• BlockTower has had prominent investors such as billionaire hedge-fund manager Marc Lasry and former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo
  • The digital investment firm has raised $25 million to invest in DeFi projects and assets

Digital asset firm BlockTower Capital announced that it has acquired its rival Gamma Point Capital on Tuesday morning.

This is more than one of the investment firm’s big moves of 2021. The 12-person team also raised $25 million for decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, Blockworks reported in March. 

“This is an amazing milestone in our mission to build the #1 market-neutral fund for digital assets,” Gamma Point said in a statement on their website. 

The deal is valued at $35 million.

BlockTower was co-founded in 2017 by Ari Paul, who previously managed an endowment investment office at the University of Chicago, and Matthew Goetz, a former vice president at Goldman Sachs. 

Goetz is taking a “market neutral strategy”, adding that the digital asset firm should make returns regardless if it’s a bull or bear market, he said in an interview with Bloomberg. 

“We are probably in something like the seventh inning of this bull market,” he said. “It still has a ways to go. But I offer that very humbly, I don’t know if it’s six months or 12 months or 18 months to continue,” he added.

Paul also tweeted that he was “thrilled to welcome the Gamma Point team to the family.”

Former US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo and billionaire hedge-fund manager Marc Lasry are among BlockTower’s most well-known investors. 

BlockTower did not respond to Blockworks’ requests for comment about the acquisition.

This story was updated on June 9, 2021, at 9:36 am EDT.

  • Morgan Chittum is a New York-based reporter covering markets and digital assets. Before Blockworks she was a street reporter at New York Daily News, where she wrote about homicide, extremist groups, state politics and other critical topics in New York. She was a Media and Journalism Fellow at the Poynter Institute, where she dabbled in data and investigative journalism. She is published in American Banker, Yahoo News, Chicago Tribune and more. She is based in Brooklyn.