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This Bitcoin Hedge Fund Is Taking Treasuries Companies Global: Blockspace

This Bitcoin-focused hedge fund outperformed bitcoin last year.
210k Capital, the hedge fund for UTXO Management, was the fifth best performing single major hedge fund in 2024 according to HFR. It returned 164% net of fees in 2024. UTXO Management is the investing arm of BTC Inc., of Bitcoin Magazine and Bitcoin Conference fame.
This article first appeared on Blockspace Media, the leading Bitcoin industry publication dedicated to covering Bitcoin tech, markets, mining, and ordinals. Get Blockspace articles directly in your inbox by clicking here.
Single manager hedge funds are run by one entity, versus multi-manager or fund-to-fund hedge funds, which have multiple portfolio managers.
In HFR’s recap of its 2024 Global Hedge Fund Industry Report Q4 2024, the research firm revealed that cryptocurrency-focused hedge funds were “the leading area of overall [hedge fund] industry performance.” HFR’s index for cryptocurrency funds returned 59.81% in 2024.
UTXO Management’s banner 2024 performance puts it in conversation with leading hedge funds that focus on traditional assets and industries. And it has bitcoin to thank for that – or, more directly, bitcoin companies.
UTXO Management’s Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer, Tyler Evans, said that the fund’s 2024 returns chiefly stemmed from its investment in bitcoin strategy companies, principally Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and Metaplanet.
“Over the last 12 months, we went very hard into the bitcoin treasury-play thesis as as we really saw it play out with what Saylor is doing, and the opportunity to really globalize it…So we did that pretty heavily in 2024, with both Strategy as well as Metaplanet out of Japan, where we were the first bitcoin investors in the company,” Evans told Blockspace.
He said that the hedge fund holds 80% of its portfolio in bitcoin equities, which were a “big factor that drove [210k Capital’s] out-performance in 2024. A portion of that 80% includes public bitcoin miners, but the real money makers have been Metaplanet and Strategy, the latter of which 210k Capital held since the early days of its bitcoin strategy.
These companies, Evans explained, offer a novel form of securitized bitcoin exposure that makes it easier for everything from institutional firms to IRAs to pension funds to hold bitcoin-adjacent assets. As a result, “the investable landscape has grown significantly over the last few years,” he said, opening the door to “registered investment advisors, wealth managers, funds, and sophisticated family offices.”
This marks a shift from the fund’s early days when it courted self-made, high-net worth individuals who were typically more active investors managing their own portfolio to more passive investors whom manage pools of capital.
“We saw the demand for institutional capital to get exposure to Bitcoin and the role that these Treasury companies can serve is securitizing bitcoins for fixed income investors, the insurance funds, or the mutual funds,” said Evans.
“These institutional allocators have very defined mandates of what types of instruments that they can invest in. And that’s really the beauty of the whole playbook is securitizing bitcoin in these different formats that make it so that institutional allocators can invest into it.”
Bitcoin ETFs, first approved in January 2024, offer liquidity as well. With BlackRock on board – not to mention it recommending a 5% allocation to bitcoin – Evans said the Overton Window for how investors view bitcoin is shifting. So much so that the Wisconsin Teacher’s pension now holds bitcoin ETFs, as does the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.
Next: taking bitcoin treasury companies global
The only thing harder than winning the championship is defending your title. And with bitcoin down year-to-date, it raises the question: can 210k Capital top 2024?
Evans said that the fund hedges its positions with a number of auctions, but it’s also still “very bullish” on bitcoin in 2025. It’s even more bullish on exporting Michael Saylor’s corporate bitcoin treasury Strategy strategy to other financial markets.
“We think that there’s an opportunity for a bitcoin treasury company in every tier-one financial market globally,” he said.
UTXO Management had a large hand in standing up Metaplanet’s bitcoin treasury in Japan. Tyler Evans served as an independent director and UTXO Management partner Dylan Leclair acting as Metaplanet’s head of bitcoin strategy. Another UTXO portfolio company, The Smarter Web Company, is set to IPO on the Aquis Exchange in the U.K. this week.
Read: England’s Metaplanet? The Smarter Web Company eyes UK IPO with bitcoin strategy
Public bitcoin treasury companies like Metaplanet give traditional investors access to bitcoin where other vehicles are limited. In Japan, for example, there are no native bitcoin ETFs, and access to American ones is limited. This – plus Japan’s low interest rates and a lower capital gains tax on equities cryptocurrencies – make it ripe for Metaplanet to reap market share, Evans believes.
UTXO has its eye on multiple markets to incubate bitcoin treasury companies, including Latin America, Central America, the Middle East, Australia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Some of these are already in the works “at various stages of maturity,” Evans teased, with some in the IPO planning stage and others raising capital.
“Our inbound deal flow of seasoned entrepreneurs who want to bring it to their own local market is growing massively,” he said.
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Canary Capital Files for Tron ETF With Staking Capabilities

