Other industry highlights:

• Legacy FoF's AUM Surges Past $140M, Attracting Interest from Crypto Treasuries and Nation States

• L/S Manager Appoints New Head of Business Development to Drive $55M AUM Expansion

• Systematic Quant Fund Tops $100M, Strengthens Leadership Team

• Liquid Fund Seeks to Institutionalize Memecoin and AI Agent Mania

…but first, let’s raise a glass to Crypto Funds Watch’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 launch of its new product in Q2.

The company offers a non-custodial investment management platform that provides institutional investors access to crypto trading strategies. Investors can select from a suite for quantitative strategies, based on their investment needs, allowing for tailored investment approaches.

In recent developments, ML Tech’s engagement at Future 100 Forum by Investopia in Dubai underscores their commitment to global expansion and collaboration within the digital assets ecosystem. Their efforts aim to strengthen partnerships and explore new opportunities in the Middle East, a region increasingly pivotal in the digital assets landscape.

Through these strategic initiatives and leadership endeavors, ML Tech continues to enhance its AI capabilities, offering institutional investors sophisticated tools for navigating the evolving digital asset market.

To learn more reach out to the team at allocators@mltech.ai

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

Malta Based Multi-Manager Targets $500M for Alpha Fund— Block Asset Management has launched the BAM Blockchain Alpha Fund (BAF), a market-neutral, multi-manager hedge fund. Since its inception in January 2020, the fund has delivered a 12.9% annualized return, achieving 97% positive months (58/60).

$200B Crypto Allocator Parts Ways with Digital Assets Director — After 12 years at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS), Matt Halstead is departing. In 2021, he spearheaded the firm's Digital Assets investment strategy, building a premier institutional investment business focused on early-stage opportunities in the Digital Asset ecosystem. TRS’s most notable public investment in the crypto fund space was in CoinFund’s Web3 Fund.

Endowments Reveal Early Crypto VC LP Investments — The $4.8B Rockefeller Foundation may increase its crypto exposure if adoption diversifies, following investments in crypto venture funds two years ago. The $78B University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company made a small experimental investment in crypto VC funds in the early 2020s as a potential future strategy, while Yale’s endowment invested in two crypto VC funds in 2018.

$100M Niche Multi-Manager Eyes +$1B Capacity — The four-year-old, London-based Calderwood Capital, which manages the Altana Calderwood Specialist Alpha Fund—a global multi-manager portfolio of 20-30 niche and alternative hedge fund strategies—has gained 5.9% YTD with just 2% volatility as it anticipates increased allocations from HNW investors and endowments.

+$1B Investment & Advisory Firm Seeks AI Agent Fund Exposure —Maja Vujinovic, Managing Director of OGroupLLC, announced in a Traders Guild community post, that those running a “memecoin fund or a normal fund focused on AI agent economy” should reach out as they are heavily invested in Ai16z, a decentralized VC fund powered by AI agents.

Huobi Founder Backed Family Office Ramps Up Allocations — The Avenir Crypto Partnership Program is allocating $500M to USD, BTC, and ETH-denominated quantitative strategies and has already deployed over $44M in USDT and 210 BTC.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

Legacy FoF's AUM Surges Past $140M, Attracting Interest from Crypto Treasuries and Nation States

Amphibian Capital, one of the longest-standing quantitative fund of funds in the crypto space, has seen its assets under management (AUM) more than triple since the start of 2024, growing from $40M to over $140M. Building on this momentum, the firm is now engaging with crypto treasuries and, more notably, beginning to speak with nation-states holding Bitcoin (BTC) on their balance sheets as potential limited partners (LPs) in its fund.

Established in 2022, Amphibian Capital has built a strong reputation for delivering optimal risk-adjusted returns by allocating capital across 20+ managers within each of its three share classes: USD, BTC, and ETH. With an impressive track record, the firm’s USD share class has generated an annualized percentage yield (APY) of 20.44% in 2024. All three of Amphibian’s segregated portfolios - BTC, ETH and USD returned only positive months for 2024 (36/36). Even more impressively, its BTC share class achieved a net return of 14.39% in 2024 alone, greater than +150% in USD terms.

