The world's largest crypto index fund manager, US-based Bitwise, is expanding from passive to active management in an effort to attract more institutional investors.
Bitwise has established a new multi-strategy absolute return strategies team to lead the exapnsion. It will be led by Jeffrey Park, who was most recently a partner at alternatives manager Corbin Capital.
The change in strategy will see Bitwise look to make direct investments and changes in asset allocation rather than relying solely on an index to generate investment returns. The move has been driven by the increased demand among institutional investors for exposure to the asset class, according to Bitwise.
The number of crypto-focused funds has grown from 31 in 2016 to more than 850 today.
“A new dimension of opportunity now presents itself as the market structure of liquid crypto has matured," said Park.
"We believe market-neutral, yield, arbitrage, and quantitative strategies can be combined with top-tier long-oriented approaches to create unique absolute return opportunities.