Other industry highlights:

• MFT Quant Fund Hopes to Piggyback off Strong YTD Gains With $25M AUM Target by Year-End

• Baus Capital Seeks Expansion with Seed-Stage GP Round

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

Quant Allocator Appoints Former Point72 Head as CEO — Algoquant, a quant multi-manager with +$30M allocated across 10 managers, has appointed Michael Ashby as CEO. Ashby was recently Head of Digital Assets Strategic Implementation for Point72.

Family Office Sees Inflows into Crypto Arm –- Huizenga Digital Assets, LLC, digital assets arm of family office Huizenga Capital Management (HCM), sees +$2M of inflows. Founded in 1990, the firm manages around $618M in AUM across various asset classes.

Sub $10M Multi-Manager Plans Fall Launch with Outside Capital — Newly launched multi-manager, Annamite Capital, seeks $50M raise ahead of formal launch. Aims to produce +40% net returns allocating to quant managers via separately managed accounts. Will also seed new managers.

Whales Fund Regulator Backed $5.1M VC — Multicoin’s Kyle Samani and Winklevoss twins, co-founders of centralized crypto exchange Gemini, back $5.1M crypto VC founded by Ex-DFS regulator.

FoF PM Honored Amongst Top TradFi Traders — Jeffrey Park, Bitwise’s Head of Alpha Strategies, named “Rising Star” during the 21st Annual Hedge Fund Industry Awards. Bitwise’s Multi-Strategy Alpha Fund, managed by Park, saw an 18.8% gain in 2023.

Industry Update From Crypto VC Fund of Funds (FoF) — Hutt Capital, a crypto VC FoF, sees capital base among crypto VC funds decline 10% YoY despite the average fund (over 254 tracked) gaining 13% YTD.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

AI & Crypto Multi-Manager Secures $100M in Day One Commitments

Opus One Asset Management, a quant multi-manager led by 24-year-old Zachary Levitt, has secured $100M in day one commitments. The firm has received allocations from an undisclosed multi-manager, an outsourced CIO firm, and an asset management firm. Prior to launching Opus One, Levitt managed a biotech alpha capture strategy that outperformed the biotech sector in several SMAs over the past three years.

The multi-manager incorporates 12 subsidiary strats across 10 managers. The types of strategies include: Intraday order flow, relative value volatility, market neutral (focused on equities in emerging markets), equity trend, intraday futures, multi-day spot FX, crypto futures breakout, AI macro, stat arb, nat gas quant, commodity trend and carry neutral tail hedge. It’s important to note, Opus One only allocates to crypto strategies that trade CME futures, however, the firm is open to allocating to strategies with direct crypto exposure in the future.

Opus One has only allocated to strategies with some sort of systematic component, but is not opposed to allocating to managers that are 100% discretionary. Each PM operates under strict risk management protocols, with maximum drawdown levels across one-day and 30-day windows. Strategies are turned off if they fail to recover within a designated period. The goal of Opus One is to produce high risk adjusted returns that are uncorrelated to the S&P500.

To enhance their trading team, Opus One has appointed several key executives: George Robertson, formerly Executive Director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, as Chief Risk Officer (CRO); Nithin Ansari as Chief Technology Officer (CTO); and Mitchell Rosenthal, a veteran of Ambrus Group, Amber Capital, and Bloomberg, as a quantitative researcher. Additionally, the firm is nearing the appointment of a Chief Operating Officer (COO).

Opus One plans to cap their fund at $250M AUM and is actively seeking to allocate capital to trading teams that can produce produce orthogonal returns to other managers in their portfolio.

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MFT Quant Fund Hopes to Piggyback off Strong YTD Gains With $25M AUM Target by Year-End

Tendex, the $10M AUM crypto quant fund utilizing a mid-frequency (MFT) market-making approach to exploit mispricings across spot, perpetual and futures markets, is looking to raise $25M by year end after boasting a strong YTD performance of 19.17%.