This outstanding performance has led to the fund being shortlisted for two prestigious awards by the 2025 HedgeWeek European Awards: Emerging Performance of the Year – Fund of Funds and Emerging Performance of the Year – Multi-Strategy. Amphibian Capital’s increasing institutional appeal has drawn interest from both crypto treasuries and sovereign entities. The firm has declined to disclose specific names.

Amphibian Capital was co-founded by Todd Bendell, James Hodges and David Langer, in a joint venture with Hyla Funds (formerly Chainlink Capital Management) all of whom bring extensive experience in finance and digital assets. James Hodges, Managing Partner, holds a finance degree from UC Berkeley and has been involved in cryptocurrency since 2013. He played a key role in scaling the fintech startup MX.com from 2M to 28M users. Todd Bendell, a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®), spent over six years at Merrill Lynch and currently manages an SEC registered private wealth management practice with AUM exceeding $120M. He has been investing in cryptocurrencies since 2014. David Langer is the Founder of impact-driven VC firm Lionheart Ventures and early investor in unicorns Anthropic, Groww, Calm and Twelve. He has been Investing actively in crypto quant funds since 2020.

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L/S Manager Appoints New Head of Business Development to Drive $55M AUM Expansion

Factor6 Capital, a fundamentals-driven long/short manager specializing in digital and traditional assets within the Web3 sector, is expanding its team with the addition of Nisha Deshmukh as Head of Business Development. Formerly with Ghost Tree Capital and Protégé Partners, Nisha will focus on developing investor relationships and driving firm growth. She holds a B.S from the Wharton School and a J.D. from the Emory University School of Law.

Factor6 Capital is set to mark its three-year anniversary on March 1st, managing approximately $30M in AUM. According to sources familiar with the firm's plans, Factor6 is looking to expand its investment capacity by an additional $25M by the start of Q2.

At the core of Factor6’s thesis is the belief that blockchain technologies will power socioeconomic engines, shape culture, and democratize wealth. The firm maintains a keen focus on AI x Crypto, allocating research and capital to AI infrastructure, agentic platforms, AI-friendly Layer 1s, decentralized finance and crypto-adjacent traditional equities.

Among liquid Web3 managers, Factor6 differentiates itself by expressing ideas through both digital and traditional assets, primarily in public markets, with select venture investments to capture asymmetric early-stage opportunities.

Factor6 was founded by Ralph Achacoso and Jason Zhang, both seasoned investors with backgrounds in low-net, fundamentally driven hedge funds and expertise in volatile, high-beta sectors like TMT and biotechnology. Most recently, they worked together at biotech-focused hedge fund Ghost Tree Capital.

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Systematic Quant Fund Tops $100M, Strengthens Leadership Team

Temple Capital, a fully systematic crypto quant fund founded in 2018, has surpassed $100M in assets under management (AUM), marking a key milestone in its six-year history.

To support its expansion, Temple Capital welcomes Guy Griffiths to a leadership role. With 17 years at Brevan Howard and affiliates, including his final year as London Deputy Funds CFO, Griffiths brings institutional expertise to the firm. His addition strengthens Temple Capital’s operations as it scales.

Temple Capital employs a fully systematic, beta-neutral, quant strategy to navigate cryptocurrency markets. The fund avoids leverage and remains uncorrelated to traditional financial indices. By capturing alpha across time frames and market conditions, it maintains strong risk-adjusted returns while avoiding beta exposure. The strategy is built around an advanced mathematical model (the “alpha factory”) developed by programmers, statisticians, and data scientists. Temple Capital limits gross exposure to 100% as a hard rule and rebalances its portfolio every five minutes to respond quickly to market movements. The firm utilizes thousands of uncorrelated weak signals, combining them into strong signals to generate superior risk-adjusted returns. Additionally, the strategy has positive convexity, excelling in periods of market turmoil such as March 2020 and May 2021. Unlike high-frequency traders, Temple Capital remains undistracted by short-term alpha horizons, focusing instead on the most liquid assets, which can be liquidated within 24 hours. The approach ensures no correlation to crypto markets or traditional indices while profiting from both rising and falling BTC and ETH prices.

