Other industry highlights:

• New Form Capital on pace to Close its 100M Fund III

• $10M Liquid Fund Rebrands Following Launch of DeFi Stablecoin Fund

• $4M Solo-Managed DeFi Fund Eyes Growth Following Post-FTX Launch

…but first let’s raise a glass to this month’s sponsor 🥂

Crypto Funds Watch is thrilled to announce its partnership with Dutch East India and Traders Guild, a community for institutions and DeFi protocols seeking to build strategies, and protocols together!

Together, we’ve launched a comprehensive 2025 calendar showcasing all major events related to fundraising for digital asset investment funds and quantitative trading firms.

Members of Crypto Funds Watch and/or Traders Guild can join specific Telegram channels linked on the calendar, providing them with exclusive access to networking opportunities and side events surrounding major conferences.

Click the button below to view the calendar!

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

Family Office to Allocate $500M to Quant Trading Groups — Avenir Crypto, a subsidiary of the emerging family office Avenir Group, has announced its plans to invest $500M to support leading quantitative teams in the market. Avenir Group was founded by Li Lin, the founder of Huobi, one of the largest crypto exchanges.

Multi-Managers Seek to Allocate up to $100M in Capacity —ARB Asset Management and ARB Trading Group allocating to trading teams with at least $2M in AUM and have capacity for $100M with a focus on derivatives-heavy strategies. Meanwhile, Digital Opportunities Group is now allocating to traders focused on DeFi arbitrage strategies and bitcoin tail hedged strategies.

Hamilton Lane Raises First VC Fund of Funds — The Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based firm has launched the Hamilton Lane Venture Access Fund I LP, raising +$500M from 24 investors. The Hamilton Lane venture and growth equity team will target high-growth companies via fund investments, direct investments and what the firm calls “solution-oriented” secondaries.

Annamite Capital Launches Multi-Strategy Hedge Fund — Annamite Capital, a multi-strategy investment firm focused on digital assets, announced its formal launch for Jan 2, 2025. It has made a >$4M investment over 2.5 years in building its tech infrastructure and has deployed +$7M of prop capital to external investment teams returning+27.8% net returns for its USD share class.

Accolade Closes Third Blockchain Fund of Funds — Accolade held a final close for Accolade Blockchain III , raising $202M for its third fund backing blockchain VC funds. Accolade now manages $1.3B across its blockchain FoFs.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

New Form Capital on pace to Close its 100M Fund III

New Form Capital has secured 75% of its 100M target for its third venture fund. The new fund continues the firm’s original mission of backing seed stage founders building products that utilize blockchain technology to make capital markets more efficient. They look to give their portfolio companies a competitive advantage by connecting them to larger tradfi capital allocators, many of which are New Form limited partners.

The firm was founded in 2019 by Alex Marinier who previous held investment roles at Blackstone and DCM Ventures. New Form’s first fund, a $21M solo GP fund, was followed by the launch of a $65M fund II in early 2022. Last year, the firm also introduced a $30M liquid hedge fund of funds, offering investors both market-neutral and directional portfolios.

Notable companies in New Form’s portfolio include Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market, Figure Markets, a crypto and RWA trading platform, and Spectral Labs, a platform that enables users to create on-chain AI agents to execute investment strategies.

The firm currently has a team of eight, and is looking to expand by adding a VP of finance in Q1 2025.

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$10M Liquid Fund Rebrands Following Launch of DeFi Stablecoin Fund

Blackbox Digital, a cryptocurrency hedge fund managing $10M in AUM, has officially rebranded as Carpathian Crypto.

Carpathian Crypto, inspired by the legend of the Golden Horseshoe from the Carpathian Mountains—a symbol of prosperity and trust—positions itself as a "digital treasure trove" for investors. The firm seeks to bridge traditional values with the opportunities of the digital era, offering access to wealth creation through deep market insights and strategic approaches to blockchain technologies.

Carpathian Crypto offers two key investment products:

Liquid Opportunities Fund I — Launched in August 2021, this fund aims to provide consistent returns while minimizing exposure to cryptocurrency market volatility. It focuses on timing altcoin rotations to outperform Bitcoin during bullish cycles.

