Rumors about "market maker" are frequent, who exactly is the mysterious new Whale in Ethereum, Abraxas Capital?

Original Title: "Who is the new Ethereum Whale Abraxas Capital? Accumulation of over 270,000 ETH in a single week, Tether's 'mysterious' major client"

Original Author: Nancy, PAnews

Recently, Bitcoin and Ethereum have driven a significant rebound in the crypto market, with a noticeable increase in market liquidity and frequent actions from Whale funds. 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 investment in Ethereum DeFi strategies.

Weekly accumulation exceeds 270,000 ETH, heavily investing in the Ethereum LST ecosystem.

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

Overview of Asset Holdings in Public Address of Abraxas Capital

According to Arkham data, 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 perspective of asset structure, in addition to more than $190 million worth of Bitcoin, Abraxas Capital's portfolio is highly concentrated in the Ethereum liquid staking token (LST) track, which is used for staking or as collateral invested 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, accounting for the absolute majority of its overall assets. This type of asset combines on-chain staking yield with secondary market liquidity, which also reflects Abraxas Capital's pursuit of a balanced strategy between stable income and flexible rebalancing.

In terms of the pace of capital growth, the institution's assets have accelerated significantly since mid-February 2025 and recently crossed the $1 billion mark. In the past week alone (May 13-20), its net worth has increased by more than $130 million, mainly due to a significant increase in AwSTETH (Aave v3 wstETH) positions, which increased by more than $120 million.

In terms of capital flow, over the past 7 days, Abraxas Capital has withdrawn nearly 270,000 ETH from CEX (Centralized Exchange), completing an average of about 6 buy transactions per day, with a total value exceeding 690 million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

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 2,000 BTC to trading platforms, worth over $190 million. However, recently it has started to accumulate again, withdrawing Bitcoin worth approximately $85 million from trading platforms.

According to Arkham data, Abraxas Capital's ETH funds mainly flow to the Ethereum DeFi protocol. In the past seven days, Abraxas Capital has also transferred more than 174,000 ETH to major DeFi protocols such as Aave, Ether.fi, and Compound, with a total estimated value of about $440 million at the current price. In particular, Aave is the primary use of Abraxas Capital's ETH holdings, which currently hold over $480 million in asset positions 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 strengthening the liquidity and yield reuse of assets through deep participation in the DeFi market.

Asset size exceeds 3 billion USD and was once a major client of Tether.

Abraxas Capital Management is an asset management company headquartered in London, regulated by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), with the aim of building a top-tier asset management institution. The company was co-founded by Fabio Frontini and Luca Celati in 2002, both of whom previously held executive positions at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DRKW) in London.

Abraxas Capital initially focused on the traditional finance sector. On-chain data shows that as early as the end of 2014, the company had started to lay out Bitcoin assets. In 2017, Abraxas Capital announced that it would shift its business focus to digital assets. Heka Funds is a core investment platform under Abraxas Capital that focuses on digital assets, headquartered in Malta and regulated by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), with assets exceeding 3 billion USD.

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 operational digital asset fund in the EU, with a return rate of 214.95% since its establishment. By the end of 2024, its assets under management have surpassed €1.2 billion; the Alpha Bitcoin Fund was established in 2022, focusing on Bitcoin investments, currently managing $2 billion; the Alpha Ethereum Fund was set up in 2023, focusing on Ether, with current assets under management of $4.8 million.

Among them, Elysium Fund is the main business of Heka Funds, which initially entered the market with a bitcoin arbitrage strategy, inspired by a small arbitrage fund that bought bitcoin at a low price on a western trading platform and resold it to a Japanese trading platform. Initially, Elysium mainly engaged in Bitcoin arbitrage, but as the relevant 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 assets at the time: over 60% of 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. Subsequently, Heka Funds validated Tether's liquidity through a series of small test transactions, gradually increasing the scale of trading.

With continuous trading and cooperation, Heka Funds has gradually grown into one of Tether's largest institutional customers, and it can be said that Heka Funds is also the driving force behind Tether's rapid development. According to a research report published by Protos in 2021, Heka Funds received more than $1.5 billion in USDT at that time, accounting for about 1.5% of Tether's total issuance. During the year, Heka Funds made approximately $52 million in profits, far surpassing the $5.8 million earned by parent company Abraxas, making it one of the most successful funds within the group. In the past 30 days, Arkham data shows that in the past 30 days, among Tether's major counterparties, Heka Funds has traded $564 million, ranking eighth.

In an interview with Protos at the beginning of 2025, Frontini once again publicly expressed his confidence in Tether. He pointed out that Tether is making huge interest rate differentials in the U.S. high-interest rate environment, and its business model is very simple but extremely effective. He also cited comments from Howard Lutnick (CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald) at the 2024 Davos Forum, saying that Tether's assets are mainly held by Cantor, the largest U.S. Treasury broker, further strengthening its confidence in Tether.

It is worth mentioning that earlier this month, on-chain analyst @DesoGames traced the flow path of Tether's funds in a certain cycle and found that it mainly flowed to Abraxas and Cumberland crypto entities. However, funds are subjected to complex and opaque circumventions through multi-tiered accounts, which may be designed to conceal the origin of illegal transactions. The analyst further disclosed that HEKA Funds, which claims to have a net asset value of €1.3 billion, purchased $1.5 billion worth of USDT through HEKA (Tether issued about $2.5 billion more during the cycle), an amount that is clearly beyond its financial capacity and is suspicious. At the same time, the shareholders and directors of HEKA Funds were found to have appeared in an offshore leak database, with a complex background and real identities that are difficult to trace. HEKA Funds may just be shell funds used by Abraxas to conceal their true activities, lacking transparency and credibility.

At present, from the perspective of on-chain trends, Abraxas Capital is also exploring expanding its strategy to a more sustainable Ethereum staking and lending ecosystem as the crypto market structure continues to financialize and the early stablecoin arbitrage space gradually narrows.

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