, while his Co-CIO, a crypto-native trader known as @DefiSquared, brings a track record that includes founding an HFT trading firm and holding the #1 ranked spot on Bybit across multiple fiscal years. The founding team collectively boasts five years of top-ranked P&L performance while trading their own capital. Notably, Zeng was ranked #46 on FTX’s all-time cumulative P&L leaderboard at the time of its bankruptcy and also top 3 on Bybit this year.

Third Eye’s strategy draws inspiration from old-school macro funds, now reincarnated in crypto’s high-velocity environment. The fund will actively manage delta risk through long and short positions in tokens, trade crypto-adjacent equities, pursue arbitrage opportunities, and offer structured solutions to participants in the ecosystem looking for liquidity.

The capital base is as diverse as its strategy: LPs span U.S. and Asia-based family offices, crypto whales, traditional finance portfolio managers, and institutional allocators. As the firm scales, it is also looking to expand its investment team, with plans to onboard an additional portfolio manager and traders in the near future.

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Private Credit Fund Targets $10M Raise to Scale Onchain Lending Infrastructure

Drip Capital is preparing to raise $10M in LP capital over the next two quarters to support growth and expand its onchain credit operations.

Founded by Raul Elizondo and Renato Martinez, Drip Capital underwrites short-term (7–90 day), overcollateralized, low-LTV loans against top-tier NFTs, offering lenders exposure to 15–30% annualized returns in ETH or USD. The firm has $3.5M+ in AUM and has executed over $42M in loan volume to date.

While the rise of financial primitives around NFTs enables open lending, Drip sources loans directly with proprietary deal flow and uses real-time pricing, collection tiering, and borrower behavior analytics to underwrite risk. Martinez previously deployed a 7 figures loan book for Nexo’s institutional NFT lending desk and helped scale Arcade.xyz’s volume from $70M to $200M in less than one year. Elizondo has managed a seven-figure web3 portfolio since 2020.

Drip is finalizing a board of advisors with experience in hedge funds, structured credit, and C-suite roles. The firm is also building Atlas, an in-house credit engine to price risk in real time across NFTs and other digital assets. Long-term, Drip aims to develop a modular credit framework for digitally-native asset classes—bringing structured credit infrastructure to web3. A new LP platform with live NAV dashboards and automated subscriptions and redemptions will anchor this next phase of development.

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Raleigh Based DeFi Fund Seeks to Expand $3M Stablecoin Fund

Ethos Capital is ramping up efforts to grow its Stable Fund by raising an additional $7M in assets under management by year-end, aiming to meet rising demand for lower-volatility yield strategies in digital assets. The Stable Fund was launched at the start of this year and currently manages over $3M. The fund generates returns by providing liquidity to stablecoin-only pools on platforms like Curve Finance and Uniswap. The strategy is designed to deliver consistent absolute returns, targeting 15–20% annually.

Based in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Ethos launched in 2023 to provide institutional investors with a professional on-ramp to blockchain finance. The firm manages two flagship products: the bitcoin-focused Scarcity Fund and the Stable Fund. While the Scarcity Fund emphasizes BTC-denominated yield generation through lending and options strategies, the Stable Fund focuses exclusively on stablecoins.

To complement its fund offerings, Ethos recently launched Separately Managed Accounts for clients interested in tailored exposure to bitcoin yield or custom digital asset strategies. Investors can choose among custodians including Fidelity, Anchorage Digital, and BitGo, with the option of on-chain or traditional custody setups.

Ethos was founded by David Yerger and Coburn Murray, whose combined experience spans institutional investing and digital asset markets. Yerger previously led platform initiatives at BitGo, one of the earliest institutional crypto custodians, and co-managed a digital asset hedge fund focused on bitcoin and Ethereum strategies. Murray brings over a decade of experience in private markets and fund management, having overseen real estate and alternative investment portfolios.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Tether co-founder Reeve Collins and a former Blackstone executive affiliated with CC Capital have launched a $1B publicly traded crypto fund via a SPAC. The vehicle will invest in major digital assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana (AInvest)

• Aqua 1 Foundation, a UAE-based web3-native fund, has purchased $100M worth of $WLFI tokens issued by Donald Trump’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. The firm also engages in fund of funds investments, as noted on its website (Aqua1)

• MEV Capital now manages +$900M in onchain assets across 10+ blockchains and more than 50 assets, five years after launching with less than $500K in angel investment. The firm curates 35+ vaults on platforms including Morpho, Symbiotic, and Mellow Protocol, and serves institutional, corporate, and retail clients through a mix of regulated funds, SMAs, and public vaults (MEV Capital)

• Metalayer Ventures has closed its $25M Fund I to invest in early-stage crypto infrastructure startups bridging traditional finance and blockchain. Backed by alumni from Two Sigma and Chainlink Labs, the firm targets innovations in stablecoins, capital markets tech, and real-world asset tokenization (Cointelegraph)

• Anthony Bassili, former Head of Asset Allocators of Coinbase, has been appointed President of Coinbase Asset Management (Anthony Bassili). Digital Wealth Partners, with $150M AUM, has elected Max Kahn as its new CEO (Max Kahn). Stuart MacDonald has been named Chairman of Level III Capital, a systematic digital asset manager founded in 2021 by Goldman Sachs alumni Jack Zumwalt and Mauricio Ortiz (Stuart MacDonald)

• Parataxis, a $100M+ digital asset hedge fund, plans to launch South Korea’s first bitcoin treasury platform by acquiring Kosdaq-listed Bridge Biotherapeutics and rebranding it as Parataxis Korea (The Investor), amid a broader wave of public companies adopting BTC as treasury—138,912 BTC (+19.6%) have been added since Q2 began, bringing the total to 848,042 BTC (Coindesk)

• Singapore Based Primrose Capital Management received in-principle approval from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s FSRA as part of its Middle East expansion plans, paving the way for regional institutional access to its machine-learning-driven strategies (Citywire)

• Frachtis, a new $20M pre-seed fund launched by former Chorus One CIO Xavier Meegan, will back crypto-native founders building decentralized AI, infrastructure, middleware, and consumer applications. Investors include Theta Capital, RockawayX, Chorus One, and Cyber Fund (Tech EU)

• Of the ~60 liquid fundamental hedge funds surveyed, only 37% of funds reported capital inflows. 20% of funds reports inflows, but less than $1M, and 17% of funds received inflows of $1M (CIG)

• ECN Research, a quant hedge fund focused on high-frequency market-making and cross-exchange arbitrage, has rebranded as EST Alpha. The firm has delivered over 50% annualized returns across six years of live trading through its arbitrage strategies (EST Alpha)

• Dunamis Trading Group has seen $16M in inflows into its hedge fund arm, Red River Digital Trading LLC, as the 2017-founded crypto quant prop shop expands its institutional footprint (EDGAR)

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