Other industry highlights:

• Chicago Prop Trading Giant Backs $200M London Multi-Manager

• FoF Seeks 30–40%+ Annual Return Managers After Double-Digit May

• Former Deputy CIO of $500M Quant Allocator Joins Onchain Capital Formation Platform

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^{🗞 Allocator Developments 🗞}

Chicago Prop Trading Giant Backs $200M London Multi-Manager — Jump Trading, one of the largest proprietary trading firms in the digital asset market, has acquired a minority stake in London-based Nickel Digital Asset Management. Nickel operates a multi-strategy pod platform that allocates approximately $200M across more than 80 external trading teams. The partnership also includes plans to explore “additional collaboration opportunities”.

FoF Seeks 30–40%+ Annual Return Managers After Double-Digit May — Toshima Digital, whose AUM has not been publicly disclosed, reported double-digit gains in May despite the broader crypto market selloff. The firm is actively seeking algorithmic and crypto-native portfolio managers across crypto, AI, and blockchain infrastructure, with a particular focus on short-bias quant, long-volatility, HFT, statistical arbitrage, and market-neutral strategies capable of generating 30–40%+ annualized returns with low or negative correlation to crypto beta.

French Multi-Manager Secures MiCA License to Expand Digital Asset Offerings — Rcube Asset Management, a France-based multi-manager investment platform founded in 2013 with approximately $100M in seed capital, has secured a Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) license, becoming one of only three French asset managers to do so. The authorization expands the firm's regulated capabilities across digital assets and DeFi, supporting its platform model of allocating capital to independent investment managers as it positions for the growing institutional adoption of tokenized assets and on-chain investment infrastructure.

Former Deputy CIO of $500M Quant Allocator Joins Onchain Capital Formation Platform — Kelly Ye, formerly Deputy CIO at Avenir—one of the largest quantitative allocators in digital assets, which announced plans to invest up to $500M across trading teams at launch—has joined CoinBridge as Co-founder and CIO. The new platform aims to build institutional infrastructure for onchain capital formation by connecting private-market assets with global investors, positioning tokenization and blockchain-based capital markets as the next phase of institutional digital asset adoption.

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🔥 What’s Hot in Crypto 🔥

Recently Launched Fund of Funds Targets $100M AUM

BlockArrow has recently launched the BlockArrow Opportunity Fund, a multi-strategy digital asset fund-of-funds targeting $100M in assets under management. The fund, which went live in December 2025, is designed to provide high net worth individuals and institutional investors with diversified exposure to the crypto market.

The fund was developed to address what BlockArrow views as a gap in the institutional digital asset market, where investors have historically been forced to choose between passive strategies that expose portfolios to significant volatility and diversified approaches that may dilute returns. Rather than relying on a single investment style, the BlockArrow Opportunity Fund allocates capital across a curated portfolio of institutional-grade managers employing complementary strategies designed to perform across varying market environments.

The portfolio invests in approximately 8–12 underlying funds across three primary strategy categories: Market Neutral, Mixed Strategy (long/short and directional), and Long-Bias. The strategy is actively managed through monthly portfolio rebalancing, formal investment committee oversight, and a continuous due diligence process that evaluates operational, legal, compliance, liquidity, and risk management considerations. The fund seeks to capture approximately two-thirds of Bitcoin's upside during positive market environments while experiencing roughly one-third of Bitcoin's drawdown during periods of market weakness. By combining diversified sources of return with active portfolio management, the Opportunity Fund is designed to reduce volatility and help limited partners compound capital more effectively across market cycles.

The fund is led by Thomas Sutker and Dylan Gold, with Sam Isaacson supporting research, manager diligence, and operations. Sutker oversees the firm’s operations, compliance, investor relations, and capital formation while contributing to portfolio strategy through his broad network across the digital asset industry, macroeconomic perspective, and ongoing dialogue with fund managers, founders, allocators, and market participants. Gold leads investment strategy, portfolio construction, and manager selection while architecting the firm’s proprietary research infrastructure. His work integrates AI-assisted research systems, automated analytical workflows, and large-scale data synthesis into the investment process, supporting manager underwriting, thematic research, portfolio monitoring, and internal decision-making. Isaacson supports manager diligence, investment research, and operational initiatives as BlockArrow continues expanding its institutional investment platform.

