Other industry highlights:

• Consumer Crypto VC Firm partnered with Kygo (yes… the famous DJ) Completes First Round of Funding for Crypto Fund II

• $40M Digital Asset Manager Launches Mid-Cap Crypto Strat

• $500M Secondaries Fund Seeks Last $200M to Close Fund

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

FoF’s $300M Pivot into TradFi — Nickel Digital, a crypto native FoF run by ex-Wall Street professionals that managed approximately $300M during the height of the last crypto bull market, is pivoting to… TradFi? With +3 years of track record and “tried-and-tested risk management systems” the firm is now looking to implement their experience and technology in traditional markets, but will still maintain crypto exposure.

Emerging Family Office with Roots in Digital Assets — Lucas Betschart, President of Bitcoin Association Switzerland, “leaks” Genesis Investment Partners as emerging FO with crypto exposure. Dr. Costa Vayenas, CIO of Genesis Investment Partners, “has devoted his career too” blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Multi-Family Office Gains Crypto Native CIO — Scott Army, former CIO and Managing Partner of Galaxy Vision Hill, the now obsolete FoF division of Galaxy Asset Management, announces new position as Partner and Head of Alternatives at multi-family office meetperry.

Asian Family Offices Demand Crypto Fund Exposure — Revo Digital Family acknowledges pickup in Asian FO interest in liquid crypto funds as they embrace smarter crypto allocation strategies. Asian FO allocation into crypto ranges between 1-5%.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

Consumer Crypto VC Firm Partnered with Kygo Completes First Round of Funding for Fund II

Palm Tree Crew Crypto (PTC Crypto), a VC fund focused on Consumer Crypto early stage investments, co-founded by Brett Shear, early crypto entrepreneur and investor, and the diversified holding company, Palm Tree Crew Holdings, founded in 2020 by Kyrre Gørvell-Dahl (Kygo), famous Norwegian DJ, and Myles Shear, is raising $40M for Fund II.

PTC Crypto invests in early stage companies in the Consumer Crypto category including consumer infrastructure and applications. In Fund II, the firm continues to focus on investing in four main pillars: Consumer Infrastructure, Web3 Social, Content Protocols, and Autonomous Worlds (on-chain gaming). The Fund prioritizes pre-seed stage investments and has an average check size of around $500K.

What separates PTC Crypto from other VC firms in the space is their sector focus on Consumer Crypto, a crypto native approach to sourcing and evaluating deals, and strategic go-to-market support for founders from crypto native all the way to mainstream adoption, with the Palm Tree Crew brand. Being the first to focus on this category, they’ve been able to establish themselves as a first check in venture fund in the earliest stages of fundraising for many Consumer Crypto category leaders.

Some notable investments in Fund I include: Delegate Cash, a wallet delegation protocol that facilitates secure hot wallet delegation for cold storage, enabling safe vaulting of NFTs and ERC20s. Delegate Cash has secured +$1.2B of assets in +180K wallets. IYK, Physical to NFT infrastructure utilizing NFC technology to connect physical items with digital goods and as NFTs. Over 60K NPC chips have been deployed with integration partners and over 270K taps from users. Sound, Music NFT platform for creators earning over $5.5M with artists on the platform such Snoop Dogg, Kygo, and Ryan Tedder. Additionally, Fund II has already completed its first round of funding and the firm has already deployed capital across several projects.

The PTC Crypto investment team is managed by Brett Shear, Managing Partner, and Jon Gall investment associate and former TradFi investment research analyst. PTC Crypto is looking to grow the team in 2024 seeking to bring on another deal partner.

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$40M Digital Asset Manager Launches Mid-Cap Crypto Strat

Runa Digital Assets, a digital assets investment manager with $40M assets under management, has officially launched the Runa Digital Assets Mid-Cap Strategy (MDCAP) for external investments.. This strategic move comes after incubating the new strategy with internal capital since January 2023.

MDCAP seeks to deliver long-term capital appreciation through active management of a diversified digital assets portfolio. The strategy employs a long-only approach, focusing on building a portfolio of liquid tokens, with an emphasis on emerging mid-cap size projects (excluding Bitcoin). The investment universe spans the top 300 tokens by market cap, with strategic concentration within the top 100.

The portfolio utilizes a barbell investment approach, making discretionary investments in digital assets with attractive value characteristics for long-term holdings. Simultaneously, it seizes shorter-term opportunistic investments with an average holding period of just a few months.

