BlockTower Acquires Rival Crypto Hedge Fund Gamma Point

(Bloomberg) --

BlockTower Capital, a cryptocurrency fund that recently snagged an investment from billionaire hedge-fund manager Marc Lasry, has acquired rival Gamma Point Capital.

The deal is valued at about $35 million, BlockTower co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Matthew Goetz said in a Bloomberg TV interview. Gamma is a San Francisco-based investment manager specializing in neutral strategies, investing in everything from coins to derivatives and decentralized-finance applications-related strategies. The idea is to use hedging to make returns no matter whether it’s a bull or bear market.

“A market-neutral strategy we are talking about really doesn’t care where the market goes from here,” Goetz said in an earlier interview.

Bitcoin has slid about 50% since its all-time high of almost $65,000 in mid-April. Even so, Goetz remains undeterred in his optimism for digital assets.

For institutional investors, “it can be a harder sale, we are going to go long crypto, and we are going to ride the roller coaster,” Goetz said in the TV interview. “This will be a much more attractive way to access the opportunities in this market.”

Gamma’s fund will become part of BlockTower’s family of funds, and its three co-founders will join Miami-based BlockTower’s 12-person team, said Goetz, who previously worked in investment management at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Goetz co-founded the firm in 2017 with former University of Chicago Endowment portfolio manager Ari Paul. In March, Bloomberg reported that Lasry and former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo invested in BlockTower.

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