The annual PwC–Elwood Crypto Hedge Fund Report is a must read and contains very insightful data on the institutionalisation of the industry.
Some key takeaways:
- The median crypto hedge fund returned +30% in 2019 (vs -46% in 2018)
- The percentage of crypto hedge funds with an AuM of over US$20 million increased in 2019 from 19% to 35%.
- The vast majority of investors in crypto hedge funds are either family offices (48%) or high-net worth individuals (42%).
- The most common crypto hedge fund strategy is quantitative (48% of funds), followed by discretionary long only (19%), discretionary long/short (17%), and multi-strategy (17%).
- Most crypto hedge funds trade Bitcoin (97%) followed by Ethereum (67%), XRP (38%), Litecoin (38%), Bitcoin Cash (31%) and EOS (25%).
- Crypto hedge funds are also involved in cryptocurrency staking (42%), lending (38%) and borrowing (27%).
- The percentage of crypto hedge funds using an independent custodian increased in 2019 from 52% to 81%.
- The percentage with at least one independent director on their board increased from 25% to 43% in 2019.
- 86% were using an independent fund administrator in 2019.
