Private funds catering to accredited investors as well as family offices, hedge funds, and other entities, have seen one of the most active period in two years.
While not yet quite near the frenzy seen in November and December 2020, such activity has been picking up throughout September, and seems to be slightly accelerating.
From the small fish to the big ones, the unknown Windward Fund LP represents the former.
They’re owned by FirstWatch Crypto, itself a little known entity, which seems to be focused on what we’d describe the professional class, or the ‘poorest’ of the rich.
47 individuals contributed towards raising $6 million for this FirstWatch Crypto fund according to Daniel McGlinn, a Managing Member.
Of a slightly different sort, Stronghold Digital Mining raised $9 million in equity and options from just two investors.
Though this is not a direct purchase of bitcoin, selling equity may well allow them to hold the crypto, and therefore can be an indirect purchase.
The recent raise of $5 million by Fidelity for their Ethereum Index Fund may well be even more intriguing because it was by just one client.
Does that show low demand, or one smart man/woman, or a rush by Fidelity to get people to talk about it, is anyone’s guess.
But their bitcoin fund raised $62 million, one of the biggest sum prior to NYDIG throwing a bazooka with a raise of $720 million for their Institutional Bitcoin Fund.
And all this was started by the little Cambrian on September 22nd with a purchase of $20 million worth of bitcoin and eth.
In combination, this is the first time in many months that $100 million is bought by this class of investors in a week, and the first time in two years that they bought close to one billion in two weeks.
The Return of Investors?
After months of sliding down in a deleveraging cascade that culminated in June, the quiet summer has led to an autumn of pondering whether bitcoin is investable again.
Amid turbulences in fiat currencies, a mini-frenzy in corporate bonds, a near miss in British pension funds, in addition to intense speculation in China about their financial troubles, while Russian stocks proper crash again; through all this bitcoin has recently come across as a sea of calm.
It even detached from stocks somewhat, leading some to wonder whether bitcoin is now a hedge again.
Chart based price activity, however, wasn’t suggesting any movements, and still isn’t.
Not that this is too unusual as it took months last time from late 2020 when institutional investors piled on, to spring 2021 when bitcoin went nuts.
Now it might be different in that no one quite expects bitcoin to rise. The currency instead is at the depths of bear, with it all quiet, except in some of these institutional investors offices which seem to be seeing once again at least some activity, when there was none.
Are they front-running? Getting in during the quiet time, much before the ‘nuts’ bit.
These are sophisticated investors, and well informed. Their calculations therefore may well be that there might be more to go down, but perhaps not as much as up in due time.
Not least because at the current stage, timing becomes very difficult. One can wait but, at the current stage it becomes easy to fall into the trap of expecting bitcoin to go down, while it slowly doesn’t.
Veterans of course may wonder whether June did or did not front-run the ‘calamity’ stage of trees burning and devastation everywhere in the crypto land, that tends to happen around now-ish.
It certainly felt like it, and even worse, but price wise that would be $10,000 for bitcoin, or maybe it was the circa near $15,000 it reached this summer.
No one knows but what can be known is that if the answer to that June front-running question is yes, then it won’t be known until these levels have long gone.
Which may well explain why some sophisticated investors are now willing to take risks again. Not least because the second year of bear usually tends to be seen as a flatline, but in actuality it is more a very very slow rise, with some mini-bulls that end up higher than the very low of that cycle.
Yet at this stage no one can quite speculate the train might be leaving. Not least because all bulls are bear now, and in bear it can only go down, no.
But Christmas of the first bear year has always been a good time to buy. When do you front-run that Christmas?
It might not repeat of course, no one knows but, the risk-reward calculation at this point may have reached the stage where we can tentatively say: bitcoin was dead, long live bitcoin!