Canary Capital is looking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) tracking the price of Tron’s native token, TRX, according to a filing.
The hedge fund submitted a Form S-1 for the Canary Staked TRX ETF with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday. As the name suggests, the fund — if approved — would stake portions of its holdings.
This would be done through third-party providers, with BitGo acting as custodian for the assets. The fund would track TRX’s spot price using CoinDesk Indices calculations.
A proposed ticker as well as the management fee for the product have not been shared yet.
Issuers had initially filed applications for spot ethereum (ETH) ETFs with the staking feature included but removed them in an amended filing later in order to receive approval from the SEC on their proposals.
While the SEC under former Chair Gary Gensler was strictly against staking, issuers have grown more hopeful that they will be able to add the feature to their spot ether funds, among others, with the appointment of crypto-friendly Chair Paul Atkins.
A decision on a February request from Grayscale to allow staking in the Grayscale Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHE) and the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust ETF (ETH) was postponed by the regulator just a few days ago.
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Feds Mistakenly Order Estonian HashFlare Fraudsters to Self-Deport Ahead of Sentencing

Just four months ahead of their criminal sentencing for operating a $577 million cryptocurrency mining Ponzi scheme, the two Estonian founders of HashFlare were seemingly mistakenly ordered to self-deport by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — an instruction that directly contradicted a court order for the men to remain in Washington state until they are sentenced in August.
In a joint letter to the court last week, lawyers for Sergei Potapenko and Ivan Turogin told District Judge Robert Lasnik of the Western District of Washington that both men had received “disturbing communications” from DHS ordering them to leave the country immediately.
“It is time for you to leave the United States,” an email to Potapenko and Turogin dated April 11 read. “DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”
The email, included with the letter filed last week, threatened both men with “criminal prosecution, civil fines, and penalties and any other lawful options available to the federal government” if they stayed in the country. It resembles emails that undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike have received over the past few days.
Ironically, Potapenko and Turogin are not in the U.S. of their own volition — they were extradited from their native Estonia at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice in 2022 on an 18-count indictment tied to their HashFlare scheme. Though they initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, in February they both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, and agreed to forfeit over $400 million in assets. They have both been in the Seattle area on bond since last July.
“Although there is nothing Ivan and Sergei would want more than to immediately go home, they understood that they are also under Court order to remain in King County,” wrote Mark Bini, a partner at Reed Smith LLP and lead counsel for Potenko, wrote in the pair’s joint letter to the court. Bini did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
In his letter, Bini said DHS’s emails had caused both Potapenko and Turogin «significant anxiety.”
“We and our clients have all seen recent news. Immigration authorities make mistakes, and individuals who should not be in custody end up in custody, sometimes even deported to places where they should not be deported,” Bini wrote.
Six days after Bini’s letter to the judge, the DOJ filed its own letter with the court saying that prosecutors had coordinated with DHS’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division and secured a year-long deferral to the self-deportation order.
“This should provide ample time for the sentencing to take place,” the prosecution’s letter said.
DHS did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.
Potapenko and Turogin are slated to be sentenced on August 14 in Seattle. Their lawyers have said that they will request to be sentenced to time served, meaning no additional time in prison, and to be sent home to Estonia “immediately.”
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CoinDesk Weekly Recap: EigenLayer, Kraken, Coinbase, AWS

Following last week’s tariff-caused drama, this was a relatively quiet week in crypto. Bitcoin remained stable around $84k. The CoinDesk 20, which tracks about 80% of the market, was up about 4% in the last seven days — i.e. nothing historic.
Still, plenty happened. On Tuesday, much of crypto went offline because of a tech issue at AWS, showing how the decentralized economy isn’t always that decentralized. Shaurya Malwa reported the news early. Bitcoin and other major cryptos slipped on bad news for Nvidia, Omkar Godbole reported.
Mantra, a project focused on real world assets, lost 90% of its value. Explanations varied (the company said it was due to “force liquidations” exchanges).
Meanwhile, EigenLayer, a restaking leader, rolled out a “slashing” feature meant to address security concerns (Sam Kessler reported). OKX, a major exchange, announced plans to set up in California following a $500 million settlement with the SEC over claims it operated previously in the U.S. without a money transmitter license. Cheyenne Ligon had that story.
In less good news, Kraken laid off “hundreds” of staff ahead of an expected IPO. And Coinbase became embroiled in a “front running controversy” linked to a curiously named token on its Base L2. Privacy advocates reacted with alarm to rumors that Binance was about to delist Zcash following a long decline in the value of privacy coins.
In D.C. news, Jesse Hamilton reported on a new wave of crypto lobbyists flooding the capital. Some asked if there are now too many trade groups and whether they really all could be effective.
Friends With Benefits, a buzzy social club for creative technologists, launched a new program to build Web3 products for music, film, publishing and other fun activities. (I wrote that one.)
Of course, there was plenty happening in the economy and markets (Trump’s disgust for Fed chair Powell fed into the unease). But, in crypto, it was pretty much business as usual. Fortunes won, fortunes lost, fortunes deferred.
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