The firm leverages a unique approach to trading crypto markets, deploying one core strategy across various exchanges. The strategy’s average daily turnover is 5-10X, producing average daily trading volumes between $50-100M. The strategy takes little to no directional risk, rigorously managing its net exposure with a comprehensive risk framework. Currently the firm is only active in CeFi, but is looking to deploy their trading strategies in DeFi markets towards year end.

Notably, tendex has successfully navigated significant market disruptions—including the collapse of FTX, Luna, and BlockFi—limiting their largest annualized loss to just -0.18% in 2022. This marks their only down year since their inception in 2020.

The firm's co-founders, Directors James Kilroe and Geoffrey van Ryneveld, intend to expand the tendex team beyond its current five members within the next six months. Additionally, they plan to broaden the firm's trading scope, shifting focus from the top 15 assets to the top 50-100 assets.

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Baus Capital Seeks Expansion with Seed-Stage GP Round

Baus Capital, a crypto algorithmic trading firm, has launched a seed-stage equity round, offering investors a stake in its General Partnership (GP). The capital will support ongoing operations and facilitate growth.

Founded shortly after the collapse of FTX, the multi-strategy firm focuses on statistical arbitrage, long/short, and delta-neutral arbitrage. Their research blends scientific methodology and machine learning techniques to decipher market intricacies within exchange-specific and broader market orderbook and orderflows.

After unveiling its statistical arbitrage portfolio to separately managed account (SMA) to clients in March, Baus Capital attracted low seven figures in initial inflows. The firm is set to launch its Delta Neutral portfolio in Q2, followed by a market-making division in the near future, to further diversify its product offerings.

The executive team at Baus Capital is led by Seattle Smith, the founder and CIO, a former proprietary trader and BlockTower Capital Alum. The team features seasoned professionals, including Matthew Tweed, Head of Engineering and former founder of Pine Financial, an ultra-low latency crypto trading firm, and Chris LeClerc, PhD, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and former CTO of First Quadrant, a $10.5B AUM macro hedge fund. Other team members have strong backgrounds in quantitative research, low-latency engineering, and portfolio specialization, with experience at firms like Tower Research Capital, Bridgewater, and AQR.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Klumi Ventures becomes first web3 VC to be regulated by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) — Will launch $100M fund for emerging technologies and a $15M fund for early-stage Web3 startups (FinanceFeeds)

• Dan Tapiero’s 1RoundTable Partners is raising up to $800M for a new venture fund focused on growth-stage startups in the infrastructure, blockchain and financial services sectors, along with emerging segments like gaming (TechCrunch)

• Polychain Capital begins distributing significant payouts to investors, returning 44% of Polychain Ventures II fund and half of its first VC fund (Bloomberg)

• $1.7B AUM BlockTower Capital faces hack — Amount stolen has been undisclosed (YahooFinance)

• Pantera Capital sets target of +$1B for Pantera Fund V, which will look to gain exposure to a wide range of assets, including startup equity, early-stage and liquid tokens, with an expected launch in April 2025 (The Block)

• Former Point72 trader Bobby J. joins Hermeneutic Investments, a crypto prop trading firm with a nine-figure balance sheet (Hermenuetic) and Matthew Miller ditches Bison Fund to lead cap raising efforts at +$1B AUM multi-strat crypto fund, Hivemind (Matthew Miller)

• New Form Capital looks to raise $100M for investments in trading markets and payment systems, as well as crypto-related AI startups (Binance)

• Hyperion Decimus launches HD CoinDesk Acheilus Fund to offer institutional investors a systematic, risk-managed approach to capturing alpha in the digital asset market (Alexa Blockchain) — Its Libertas Fund manages around $70M in AUM (RCM Alternatives)

• $100M crypto quant fund and HFT market maker, KBit, looks to add five additional members to their 12 person team — Roles they are hiring for include quant and algo trading, DevOps, and operations engineering (efinancialcareers)

• Shima in Shambles!!!??? — Yida Gao, Founder of $200M Crypto VC, caught funneling assets belonging to Shima into a corporation set up under his own name (YahooFinance)

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