Forwarding the original title “Who is the new Ethereum Whale Abraxas Capital? Accumulating over 270,000 ETH in a single week, Tether’s ‘mysterious’ major client”

Recently, Bitcoin and Ethereum have driven a significant rebound in the cryptocurrency market, leading to a noticeable increase in market liquidity and frequent actions from Whale funds. Among them, the London asset management company Abraxas Capital has become a focal point in this rebound due to its high-frequency on-chain operations and heavy investment in Ethereum DeFi strategies.

Over 270,000 ETH accumulated in a single week, heavily investing in the Ethereum LST ecosystem.

Recently, Abraxas Capital has been very active on the blockchain.

Abraxas Capital Public Address Asset Holdings Overview

According to Arkham data, as of May 20, the total value of cryptocurrency assets held by the two related public addresses of Abraxas Capital has exceeded $1.15 billion, with a cumulative profit of approximately $280 million.

From the perspective of asset structure, in addition to Bitcoin valued at over $190 million, Abraxas Capital’s portfolio is highly concentrated in the Ethereum liquid staking token (LST) sector, which is used for staking or as collateral in various DeFi protocols. Its main holdings include AwETH, wstETH, awstETH, and weETH, among which the combined holdings of AwETH and wstETH have exceeded $700 million, accounting for the absolute majority of its overall assets. These assets provide both on-chain staking returns and secondary market liquidity, reflecting Abraxas Capital’s pursuit of a balanced strategy between steady returns and flexible portfolio adjustments.

In terms of the pace of capital growth, since mid-February 2025, the asset scale of this institution has significantly accelerated, and recently it once broke through the 1 billion USD mark. In just the past week (from May 13 to May 20), its net assets increased by more than 130 million USD, with the majority of the growth coming from a substantial increase in the AwSTETH (Aave v3 wstETH) position, which was increased by more than 120 million USD.

In terms of capital flow, over the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has withdrawn nearly 270,000 Ether from CEX (Centralized Exchange), completing about 6 buy transactions per day on average, with a total value exceeding 690 million dollars. Based on its average purchase price of 2573.8 dollars, compared to the current market price of Ether at about 2500 dollars, this portion of the position is currently experiencing a temporary unrealized loss of about 11 million dollars.

It is worth noting that Abraxas Capital has significantly reduced its Bitcoin holdings within a month. On-chain data shows that in the past few weeks, the institution has transferred a total of 2000 BTC to exchanges, worth over $190 million. However, recently it has started to reinvest, withdrawing approximately $85 million worth of Bitcoin from the exchanges.

According to Arkham data, Abraxas Capital’s ETH funds are mainly flowing into Ethereum DeFi protocols. In the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has transferred over 174,000 ETH to mainstream DeFi protocols such as Aave, Ether.fi, and Compound, with a total estimated value of approximately $440 million at current prices. Notably, Aave is the primary use case for Abraxas Capital’s ETH holdings, with current asset positions exceeding $480 million on AAVE V3.

From this perspective, Abraxas Capital is becoming one of the more active and heavily invested institutional players in the Ethereum ecosystem, and is enhancing asset liquidity and yield reuse rate through deep participation in the DeFi market.

Asset scale exceeds 3 billion USD,曾是Tether的大客户

Abraxas Capital Management is an asset management company based in London, regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), aiming to build a top-tier asset management institution. The company was co-founded in 2002 by Fabio Frontini and Luca Celati, both of whom held executive positions at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DRKW) in London.

Abraxas Capital initially focused on traditional finance. On-chain data shows that as early as the end of 2014, the company had begun to lay out its Bitcoin assets. In 2017, Abraxas Capital announced a shift in its business focus towards digital assets.

Heka Funds is a core investment platform focused on digital assets under Abraxas Capital, headquartered in Malta and regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), with assets exceeding $3 billion.

As a multi-fund investment company, Heka currently manages three main funds: the Elysium Global Arbitrage Fund, launched in 2017, is the first officially licensed and operational digital asset fund in the EU, with a return rate of 214.95% since its inception. By the end of 2024, its assets under management have exceeded 1.2 billion euros; the Alpha Bitcoin Fund was established in 2022, focusing on Bitcoin investment, with current assets under management reaching 2 billion dollars; the Alpha Ethereum Fund was established in 2023, focusing on Ether, with current assets under management of 4.8 million dollars.

Among them, the Elysium fund is the main business of Heka Funds, initially entering the market with a Bitcoin arbitrage strategy, inspired by a small arbitrage fund that once bought Bitcoin at a low price on Western exchanges and then resold it to Japanese exchanges. At first, Elysium mainly engaged in Bitcoin arbitrage, but as the relevant arbitrage space gradually narrowed, the fund’s strategy gradually shifted to stablecoin arbitrage.

In 2019, Fabio Frontini first met with Tether’s CFO Giancarlo Devasini and was invited to the Bahamas to meet with Tether’s banking partner Deltec Bank. According to Frontini, Deltec showed him Tether’s proof of reserves at that time: over 60% of the reserves were in cash, and the rest were in short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, which gave him full confidence in Tether’s 1:1 backing. Subsequently, Heka Funds verified Tether’s liquidity through a series of small test transactions, gradually increasing the trading volume.

With continuous trading and cooperation, Heka Funds has gradually grown to become one of Tether’s largest institutional clients, and it can be said that Heka Funds is also a driving force behind Tether’s rapid development. According to a research report released by Protos in 2021, Heka Funds had obtained over $1.5 billion in USDT at that time, accounting for about 1.5% of Tether’s total issuance. That year, Heka Funds accumulated approximately $52 million in profits, far exceeding the $5.8 million profit achieved by its parent company Abraxas, making it one of the most successful funds within the group. In the past 30 days, Arkham data shows that Heka Funds’ trading volume reached $564 million among Tether’s main counterparts, ranking eighth.

In an interview with Protos at the beginning of 2025, Frontini once again publicly expressed confidence in Tether. He pointed out that Tether is earning huge interest income in the high interest rate environment in the U.S., and its business model is very simple yet extremely effective. He also cited comments from Howard Lutnick (CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald) at the 2024 Davos Forum, stating that Tether’s assets are mainly held by Cantor, the largest Treasury bond broker in the U.S., further enhancing his confidence in Tether.

It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of this month, on-chain analysts@DesoGamesBy tracking the flow of funds from Tether over a certain period, it was found that the funds mainly flowed to the crypto entities Abraxas and Cumberland. However, the funds were routed through multiple layers of accounts in a complex and opaque manner, which may aim to conceal the source of illegal transactions. The analyst further disclosed that HEKA Funds claimed its fund’s net assets were 1.3 billion euros, yet purchased 1.5 billion USDT through HEKA (Tether issued approximately 2.5 billion USDT during this period), an amount that clearly exceeds its financial capacity, raising suspicions. Meanwhile, the shareholders and directors of HEKA Funds were found to appear in offshore leak databases, with complex backgrounds and difficult-to-trace real identities. HEKA Funds may merely be a shell fund used by Abraxas to cover its real activities, lacking transparency and credibility.

Currently, from the on-chain dynamics, as the structure of the crypto market continues to financialize and the arbitrage space of early stablecoins gradually narrows, Abraxas Capital is also exploring the expansion of its strategy into a more sustainable Ethereum staking and lending ecosystem.

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