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A new survey reveals a significant shift in hedge fund investments towards cryptocurrencies, with nearly half of traditional asset-focused funds now engaged in the digital asset class. This uptake, according to the Global Crypto Hedge Fund Report by the Alternative Investment Management Association and PwC, marks an increase from 29% in 2023 to 47% in 2024. Enhanced regulatory clarity and the introduction of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. and Asia have bolstered investor confidence, leading to a more diverse application of trading strategies, including a rise in derivative trading among these funds.
The report highlights a strategic evolution within hedge funds; 58% are now trading crypto derivatives, a significant jump from last year’s 38%. The decrease in direct token trading from 69% to 25% this year illustrates a shift towards more sophisticated investment methods. With crypto markets known for their volatility, hedge funds are capitalizing on the higher potential returns offered by these less efficient markets.
Despite a broadening interest, some hedge funds remain cautious, with 76% of non-investors likely to stay away over the next three years. However, for those invested, a robust 67% intend to maintain or increase their stakes in crypto, suggesting a strong, ongoing commitment to the asset class among leading financial players.
Wizards on stage. Rock climbing. And don’t forget the axe throwing.
These things and more helped set the tone during Permissionless III’s first day as thousands of crypto denizens descended on Salt Lake City.
There’s excitement in the air as folks sit in on sessions focused on a variety of topics, from investing in private markets to a fireside chat with BlackRock’s Samara Cohen (we’ll get to that in a bit).
One attendee remarked that they preferred Permissionless over other popular crypto events, remarking that it was “less of a zoo.”
Source: Mike Lawrence for Blockworks
While many attendees noted that the overall vibes were good, Ram Ahluwalia told me that he felt…
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VanEck goes into venture
An asset manager with a crypto bent is doubling/tripling/quadrupling down — whatever you want to call it — on the sector.
VanEck brought to market a bitcoin futures ETF in late 2021, following that up with a similar ETH offering in October 2023. It later chose to shutter both those funds once the SEC approved products that would hold BTC and ETH directly.
To that point, it was among the firms that debuted spot bitcoin and ether ETFs in the US in January and July, respectively.
VanEck…
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Solana’s march into mobile continued yesterday when the popular DeFi platform Jupiter released its mobile app.
Jupiter’s pseudonymous founder meow said on X that the team built and dropped many features while developing the app, but the final version sticks pretty closely to Jupiter’s hit feature, which is swaps. Interestingly, Jupiter doesn’t appear to be making money from fees on the app, so the initiative is purely a play at growing Jupiter’s distribution for now.
The app has just two tabs, one for making swaps and one for viewing your wallet balance. Jupiter partnered with MoonPay to offer fiat onramps, and I was able to fund a wallet with SOL via Apple Pay in under…
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Babylon sees $1.4 billion in deposits
Babylon is a restaking protocol on the CometBFT consensus that saw a mainnet launch in August.
As of today, the Babylon chain has racked up an impressive 23,000 bitcoin ($1.4 billion) staked from 25.3k stakers. That puts it in the TVL ballpark of major restaking protocols like Symbiotic ($1.5 billion) and EigenLayer ($10.7 billion).
Unlike previous sidechain attempts at bridging bitcoin to smart contract chains, Babylon offers a trustless coordination layer to do so without technically…
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CAUTION: SPOILERS AHEAD.
Some say we live in the golden age of documentaries – certainly they are being created at a volume far higher than at any point in history, but for every “My Octopus Teacher,” a genuinely inspiring and unusual human story, there’s the opposite: cynical trash like “Money Electric.”
Let’s start by acknowledging that “Money Electric” upped its own stakes, mounting a week-long hype cycle with the promise of a big reveal – that the world would at last know the identity of Bitcoin’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.Maybe let’s…
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Delta, a new layer-1 platform challenging the status quo for building high-throughput decentralized applications, has raised $11 million in funding.
The platform positions itself as a “network of networks” that seeks to break the traditional trade-off between blockchain sovereignty and interoperability, a nagging problem that many developers face today.
Delta’s funding round was led by Figment Capital and Maven 11, with contributions from Variant, DBA and other investors. (Blockworks co-founder Michael Ippolito is also an angel investor.)
The functional goals of Delta’s architecture are similar to those of the major rollup “clusters” — OP Superchain, the AggLayer or…
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Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) is setting the stage for a significant advancement in cryptocurrency adoption. The FSC plans to launch a pilot program for crypto storage services through local banks. Scheduled to begin collecting applications by early 2025, the initiative has already attracted interest from three private banks ready to pioneer a crypto custody business. The pilot will focus on major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin, targeting both professional and general investors.
This move is part of a broader strategy to strengthen Taiwan’s position in the global financial market. By updating its Anti-Money Laundering framework to include cryptocurrencies and permitting professional investors to engage with foreign cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds, Taiwan is paving the way for increased institutional engagement in the crypto space.
As one of Asia’s leaders in technology and finance, Taiwan is rapidly becoming a key player in the cryptocurrency market. The FSC’s proactive approach, including public consultations and regulatory updates, underscores its commitment to integrating digital currencies into Taiwan’s economic fabric, signaling potential growth into a major crypto market.
Despite slick marketing leading up to the release of HBO documentary Money Electric, we’re no closer to finding out the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
What filmmaker Cullen Hoback, whose most recent work chronicled QAnon and 8chan with “Q: Into The Storm,” has given us is more of a creative retelling of Bitcoin lore.
The early efforts of the Cypherpunks, the formation of Blockstream and its victory in the Blocksize War, into the corporatization/industrialization of bitcoin mining and El Salvador adopting it as legal tender.
All that’s squeezed into 90 minutes, including cutaways to incessant negging from Nouriel Roubini and the mainstream media — solid comedic relief.
That…
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