Over 270,000 ETH accumulated in a single week, revealing the new Ethereum whale Abraxas Capital.

Original author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, Bitcoin and Ethereum have driven a significant rebound in the cryptocurrency market, leading to a noticeable increase in market liquidity, with whale activity becoming frequent. Among them, the 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 investment in Ethereum DeFi strategies.

Accumulated over 270,000 ETH in a single week, heavily investing in the Ethereum LST ecosystem.

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

Abraxas Capital Public Address Asset Holdings Overview

According to data from Arkham, 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 asset structure perspective, 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 holdings of AwETH and wstETH have exceeded 700 million USD, accounting for an absolute majority of its overall assets. These types of assets offer both on-chain staking yields and secondary market liquidity, reflecting Abraxas Capital’s pursuit of a balanced strategy between stable returns and flexible asset allocation.

From the perspective of capital growth pace, since mid-February 2025, the asset scale of the institution has significantly accelerated, recently surpassing the 1 billion dollar mark. In just the past week (from May 13 to 20), its net assets grew by more than 130 million dollars, with the increase mainly coming from a substantial increase in the AwSTETH (Aave v3 wstETH) position, which was boosted by over 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In terms of capital flow, over the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has withdrawn nearly 270,000 ETH from CEX (Centralized Exchange), completing an average of about 6 buy transactions per day, with a total value exceeding $690 million. Based on its average buying price of $2573.8, compared to the current ETH market price of around $2500, this portion of the position is currently in a temporary unrealized loss of about $11 million.

It is noteworthy that Abraxas Capital significantly reduced its Bitcoin holdings within a month. On-chain data shows that over the past few weeks, the institution has transferred a total of 2,000 BTC to exchanges, worth more than $190 million. However, recently it has started to accumulate again, withdrawing approximately $85 million worth of Bitcoin from exchanges.

According to data from Arkham, Abraxas Capital’s ETH funds are primarily flowing into Ethereum DeFi protocols. In the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has also transferred over 174,000 ETH to mainstream DeFi protocols such as Aave, Ether.fi, and Compound, with an estimated total value of approximately $440 million based on current prices. Notably, Aave is the main use case for Abraxas Capital’s ETH holdings, and it currently holds asset positions worth over $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 create a top-tier asset management institution. The company was co-founded in 2002 by Fabio Frontini and Luca Celati, both of whom previously held executive positions at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DRKW) in London.

Abraxas Capital initially focused on the traditional financial sector. On-chain data shows that the company began laying the groundwork for Bitcoin assets as early as the end of 2014. 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 dollars.

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 officially operated digital asset fund in the EU, achieving 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 a current management scale of 2 billion dollars; the Alpha Ethereum Fund was established in 2023, focusing on Ethereum, with a 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 low prices on Western exchanges and resold it to Japanese exchanges. At first, Elysium mainly engaged in Bitcoin arbitrage, but as the arbitrage opportunities 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’s recollection, Deltec showed him Tether’s proof of reserves at that time: over 60% of the reserves were in cash, with the remainder in short-term U.S. Treasury bonds, which gave him full confidence in Tether’s 1:1 backing. After that, Heka Funds verified Tether’s liquidity through a series of small test trades, 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 published by Protos in 2021, Heka Funds had received over 1.5 billion USDT at that time, accounting for approximately 1.5% of Tether’s total issuance. That year, Heka Funds accumulated profits of about 52 million USD, far exceeding the 5.8 million USD 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 USD among Tether’s major trading partners, ranking eighth.

In an interview with Protos at the beginning of 2025, Frontini publicly expressed his confidence in Tether once again. 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 quoted 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 U.S. Treasury broker, which further strengthens his confidence in Tether.

It is worth mentioning that earlier this month, on-chain analyst @DesoGames discovered through tracking the flow of funds during a certain period of Tether that the majority was directed towards the crypto entities Abraxas and Cumberland. However, the funds were routed through multiple layers of accounts in a complex and opaque manner, suggesting that this operation might be aimed at concealing the source of illegal transactions. The analyst further disclosed that HEKA Funds claims its net asset value is 1.3 billion euros, yet it purchased 1.5 billion USDT through HEKA (during this period, Tether issued approximately 2.5 billion dollars), an amount that clearly exceeds its financial capacity, raising suspicions. Meanwhile, shareholders and directors of HEKA Funds were found 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 obscure its real activities, lacking transparency and credibility.

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