A trio of founders from Aarhus, Denmark, is launching a fund built around a systematic long/short strategy for digital asset markets. After almost two years of developing and live-testing the approach, Azpire Capital is now bringing the strategy to professional investors through a fund registered with the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority.
“We have spent almost two years developing and testing our strategy, and we are now ready to take the next step and launch the fund,” says Andreas Blom, CEO and co-founder of Azpire Capital. “We believe that crypto will become an increasingly established and central part of the investment landscape. This creates a need for new and more professional ways of investing in the asset class.”
“We have spent almost two years developing and testing our strategy, and we are now ready to take the next step and launch the fund.”
Andreas Blom, CEO and co-founder of Azpire Capital.
Rather than taking a directional view on the broader crypto market, Azpire Capital’s strategy seeks to identify and anticipate price movements across digital assets, combining long positions in assets the model considers attractive with short positions in those it expects to underperform. The objective is to reduce the strategy’s dependence on the overall market direction and capture returns in both rising and falling markets.
The approach is intended to address one of the central challenges for institutional investors considering digital assets: the asset class’s high volatility and strong dependence on market direction. By combining long and short positions, Azpire aims to build a portfolio with less exposure to broad market movements while retaining the potential to generate returns from both upward and downward price moves.
The fund comes as digital assets continue to move from a niche market towards a more established segment of the investment universe. Azpire’s ambition is to provide professional investors with access through a regulated Danish investment vehicle while offering an alternative to traditional buy-and-hold exposure to cryptocurrencies. “We believe crypto is moving from being a speculative niche into a genuine investment category,” says Blom. “Our ambition is to give Danish investors access to the market through an actively managed investment vehicle capable of generating returns in both rising and falling markets.”
“Our ambition is to give Danish investors access to the market through an actively managed investment vehicle capable of generating returns in both rising and falling markets.”
Andreas Blom, CEO and co-founder of Azpire Capital.
The fund launch follows 23 months of development and testing, during which the team refined and evaluated the strategy before making it available to external investors. For Azpire, the testing period has also been about establishing the operational and governance framework needed to manage a systematic strategy in a relatively young and rapidly evolving asset class.
“We developed the strategy from the ground up, tested it thoroughly, and are now ready to make it available to investors,” says Anthon Lorentzen, CFO and co-founder of Azpire Capital. “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.”
“We developed the strategy from the ground up, tested it thoroughly, and are now ready to make it available to investors.”
Anthon Lorentzen, CFO and co-founder of Azpire Capital.
The strategy generated a 25 percent return during the first 14 months of testing, according to Azpire, while Bitcoin declined by 30 percent over the same period. The firm now aims to translate that track record into institutional scale, targeting DKK 100 million in assets under management within the first 12 months and DKK 500 million over time.