Temple Capital is led by experts in quantitative trading, machine learning, and crypto investing. CEO Vasily Andreev, an early Bitcoin investor, helped scale enterprise tech firms like Gigster. CTO Alexei Andreev, a former Google and YouTube engineer, specializes in machine learning and trading infrastructure. VP of Data Science Satvik Beri, a UC Berkeley graduate, has experience in financial modeling and held key roles at fintech startups and Point72. Together, they drive Temple Capital’s research-driven approach to digital asset investing.

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Liquid Fund Seeks to Institutionalize Memecoin and AI Agent Mania

Zero Knowledge Ventures (ZK Ventures) liquid fund is nearing the final close of its $3M fund, advancing its AI-driven investment strategy with cutting-edge proprietary technology to identify and capitalize on high-upside opportunities in AI-agents and memecoins.

With a structured approach to risk management, ZK Ventures maintains a 60% cash/stables position, strategically deploying capital across a portfolio of high-conviction investments. The fund's AI tool continuously scrapes, analyzes, and synthesizes data from social, on-chain, and alternative sources, providing an advanced decision-making edge that has consistently driven strong performance.

ZK Ventures stands out with three key advantages: a proprietary AI tool that detects market-moving trends before they take off, ownership of Spot.dog, a leading memecoin trading app backed by Binance, and a proven track record of multiple 100x returns from its General Partners. With a data-driven strategy, the fund ensures precise capital deployment, balancing risk management with high-upside potential.

The investment team includes Nicky Montana (Founder of Spot.dog), Andrew Lubahn (early investor in Bonk, WIF, and Solana), Idan Sugarman (former manager of a $30M on-chain liquid book with 50% returns), and Bar Merhav (developer of an automated arbitrage yield strategy returning 75% annually). Their collective expertise and AI-driven methodology position ZK Ventures as a leader in the rapidly evolving digital asset space.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• William Purdy, former Head of Investor Relations at Van Markl Investment Management, where he raised $45M+ for the quant options hedge fund, joins MNNC Group as Director of Business Development & Strategy (William Purdy)

• Galaxy Digital launches the Galaxy Absolute Return Fund with a $25M start and a $100M target — This fundamentally driven, multi-asset strategy features equity-like volatility, taking both directional and non-directional views through long and short positions (Galaxy Digital)

• Bankless Ventures launches $50M Fund II after posting a 2.3X MOIC in Fund I (Bankless)

• According to a top executive at Decima Fund, the Tokyo based VC hit the final close of its debut fund — Notable LPs include: Gumi Inc., MZ Cryptos, SBI Holdings; and Animoca Brands (DealStreetAsia)

• Richard Chen , former General Partner at 1confirmation, raises $30M for Varrock Ventures’ maiden fund — The fund will take a general approach, investing $600K-$900k in pre-seed & seed crypto founders (VCWire.Tech)

• According to sources close to the matter, Hack VC, a $500M crypto investment firm, has launched Fund IV, an early-stage venture fund focused on Web3 infrastructure — This fund serves as a follow-on to both Seed Fund II and Venture Fund I (Hack VC)

• Of 50+ liquid fundamental hedge funds surveyed, discussions for capital remain strong; over 50% of managers reported inflows for the month — Powered by Crypto Insights Group (CIG)

• Borderless Capital, the Miami based Web3 investment firm with +$500M AUM, appoints former BlockTower Trader, Ryan Silva, as Partner & Head of Trading (Businesswire)

• ​10T Holdings the +$1B AUM growth equity fund specializing in mid-to-late-stage companies within the Digital Asset Ecosystem announces its fifth fund and will be “significantly differentiated from previous funds” (Dan Tapiero)

• The University of Austin raises $5M Bitcoin fund with a minimum holding period of five years (Cointelegraph)

• Nomura’s Laser Digital tokenizes its Laser Carry Fund (LCF), a high-yield, market neutral strategy that takes advantage of funding rates and yield opportunities in the digital asset market, on the Sui blockchain (Libre Capital)

• David Bailin, the CEO of CIO Capital Group and the former Chief Investment Officer of Citi Global Wealth, joins cryptocurrency hedge fund, Motus Capital Management, as a Partner and Senior Advisor (Motus)

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