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Here's How Top Crypto Funds Did In A Monster Year For Digital Assets

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Billionaire Alan Howard has a crypto unit of his asset manager, Brevan Howard.

Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images

  • Bitcoin was up 121% in 2024, eclipsing $100,000 for the first time.
  • The once-slowing crypto space has soared in interest again, in no small part because of Donald Trump's reelection.
  • Top fund managers in the space, like Brevan Howard Digital, had strong years.

Much like how the biggest hedge funds in the industry had strong 2024s but failed to match the gains of the S&P 500, top crypto managers soared yet struggled to match Bitcoin's meteoric rise.

Bitcoin's price jumped 121% in 2024, breaking the $100,000 barrier for the first time. The digital asset industry had a resurgence last year, bolstered even more at the end of the year with the reelection of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to be friendly to the industry that had slumped following the implosion of exchange FTX in 2022.

The most well-known managers in the space had big years, which isn't surprising given how well the overall space performed. Alan Howard's Brevan Howard Digital unit has $2.4 billion in crypto-connected assets, more than half of which is in its multistrategy fund. That fund returned 51.3% in 2024, a person close to the manager said.

The manager has a significant presence in Abu Dhabi and does a good amount of its crypto trading from the United Arab Emirates, an executive said at a conference held in Dubai last October.

"The regulators in the UAE are hard, but they want the industry to fly and so they write sensible regulations and they are prepared to talk to the industry in order to evolve those regulations," said Ryan Taylor, Brevan Howard's group head of compliance Brevan Howard who is now based in the UAE, at the conference.

Reflexive Capital, a $100 million digital assets hedge fund run by a former Peter Thiel trader, had a strong year with a 106% return, a person close to the young manager said.

Reflexive is run by David Kalk, who launched Reflexive alongside former Point72 and Brevan Howard executives in 2023. Kalk was a macro investor for Thiel's family office and a trader at Goldman Sachs before diving into crypto.

While the average crypto manager didn't match Bitcoin's rise, they greatly outperformed the average hedge fund, according to Hedge Fund Research. The industry data provider reported that the average crypto fund was up just under 60% in 2024, thanks to a November surge following Trump's election, while the overall industry average return was roughly 10%.

The banner month in number helped turn plenty of digital asset managers' good years into great ones. HFR stated that the average crypto fund gained more than 35% in the month.

Raoul Pal, the former Goldman Sachs salesman who runs the Real Vision interview channel, saw his $115 million multistrategy crypto fund jump more than 51% in November, according to HSBC's Hedge Weekly report. The Exponential Age Digital Asset fund finished November up nearly 62% for the year.

The firm did not respond to a request for comment, but it is top the performing manager on HSBC's weekly roundup for 2024 — and came in second in 2023 with a 107.9% gain.

A firm that topped Bitcoin's gains did so with a substantial stake in the original digital asset. Pythagoras Investment Management's Alpha Long Biased strategy made 204% in 2024, according to industry publication Coindesk.

The manager combines a position in bitcoin with a momentum strategy and a long-short strategy to create its best-performing strategy and is naturally bullish about where the industry will go following Trump's election. The firm's CEO, Mitchell Dong, told Coindesk that the new administration plan to create a national bitcoin reserve will "be a major catalyst."

"We expect some countries to attempt to front-run the US in accumulating bitcoin," Dong said.

Read the original article on Business Insider


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