Veteran Investor Launches $300M Digital Asset Fund After GoldenTree Spin-Out

From GoldenTree to Independent Crypto Focus

Joe Naggar, who spent 16 years as a partner at Steven Tananbaum’s GoldenTree Asset Management, has reportedly launched an independent hedge fund with $300 million under management, according to industry reports. The move marks the formal spin-out of his digital assets team from crypto-focused investment firm Republic, where they had been operating as Republic Digital.

Sources indicate Naggar began his crypto journey back in 2013 when he started mining bitcoin and made early investments in projects including Stacks, Algorand, and Coinbase. His institutional background at GoldenTree, where he helped oversee $61 billion in credit assets, informed his approach to digital asset investing when he began assembling a dedicated team within the firm in 2022., according to further reading

Navigating Market Turbulence and Regulatory Shifts

The timing of Naggar’s initial crypto push coincided with significant market turbulence, analysts suggest. The wave of collapses that followed – including Celsius, Voyager Digital, and FTX – triggered regulatory crackdowns that reshaped the crypto landscape. According to reports, GoldenTree sold the fledgling crypto fund to Republic less than two years after its formation.

Now operating independently as Feynman Point Asset Management, Naggar and his team are focusing on digital asset markets and frontier technologies. “We’re going to keep doing exactly what we did before – same focus on process, performance, institutional quality, but do even more,” Naggar stated in the report.

Impressive Track Record and Key Investments

Despite transitions between firms, the fund has reportedly performed exceptionally well. According to Feynman Point, backers including L1D, a $600 million Swiss fund, and New York-based Blockchain Investment Group have earned an annualized net return of over 42% since the fund’s inception in 2022.

The report highlights several winning trades that contributed to this performance. These reportedly include buying the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust at a 40% discount to its underlying assets, early exposure to breakout decentralized exchange Hyperliquid, and an equity investment in Ripple, developer of the XRP cryptocurrency.

Analysts note that GBTC has since become an ETF and now trades at net asset value. Meanwhile, Hyperliquid’s HYPE token, which Naggar’s team reportedly made “a large investment” in at its November 2024 launch, is now trading around $40 with a market capitalization above $10 billion. Ripple’s stock has apparently surged 162% since January and is now valued at $22.1 billion on secondary markets, according to data from Forge – a development largely attributed to the resolution of its five-year lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Digital Asset Treasury Trend and Strategic Investments

Naggar has also positioned the fund as a significant investor in the growing digital asset treasury trend, where public companies accumulate cryptocurrencies similar to Michael Saylor’s strategy at MicroStrategy. “A lot of the positions we did were 30-75 basis points, 1% on the bigger side, but we probably invested in 15 or 17 different DATs,” he explained in the report.

These investments reportedly include Tom Lee’s BitMine Immersion Technologies, Joe Lubin’s SharpLink Gaming, Cantor Fitzgerald-backed Twenty One Capital, and Kyle Samani’s Forward Industries.

Among the standout investments, Naggar highlighted Sonnet BioTherapeutics, which is expected to merge with Rorschach I LLC later this year to become Hyperliquid Strategies. The company has recently announced an $888 million raise for Hyperliquid’s HYPE tokens. “It’s very difficult to have exposure to Hyperliquid as a U.S. investor, but this one brings access,” Naggar stated, adding that while some DATs might be “money grabs,” others “add some real value, either in the ecosystem or for investors, by doing smart stuff.”

The launch of Feynman Point Asset Management represents another significant entry into the institutional digital asset space, with experienced professionals bringing traditional finance discipline to the evolving crypto markets.

References & Further Reading

This article draws from multiple authoritative sources. For more information, please consult:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_asset
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Digital
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FTX
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorand

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