(Bloomberg) — During a great year for cryptocurrencies, hedge funds focused on digital assets unsurprisingly did very well, too. It’s just that many didn’t do as well as the industry’s most famous token: Bitcoin.
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Last year, a number of crypto hedge funds logged double-digit returns, with the VisionTrack Composite Index, which tracks the performance of 130 crypto-dedicated hedge funds, jumping 40%, according to data provided by Galaxy’s VisionTrack.
But those gains are paltry when compared with the advanced notched by Bitcoin, which surged 120% to above $100,000 for the first time.
Many hedge funds bend over backwards to differentiate themselves via proprietary or innovative investment strategies that may not always include buying the largest digital coin, meaning that those that didn’t invest in Bitcoin missed out on its banner returns. But investors looking for crypto exposure also last year gravitated toward easy-to-trade, low-fee exchange-traded funds that hold Bitcoin, which allowed them to gain access to the market without having to buy into higher-charging strategies.
“2024 was a challenging year for a lot of crypto funds because it was a Bitcoin and memecoins year — those were the best assets, and everything else trailed behind,” said David Kalk, founder and chief investment officer of Reflexive Capital, which runs its own hedge fund that invests in Bitcoin, among other investments.
Beating Bitcoin’s performance is challenging for crypto hedge funds because “it’s really hard to time these things,” said David Jeong, CEO of Tread.fi, an algorithmic crypto trading platform for institutional traders. “In the hedge fund world, drawdowns are quite sensitive and so you can’t just always be fully exposed long. And investors have alternative pathways to get exposure to crypto.”
Still, hedge funds focusing on directional and quantitative strategies in the digital-asset industry notched the best average performance last year, based on data from VisionTrack. The VisionTrack Quant Directional Index gained 53.7%, while the VisionTrack Fundamental Index grew 40.4% in the same period. The VisionTrack Market Neutral Index added about 18.5%.
Galaxy Digital’s own Galaxy Liquid Asset Fund was up 76.6% in 2024, according to a person familiar with the performance. A representative of Galaxy declined to comment about the returns because the information was not public.