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🍿 Blockchain Bytes 🍿

• Dialectic, a Zug-based crypto asset manager focused on AI-driven decentralized finance (DeFi), released results from Season 1 of its DeFi Bench, which evaluated eight frontier large language models executing identical on-chain strategies across Ethereum protocols including Morpho, Aave, Curve, and Fluid. Qwen delivered the strongest raw performance, generating a +1.39% return (DeFi Bench)

• Variant has raised a $222M fund to back startups at the intersection of AI, crypto, and what founder Jesse Walden describes as "autonomy"—a thesis focused on technologies that expand user agency through decentralized finance and agentic AI applications (Yahoo Finance)

• KuCoin, one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges with a reported $10B valuation, has launched the KuCoin Wealth Quant Fund, introducing a market-neutral investment strategy for high-net-worth investors (PR Newswire)

• ETHZilla shares fell more than 5% in overnight trading after regulatory filings showed Founders Fund, Peter Thiel's venture firm with approximately $20B in AUM, had fully exited its position. Founders Fund, which invested roughly $200M in Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2023, sold its stake as ETHZilla continues to reshape its balance sheet after reducing its once 100,000+ ETH treasury during the crypto downturn to fund share buybacks (StockTwits)

• Franklin Templeton, the $1.7T asset manager, has completed its acquisition of 250 Digital, although it did not disclose the purchase price, and has launched Franklin Crypto, a dedicated division focused exclusively on actively managed digital asset investments. The new business combines the former 250 Digital team's investment expertise with Franklin Templeton's global distribution platform (CoinDesk)

• Solmate Infrastructure, a Solana-focused Digital Asset Treasury (DAT), is facing a lawsuit from RockawayX-affiliated RBCH, its largest outside shareholder, alleging insider self-dealing, preferential advisory agreements, and shareholder dilution. RockawayX, one of the crypto industry's leading institutional digital asset investment firms, denies wrongdoing, while Solmate argues CEO Viktor Fischer invested $50M in the company in an attempt to sell RockawayX to Solmate for $200M before the deal collapsed, triggering dueling lawsuits (The Block)

• Hilbert Group, a digital asset investment firm, has received the first allocation into its Basis+ BTC strategy through a new collateral structure that enables crypto-native investors to generate yield on dormant digital asset holdings without selling or diluting their positions. The firm's Basis+ BTC strategy returned +20.2% net in BTC terms in 2025 and is up 3.94% YTD in 2026, while Hilbert manages capital for institutional clients including a $25B allocator and a sovereign wealth fund, and partners with Xapo Bank on the Hilbert Xapo Byzantine BTC Credit Fund (TradingView)

• Coinbase Asset Management CEO Eric Peters is stepping down after three years to focus full-time on One River Asset Management, the firm he founded in 2013. Peters, who joined Coinbase following its acquisition of One River Digital in 2023, said the transition comes as crypto has entered the financial mainstream, with Brett Tejpaul, co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, assuming leadership of Coinbase Asset Management (Eric Peters)

• Future Digital Capital Management (FDCM) is raising $150M for SPEAR Digital, a fully systematic, market-neutral long/short fund focused on liquid digital asset perpetuals. Led by a former Credit Suisse managing director, the strategy has returned more than 15% since its September 2025 launch by using a regime-aware, relative-value approach designed to minimize market beta (Financial News)

• RockDen Digital Assets has returned capital to investors and closed its liquid crypto token fund after delivering a 2.2x MOIC and 25.5% annualized IRR over a 3.6-year investment period. Founder Denis Tolkachev said the decision reflects a disciplined, tax-aware investment approach and a desire to pursue new opportunities in on-chain markets despite the fund's strong performance (RockDen Advisors)

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