NYDIG under new management places another $720 million bet on Bitcoin
- NYDIG (New York Digital Investment Group) has raised $720 million for its Institutional Bitcoin Fund.
- The company bought 10,000 Bitcoin worth $115 million in October 2018.
- In December, the company raised $1 billion at a valuation of more than $7 billion.
- CEO Robert Gutmann and president Yan Zhao leaving their positions to keep working at Stone Ridge.
An SEC filing from last week showed that NYDIG (New York Digital Investment Group) has raised $720 million for its Institutional Bitcoin Fund.
The NYDIG Bitcoin Fund has received money from 59 investors who did not give their names. However, the filing doesn’t say when the company plans to finish the purchase.
The document also says that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has “not necessarily reviewed the information in this filing and has not decided if it is accurate and complete.”
The NYDIG Bitcoin Fund, which was first called the “Institutional Digital Asset Fund” and will raise $190 million by June 2020, was launched in 2018 and is one of the most important institutional players in the crypto space.
In October of that same year, NYDIG’s parent company, Stone Ridge, bought 10,000 Bitcoin, which were worth $115 million at the time, as part of its treasury reserve strategy. It chose its own subsidiary as the custody provider. That made NYDIG one of the biggest crypto custodians in the industry. It holds more than $1 billion worth of digital assets for its customers.
Last December, the company raised $1 billion at a valuation of more than $7 billion. WestCap led the round, and Morgan Stanley, MassMutual, and others also took part.
Management changes
In an interesting turn of events, NYDIG’s most recent filing with the SEC was followed by an announcement on Monday that CEO Robert Gutmann and president Yan Zhao were leaving their positions to keep working at Stone Ridge.
According to the news release, Tejas Shah is the new CEO of NYDIG and Nate Conrad is the new president. Shah and Conrad will work to speed up investments in NYDIG’s Bitcoin mining business, which serves North American miners, and to increase institutional adoption of bitcoin through the Lightning Network, which is Bitcoin’s solution for scaling at the Layer 2 level.
“When markets crumble, character emerges. “Over the last 12 months, bitcoin and revenue have been steadily driven to NYDIG by the most risk-aware institutional investors’ flight to quality,” Ross Stevens, founder and executive chairman of NYDIG, said in a statement.
He also said, “Our risk management practises kept us away from DeFi, centralised lending platforms, and the uncollateralized lending market even at the height of the crypto craze in the second half of 2021.”
NYDIG also said that the company’s balance sheet is now “the strongest it’s ever been.” Its Bitcoin balance hit an all-time high in the third quarter, “up almost 100% year-over-year,” while revenue is up 130% through the second quarter and is expected to go up in the third quarter.