Billionaire Alan Howard wants to make a splash in the digital assets space

Elwood Asset Management will launch an institutional crypto hedge fund that could raise as much as $1 billion. Elwood manages the personal crypto assets of Alan Howard. It has performed due diligence on crypto hedge funds to establish the quality of governance and security.

The venture is intended to capture the revival of investor interest in crypto-currencies that had been given up for dead in a bear market that bottomed in December 2018.

Bitcoin, which touched lows of around $3,200 in December, has tripled in value since then.

Cryptos – the Wild West of digital assets?

Unfortunately, cryptocurrencies have suffered negative media publicity due to frauds, hacks, and governance lapses at crypto-exchanges, and this has dimmed investor interest in the sector.

According to the CipherTrace Cryptocurrency AML Report for Q2 2019, investors, exchanges, and cryptocurrency users lost over $4.26 billion to scammers and hackers during the first half of 2019.

Elwood aims to design crypto funds for institutions, selecting assets and funds that are secure and of better quality.

In a still-nascent field, Elwood found that many standard features and procedures were missing in many crypto funds. These included reliable performance records, custodians and holding vehicles.

What Elwood Asset Management Will Do

Elwood will customize crypto portfolios. It plans to select funds according to investors’ risk appetite, return expectations, and liquidity terms. In addition, Elwood would superimpose its own fee on top of the fee charged by the underlying funds in the portfolio.