Author: Nancy, PANews
Recently, Bitcoin and Ethereum have driven a significant rebound in the crypto market, with a notable increase in market activity, and whale funds have been frequently active. Among them, London-based asset management company Abraxas Capital has become a focal point in this rebound due to its high-frequency on-chain operations and heavy investment in Ethereum DeFi strategies.
Accumulating over 270,000 ETH in a single week, heavily positioned in the Ethereum LST ecosystem
Recently, Abraxas Capital has been very active on-chain.
Overview of the asset holdings of Abraxas Capital's public address
According to Arkham data, as of May 20, the total value of the crypto assets held by the two relevant public addresses of Abraxas Capital has exceeded $1.15 billion, with cumulative profits of about $280 million.
From the asset structure perspective, in addition to Bitcoin valued at over $190 million, Abraxas Capital's investment portfolio is highly concentrated in Ethereum liquid staking tokens (LST), which are used for staking or as collateral in various DeFi protocols. Its main holdings include AwETH, wstETH, awstETH, and weETH, among which the combined holding amount of AwETH and wstETH has exceeded $700 million, accounting for an absolute majority of its overall assets. These assets provide both on-chain staking yields and secondary market liquidity, reflecting Abraxas Capital's pursuit of a balanced strategy between stable income and flexible reallocation.
From the perspective of capital growth pace, since mid-February 2025, the institution's asset scale has significantly accelerated, recently surpassing the $1 billion mark. In just the past week (from May 13 to 20), its net assets increased by over $130 million, mainly driven by a substantial increase in the AwSTETH (Aave v3 wstETH) position, with an increase of over $120 million.
In terms of capital flow, over the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has withdrawn nearly 270,000 ETH from CEX (Centralized Exchanges), completing an average of about 6 buy transactions per day, with a cumulative value exceeding $690 million. Based on its average buying price of $2573.8, compared to the current market price of about $2500 for ETH, this part of the position is currently in a temporary floating loss of approximately $11 million.
It is noteworthy that Abraxas Capital significantly reduced its Bitcoin holdings within a month. On-chain data shows that in recent weeks, the institution transferred a total of 2000 BTC to exchanges, worth over $190 million. However, recently it has begun to reaccumulate, extracting Bitcoin worth approximately $85 million from exchanges.
According to Arkham data, the ETH funds of Abraxas Capital are mainly flowing to Ethereum DeFi protocols. Over the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has also transferred over 174,000 ETH to mainstream DeFi protocols such as Aave, Ether.fi, and Compound, with a total estimated value of about $440 million at current prices. In particular, Aave is the main use of Abraxas Capital's ETH holdings, and currently, it holds assets worth over $480 million on AAVE V3.
From this perspective, Abraxas Capital is becoming one of the more active institutional players in the Ethereum ecosystem, strengthening asset liquidity and yield reuse through deep participation in the DeFi market.
With an asset scale exceeding $3 billion, it was once a major client of Tether
Abraxas Capital Management is an asset management company headquartered in London, regulated by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), aiming to build a top-tier asset management institution. The company was co-founded by Fabio Frontini and Luca Celati in 2002, both of whom previously held executive positions at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DRKW) in London.
Abraxas Capital initially focused on traditional finance, and on-chain data shows that the company began laying out its Bitcoin assets as early as the end of 2014. In 2017, Abraxas Capital announced a shift in its business focus to digital assets.
Heka Funds is the core investment platform focused on digital assets under Abraxas Capital, headquartered in Malta and regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), with an asset scale exceeding $3 billion.
As a multi-fund investment company, Heka currently manages three main funds: Elysium Global Arbitrage Fund, launched in 2017, is the first officially licensed and operational digital asset fund in the EU, with a return rate of 214.95% since its inception; Alpha Bitcoin Fund, established in 2022, focuses on Bitcoin investment, currently managing assets of $2 billion; Alpha Ethereum Fund was established in 2023, focusing on Ethereum, with current assets under management of $4.8 million.
Among them, the Elysium fund is the main business of Heka Funds, initially entering the market with a Bitcoin arbitrage strategy, inspired by a small arbitrage fund that purchased Bitcoin at low prices on Western exchanges and resold it to Japanese exchanges. Initially, Elysium primarily engaged in Bitcoin arbitrage, but as the related arbitrage space gradually shrank, the fund's strategy shifted towards stablecoin arbitrage.
In 2019, Fabio Frontini first met with Tether CFO Giancarlo Devasini and was invited to the Bahamas to meet with Tether's banking partner, Deltec Bank. According to Frontini, Deltec showed him proof of Tether's assets: over 60% of reserves were in cash, with the remainder in short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, which gave him full confidence in Tether's 1:1 backing. Subsequently, Heka Funds verified Tether's liquidity through a series of small test transactions, gradually increasing the trading scale.
With continuous trading and cooperation, Heka Funds has gradually grown to become one of Tether's largest institutional clients, and it can be said that Heka Funds is also a driving force behind Tether's rapid development. According to a research report published by Protos in 2021, Heka Funds had obtained over $1.5 billion USDT at that time, accounting for about 1.5% of Tether's total issuance. That year, Heka Funds made a cumulative profit of about $52 million, far exceeding the $5.8 million profit made by its parent company Abraxas, becoming one of the most successful funds within the group. In the past 30 days, Arkham data shows that among Tether's main trading counterparts, Heka Funds' trading volume reached $564 million, ranking eighth.
In an interview with Protos in early 2025, Frontini again publicly expressed confidence in Tether. He pointed out that Tether is earning huge interest income in the high interest rate environment in the U.S., and its business model is very simple yet extremely effective. He also cited comments from Howard Lutnick (CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald) at the 2024 Davos Forum, stating that Tether's assets are primarily held by Cantor, the largest Treasury broker in the U.S., further enhancing his confidence in Tether.
Notably, earlier this month, on-chain analyst @DesoGames discovered through tracking the capital flow path of Tether over a certain period that it mainly flowed to Abraxas and Cumberland crypto entities. However, the funds were transferred through multiple layers of accounts in a complex and opaque manner, which may aim to conceal the source of illegal transactions. The analyst further disclosed that HEKA Funds claims its net asset value is €1.3 billion, yet purchased $1.5 billion worth of USDT through HEKA (during this period, Tether issued about $2.5 billion), which is clearly beyond its financial capacity and raises suspicions. At the same time, shareholders and directors of HEKA Funds have been found in offshore leak databases, with complex backgrounds, making their true identities difficult to trace. HEKA Funds may simply be a shell fund used by Abraxas to conceal its real activities, lacking transparency and credibility.
Currently, from an on-chain perspective, as the crypto market continues to financialize and the early stablecoin arbitrage space gradually shrinks, Abraxas Capital is also exploring expanding its strategy to a more sustainable Ethereum staking lending ecosystem.
