Major Wall Street Family Offices Back Bitwise Asset Management
Posted on 06/15/2021
San Francisco-based Bitwise Asset Management Inc. is a cryptocurrency index fund manager. The fund manager raised US$ 70 million in Series B funding at a valuation of more than US$ 500 million led by Elad Gil and Electric Capital. Elad Gil was the CEO of Mixer Labs which sold to Twitter Inc. Electric Capital is one of the largest crypto venture capital firms and an early investor in many crypto protocols and companies, such as Bitwise, Bitnomial and Kraken.
Other investors in the fund raise include, Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC, Daniel Och’s Willoughby Capital, Louis Bacon’s Moore Strategic Ventures, Paul Eisenstein’s Vetamer Capital, and Coinbase Ventures, alongside individual investors Henry Kravis, Stanley Druckenmiller, David McCormick (Bridgewater CEO), Daniel Sundheim (D1 CIO), Kevin Warsh (former U.S. Federal Reserve Governor), Nadeem Meghji (Blackstone executive), Tracey Warson (former Head of Citi Private Bank), Fidji Simo (Facebook executive), Helen Riley (Google X CFO), and several others (full list below). Existing Bitwise backers including Highland Capital, Khosla Ventures, Blockchain Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Alison Davis, Adam Nash, and Naval Ravikant participated as well.
Bitwise is now four years old. The firm crossed US$ 1.2 billion in assets under management at the end of the first quarter of 2021. In February 2021, the company launched a DeFi index fund, the Bitwise DeFi Crypto Index Fund, which has seen rapid growth since inception.
“Crypto is an exciting category with a lot of promise but also unique challenges,” said Henry Kravis, co-founder of the private equity firm KKR, in a press release. “Bitwise is the best at what they do, and essential for many professionals to be comfortable participating in this growing space.”
“We’re thrilled to be backing Bitwise,” said Daniel Loeb, Third Point’s CEO and CIO. “Bitwise has assembled a best-in-class team, has built professional-grade products, and is doing all the right things to build an enduring institution in the crypto economy.”
NOTE: The full list of new Bitwise institutional investors includes Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC, Daniel Och’s Willoughby Capital, Louis Bacon’s Moore Strategic Ventures, Paul Eisenstein’s Vetamer Capital, Coinbase Ventures, ParaFi Capital, and Alison Davis and Matthew Le Merle’s Blockchain Coinvestors; new individuals investing personally include Henry Kravis, Stanley Druckenmiller, Daniel Sundheim (D1 CIO), David McCormick (Bridgewater CEO), Kevin Warsh (former U.S. Federal Reserve Governor), Nadeem Meghji (Blackstone Head of Real Estate Americas), Fidji Simo (Head of Facebook App), Helen Riley (Google X CFO), Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz (Charles Schwab Foundation President), Tracey Warson (former Head of Citi Private Bank), Charles Goldman (former AssetMark CEO), Mary Cranston (Visa Board Director), Carolyn Everson (former Facebook VP), Julie Zhuo (former Facebook VP), Asha Sharma (Instacart COO), Ashley Yuki (Instagram Product Director), Howard Akumiah (Spotify Product Director), Ranjana Clark (MUFG Head of Global Transaction Banking), Abby Adlerman (Boardspan CEO), Katia Verresen, Rebecca Macieira-Kaufmann (former Head of Citigroup’s International Personal Bank), Ben Stein (Spruce House Managing Partner), Dave Fogel (IndexIQ Co-founder), C.J. Fitzgerald (Summit Partners Senior Advisor), Paul Sallaberry (U.C. Davis Foundation Board of Trustees), Tom Schmidt (Dragonfly Capital General Partner), Stani Kulechov (Aave Founder), and Robert Leshner (Compound Labs Founder).