DeFi Dynamic Fund — Introduced in December 2024, this fund is designed for stable income generation by investing in USD-pegged stablecoins and employing a range of decentralized finance (DeFi) strategies, including lending, staking, and liquidity provisioning. The fund will invest heavily into Real World Assets leveraging DeFi native strategies. The fund leverages blockchain-native infrastructure to minimize traditional fund formation costs and ensure transparency.

The firm is led by founding partners Noah Bortnick and Tucker Sutton. Noah has been investor in blockchain since 2016 focusing on DeFi strategies and leveraging the innovative blockchain technology, while Tucker offers extensive experience in derivatives trading and cryptocurrency market analysis-- Tucker is currently the CFO of Becausebitcoin. Gregory Bortnick, with an engineering background, excels in crafting strategic investment approaches in the crypto space, focusing on yield opportunities in stablecoins and DeFi.

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$4M Solo-Managed DeFi Fund Eyes Growth Following Post-FTX Launch

Metanova Capital, a discretionary DeFi hedge fund with $4M in assets under management, launched in 2022 during the FTX collapse. Focused on navigating a volatile digital asset market, the fund positions itself to take advantage of the expanding opportunities in DeFi.

Led by Eric Chen, Metanova employs a low-volatility portfolio strategy aimed at achieving equity-like returns with a more stable risk profile. The fund balances its investments between directional and yield-focused strategies, with an emphasis on generating additional yield even from directional positions, such as through token staking. While the firm's mandate is unconstrained, it seeks to mitigate risk by focusing on established protocols such as Aave, often on newer chains.

Chen shared with Crypto Funds Watch that Metanova plans to hire an operations specialist to streamline workflows to enable him to focus on portfolio management. Although no timeline has been set, Chen’s primary focus remains on leveraging the growing opportunities in the DeFi market.

Before founding Metanova, Chen worked as an emerging markets credit analyst at DoubleLine Capital, a fixed-income asset manager with over $100B in AUM, and at ICE Canyon, an emerging markets credit hedge fund. He began his career on the leveraged finance desk at Barclays Capital.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Metalayer, a crypto VC firm founded by former Two Sigma executives, has secured $20M in a first close toward its $25M target (Cryptonews)

• Of 50+ liquid fundamental hedge funds with over $3B AUM, fundraising momentum continues to be very favorable. 25% of managers saw inflows greater than $1M, with over 60% of funds reporting inflows for the month — Powered by Crypto Insights Group (CIG)

• Bain Capital Crypto is launching a second fund, after launching its first fund of $560M AUM in 2022 — No other details regarding the fund launch have been released (MSN)

• 🔥🔥🔥 Laura Vidiella del Blanco bids farewell to MNNC Group to lead investor relations efforts for VanEck's digital assets division (LVdB)

• Firat Akkan, former COO of Pangolin Exchange, launches Iron Wolf Asset Management, an active global macro hedge fund focusing on traditional and digital assets (Firat Akkan)

• C1 Fund, a $500M crypto-focused fund specializing in secondary investments, has filed a registration statement with the SEC to launch a $100M IPO (Businesswire)

• British pension specialist Cartwright Pension Trusts has guided the UK’s FIRST pension fund to allocate 3% of its AUM to bitcoin (Jordan Walker) & Jersey City’s pension fund is seeking to allocate 2% of the firms $225M balance sheet to bitcoin ETFs (Blockworks)

• ML Tech, a crypto trading platform with $100M AUM, seeking to hire a meme coin trader (ML Tech)

• Arca ($194M AUM) and BlockTower Capital ($1.7B AUM) sign a Letter of Intent (LOI) to merge through an all-equity deal, making this the largest M&A transaction in the crypto hedge fund space to date (PRNewswire)

• ProChain Capital, a multi-strategy crypto fund, cuts its management fees from 0% - 2% for the remainder of 2024 (ProChain Capital)

There’s way more alpha than we can squeeze into a single CFW issue. Catch all the extra insights on our new LinkedIn page!

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