UNKNOWN

MAY 2024

UNITED STATES

BLOCKTOWER CAPITAL

DESCRIPTION OF EVENTS

"BlockTower is an institutional investment firm, applying professional trading, venture investing, credit underwriting, and portfolio management to digital and traditional assets."

 

"BlockTower Capital was co-founded back in 2017 by former university endowment manager Ari Paul and former investment banker Matthew Goetz." "[It] is headquartered in Miami and New York." "In 2021, it acquired rival Gamma Point Capital to launch its market-neutral fund. However, the fund was shut down last year due to the lack of investment opportunities. BlockTower officially rolled out its $150 million venture capital fund in October 2022." "The firm has invested in companies such as NFT developer Dapper Labs, game studio Sky Mavis, and Terraform Labs, the developer of the failed TerraUSD stablecoin."

 

"Crypto represents disruptive technology, liquid public markets, and new use cases and business models built on top of programmable blockchains.

 

Navigating this space requires an approach operating at the intersection of cryptography, game theory, network and behavioral economics, competitive strategy, computer science, early stage investing, credit analysis, and portfolio management.

 

We are a team of venture investors, traders, credit underwriters, engineers, data scientists, operators, and risk managers focused on stewarding capital and helping to responsibly build this globally-connected industry.

 

We partner with the teams and projects building this paradigm-shifting technology, as investors and as users, from the earliest stages to and through the liquid market journey.

 

And we use and build blockchain infrastructure to create the future of financial services, including securitizing traditional assets on-chain, and working with real-world credit originators to provide capital and support as they move along their growth path."

 

"[L]ast year, the firm decided to close its market-neutral crypto fund due to a lack of investment opportunities, a fund that once managed over $100 million in assets."

 

"BlockTower Capital’s main hedge fund has been compromised and partially drained by fraudsters. The company has $1.7 billion in assets under management." "BlockTower Capital’s main hedge fund has been compromised and partially drained by fraudsters, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified discussing sensitive information."

 

"Blocktower uses several custodians and security is not entirely up to the custodians. It’s also the responsibility of the people authorized to access the wallets to safeguard that access."

 

"Despite hiring blockchain forensic analysts to investigate the specifics of the fund theft and informing its limited partners of the incident, the stolen funds have yet to be recovered, and the hackers have not been apprehended."

 

"The funds are still missing and the hacker has not been apprehended, but the firm has employed blockchain forensics analysts to determine how the money was stolen and recently informed its limited partners about the heist, one of the people said. BlockTower declined to comment on the hack when contacted by Bloomberg." "The firm did not immediately respond to The Block’s request for further comment." "In public so far there’s been a deafening silence from Blocktower, which has $1.7 billion in assets under management across all funds according to Pitchbook."

BlockTower Capital is a large hedge fund with an estimated $1.7b under management. Some undisclosed portion of funds went missing. An anonymous source revealed the breach to Bloomberg News. The hedge fund did not disclose this and has not provided any details.

Sources And Further Reading

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