Who is the new Whale in Ethereum, Abraxas Capital? Accumulation exceeds 270,000 ETH in a single week, Tether's "mysterious" major client.

London asset management company Abraxas Capital has become a focal point in this round of Rebound due to its high-frequency on-chain operations and Heavy Position in Ethereum DeFi strategies.

Written by: Nancy, PANews

Recently, Bitcoin and Ethereum have driven the crypto market, leading to a significant rebound, with market liquidity noticeably increasing and whale activities becoming frequent. Among them, London-based asset management company Abraxas Capital has become a focal point in this rebound due to its high-frequency on-chain operations and Heavy Position in Ethereum DeFi strategies.

Over 270,000 ETH Accumulated in a Single Week, Heavy Position in Ethereum LST Ecosystem

Recently, Abraxas Capital has been frequently active on-chain.

Abraxas Capital Public Address Asset Holding Overview

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

From the perspective of asset structure, in addition to Bitcoin valued at over 190 million USD, 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 holding amount of AwETH and wstETH has exceeded 700 million USD, accounting for an absolute majority of its overall assets. These types of assets combine on-chain staking yields with secondary market liquidity, which also reflects Abraxas Capital's pursuit of a balanced strategy between stable returns and flexible reallocation.

From the perspective of capital growth pace, since mid-February 2025, the institution's asset scale has significantly accelerated, and recently it once broke through the 1 billion dollar mark. In just the past week (from May 13 to May 20), its net assets increased by more than 130 million dollars, with the major increase coming from a substantial addition to the AwSTETH (Aave v3 wstETH) position, with the added amount exceeding 120 million dollars.

In terms of capital flow, over the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has withdrawn nearly 270,000 ETH from CEX (Centralized Exchange), completing an average of about 6 buy trades per day, with a total value exceeding 690 million USD.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

It is worth noting that Abraxas Capital has significantly reduced its holdings of Bitcoin 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 dollars. However, recently it has begun to re-accumulate, withdrawing approximately 85 million dollars worth of Bitcoin from exchanges.

According to data from Arkham, the ETH funds of Abraxas Capital 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 of Abraxas Capital's ETH holdings, and currently, it holds an asset position of over $480 million on AAVE V3.

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

Asset scale exceeds 3 billion USD, once a major client of Tether

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 firm. The company was co-founded by Fabio Frontini and Luca Celati in 2002, both of whom served as executives at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DRKW) in London.

Abraxas Capital initially focused on traditional finance, and 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 that it would shift its business focus to 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 digital asset fund officially licensed and operating 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 investments, with current assets under management reaching 2 billion dollars; the Alpha Ethereum Fund was set up 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 related arbitrage space gradually narrowed, the fund's strategy gradually shifted to stablecoin arbitrage.

In 2019, Fabio Frontini first met with Tether's Chief Financial Officer 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 and gradually increased the trading volume.

Through 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. In that year, Heka Funds accumulated a profit of approximately $52 million, far exceeding the $5.8 million profit of 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 trading counterparts, ranking eighth.

In an interview with Protos in early 2025, Frontini once again publicly expressed confidence in Tether. He pointed out that Tether is earning huge interest margin income in the high interest rate environment in the United States, 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 United States, further enhancing his confidence in Tether.

It is worth mentioning that earlier this month, on-chain analyst @DesoGames discovered through tracking the flow of funds of Tether over a certain period that it mainly flowed to the crypto entities Abraxas and Cumberland. However, the funds were transferred through complex and opaque multi-layered accounts, an operation that may be aimed at concealing the source of illegal transactions. The analyst further disclosed that HEKA Funds claims its net assets are 1.3 billion euros, yet purchased 1.5 billion USDT (Tether issued about 2.5 billion dollars during this period), an amount that clearly exceeds its financial capacity, raising suspicions. Meanwhile, shareholders and directors of HEKA Funds were found to appear in offshore leak databases, with complex backgrounds and real identities difficult to trace. HEKA Funds may merely be a shell fund used by Abraxas to cover its real activities, lacking transparency and credibility.

Currently, from an on-chain perspective, as the structure of the crypto market continues to become financialized and the arbitrage opportunities for early stablecoins gradually narrow, Abraxas Capital is also exploring expanding its strategy into a more sustainable Ethereum staking and lending ecosystem.