In 2023, MDCAP achieved a +127% return, outperforming Ethereum, its benchmark, by approximately 40%. Key positions in the portfolio included Immutable X, Lido DAO, and Optimism.

Founded in 2021, the Annapolis, Maryland based Runa Digital Assets launched its flagship long-biased strategy, offering investors exposure to the broader crypto market. The firm is founded by Jennifer Murphy, CFA, CEO of Runa Digital Assets and former COO of Western Asset Management, and Max Williams, Portfolio Manager of MDCAP and former Managing Director of Nasdaq. The firm's advisory board includes legendary investor Bill Miller, MRE Capital CEO David Williams, and Western Asset Management CEO Jim Hirschmann.

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$500M Secondaries Fund Seeks Last $200M to Close Fund

C1 Fund, a secondaries fund specializing in equity investments in digital asset companies is seeking to raise an additional $200M as they seek to close their first fund of $500M.

Co-Founded in 2023 by Dr. Najam Kidwai, C1 Fund is led by a team of former secondary market investors, entrepreneurs and digital asset enthusiasts which also includes the team who founded and listed the world’s first Crypto focused SPAC and raised $230M in Nov. 2021. The firm remains highly opportunistic focusing on special situational opportunities.

C1 Fund targets investment opportunities with a minimum of a 40-50% discount on their last primary funding round. The fund aims to make investments ranging from $15M to $50M in firms with a valuation of at least $300M. Interestingly, C1 Fund holds uninvested capital in Bitcoin as opposed to cash and cash equivalents.

What sets C1 Fund apart from its peers in the secondaries sector is their emphasis on speed. Unlike traditional investment firms, which typically take at least six months to conduct due diligence on an investment, C1 Fund can move within weeks if an opportunity presents itself.

Although, C1 Fund is primarily focused on secondaries in the digital asset space, particularly infrastructure companies (i.e. wallet providers, banks, exchanges, custodial solutions, etc.), they have the flexibility to do primary rounds as well.

C1 Fund recently made headlines by announcing their partnership with the Spartan Group, an Asian based advisory and asset management firm with an extensive track record in advising and investing across all verticals in the Crypto and Web3 sector.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Billionaire Alan Howard, co-founder of the asset management company Brevan Howard, is selling equity stakes in Copper and Bitpanda to reinvest proceeds into Brevan Howard Digital (BHD) — Plans to expand capital in BHD strategies and launch new BHD products (Binance)

• VC Firm Uncorrelated Ventures Raises $315M for new crypto / software fund (focus on India) with Salil Deshpande, the firm’s founder, finding the raise “easy” (Bloomberg)

• 1RoundTable Partners (1RT) raising between $200M — $800M for upcoming fund that focuses on infrastructure, blockchain and financial services — as well as allocating small amounts of capital to blockchain gaming, NFTs and metaverse (Startup News)

• Bridgetower Capital has partnered with the recently launched $1B crypto fund, Deus X Capital, to offer institutional crypto-staking and AI to the Middle East — Bridgetower will also make VC investments in Middle East (Be In Crypto)

• Galaxy Asset Management (GAM) surpass $8B AUM on the heels of BTCO ETF launch and management of FTX estate holdings (Galaxy)

• Hedera, an open-source Proof-of-Stake (PoS) public ledger, partners with the Saudi Arabia government to launch $250M deep tech fund (CoinGape)

• RW3 Ventures secures $60M from $284B Mubadala FO and Raptor Group for new fund to invest in early-stage blockchain and Web3 companies (WAYA)

• “Crypto Investor Exploring a New Venture” — Jon Campagna publicly announces his departure as Partner from CoinFund, the $830M AUM crypto fund (Jon Campagna)

• Finalist in Bitcoin Alpha Competition, Theta Digital, launches L/S strategy for SMA investment to counter trade sentiment in Bitcoin — Targeting a Sharpe Ratio > 2 with discretionary entry and exit signals, but systematic risk management (Theta Digital)

• Hilbert Capital, the institutional focused crypto quant fund, appoints former Goldman prop trader and former CIO of Atitlan Asset Management, Barnali Biswal, as new CIO (Richard Murray)

• Pantera Capital, the $4.6B VC and liquid crypto fund, says it’s “time to seize that moment”as Bitcoin DeFi market gives birth to $500B opportunity (DLNews)

• Green Key Partners, a research-focused algorithmic trading firm founded in 2017, sees +$23M of inflows into fund (EDGAR)

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