Bitwise Asset Management has announced that it has raised $4 million in a seed round, which saw participation from Khosla Ventures via Keith Rabois, General Catalyst via Hemant Taneja, Blockchain Capital, David Sacks, Naval Ravikant, Suna Said, Adam Ludwin, Adam Nash, Elad Gil, Avichal Garg, and several others.
Founded in 2017, Bitwise Asset Management is based in San Francisco, California. It aims to make it easy for anyone to invest in cryptocurrency and develops funds, indexes, insight, and other services.
In addition to the seed round, the startup announced the launch of its cryptocurrency index fund, the Bitwise HOLD 10 Private Index Fund. First unveiled in October, the fund aims to make owning a portfolio easier.
According to the official release, the Bitwise HOLD 10 Private Index Fund holds the top-10 most valuable crypto-assets, selected and weighted by market capitalization. It rebalances monthly, capitalizes on hard forks and airdrops, and is a low-cost way to gain exposure to the emerging crypto asset class.
"As cryptocurrencies become more mainstream, a private index fund, like Bitwise, is an incredibly important step to simplifying the complexities in the space and making it more accessible," said investor Keith Rabois. "The Bitwise founders have done an exceptional job bringing world-class crypto experts onto their team to create a long-lasting financial institution."
Citing the price movement of cryptocurrencies last month, Bitwise noted:
“November was a powerful demonstration of the value of indexing this asset class: While Bitcoin was up and impressive 58%, other top 10 coins like Monero and Dash were up more than 100%. As a result, the HOLD 10 Index outperformed Bitcoin (up 64% vs. 58%) while exhibiting 37% lower volatility. Year-to-date, the HOLD 10 Index is up over 1800%.”
