Azpire Capital in Aarhus launches its first fund on 1 September, aimed at professional investors in Denmark. The model takes both long and short positions in major crypto assets and is built to return money whichever way the market moves.
Caption: From left: chief financial officer Anthon Aaby Lorentzen, chief investment officer Jonathan Engberg Conrad, head of technology Oliver Elias Amtoft Rygaard and chief executive Andreas Blom of Azpire Capital.
Most crypto funds available to investors today buy bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies and follow the market up and down. Azpire Capital, a Danish asset manager founded in 2024, launches its first fund on Tuesday on a different premise: a model that neither tries to predict the direction of the market nor depends on it. The fund is registered with Denmark's financial supervisory authority, Finanstilsynet, and is restricted to professional investors.
"We believe crypto is moving from being a speculative niche into a genuine investment category. Our ambition is to give Danish investors access to the market through an actively managed vehicle that can generate returns in both rising and falling markets," says chief executive and co-founder Andreas Blom.
The model analyses a selection of major crypto assets and assesses which are relatively strong and relatively weak over the next 24 hours. On the basis of those short-term readings, a portfolio is assembled with both long and short positions: the fund buys what the model rates as having the best prospects, while betting on price falls in what it rates as weakest.
What the fund tries to earn on, in other words, is the gap between the market's winners and losers, not whether bitcoin or the crypto market as a whole is rising. The company writes in a newsletter that it never makes forecasts several weeks out, because such calls land wide of the mark.
The starting point for the strategy is that the large swings and the wide gaps between the best and worst performing crypto assets, usually described as risk, also make the market more predictable for a systematic investor. The strategy was developed from scratch and draws on principles from equity markets and from energy trading.
Over the first 14 months of a test period, the strategy returned 25 per cent, Azpire Capital says. Bitcoin fell 30 per cent over the same period. The company describes the result as satisfactory.
Testing ran for 23 months in total, alongside the development of the strategy, and is the basis on which the company is now building the fund.
Alongside the technical development, the company has worked on the fund structure, risk management, trading infrastructure, reporting and the operational processes around day-to-day management. The fund sits in what the company calls a classic Danish fund structure.
Chief financial officer and co-founder Anthon Aaby Lorentzen emphasises that the company has prioritised compliance and governance throughout the process.
"We developed the strategy from the ground up, tested it thoroughly, and are now ready to make it available to investors. Throughout the development of the fund we have placed strong emphasis on diligence and proper governance, precisely to demonstrate that the crypto market can be approached with the same focus on analysis, discipline and risk management as traditional asset management," he says.
The company is aiming for DKK 100 million in assets under management over the next twelve months, and to scale from there to DKK 500 million.
Its next task is to develop the strategy further, strengthen the organisation and build relationships with investors and partners. The launch falls on the second anniversary of the company's founding. It is based in Aarhus.
Sources: Azpire Capital
You have read what you can read for free. With an account you get unlimited access to all news and articles on kaupr.io — and become part of the network of investors, professionals and builders following onchain finance.
