Parataxis Capital, a multi-strategy crypto investment firm that has rare backing from a U.S. pension fund system, is launching a new fund with a long/short relative value trading strategy and $25 million to $50 million in initial committed capital, CEO Edward Chin told CoinDesk in an interview.when Fairfax County, Virginia’s $6.8 billion pension fund, the Fairfax County Retirement Systems, said it would invest $35 million in the firm’s yield farming fund.
Parataxis was able to avoid exposure to FTX's collapse due to its policy of not trading on offshore exchanges, said Chin, and didn’t face a rush of redemptions from investors. Though crypto is obviously in a bear market, the atmosphere is different from the previous one, Chin said, when the talk had turned to whether crypto would continue to exist as an asset class.
“The conversations we’re having with institutional allocators now are no longer ‘Is this going to disappear,’ but rather ‘We’re trying to figure out the right type of exposure to have to the asset class’ – especially due to the volatility in the market that’s likely to persist,” said Chin. Despite the challenging environment, Chin said Parataxis plans to launch a fifth fund in the second half of the year. The quantitative smart-beta strategy would come via either a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission-registered interval fund or exchange-traded fund . The goal would be to outperform a bitcoin portfolio.