NYDIG, Under New Management, Bets Another $720M on Bitcoin

NYDIG (New York Digital Investment Group) has raised $720 million for its Institutional Bitcoin Fund, as revealed in an SEC filing published last week.

A total of 59 unnamed investors have contributed to NYDIG’s Bitcoin Fund. The filing doesn’t specify when the firm is planning to complete the purchase, however.

The document further states that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has “not necessarily reviewed the information in this filing and has not determined if it is accurate and complete.”

One of the leading institutional players in the crypto space, NYDIG launched its Bitcoin Fund in 2018—originally dubbed the “Institutional Digital Asset Fund”—raising $190 million in June 2020.

In October that same year, NYDIG’s parent company Stone Ridge purchased 10,000 Bitcoin (worth $115 million at the time) as part of its treasury reserve strategy, choosing its own subsidiary as custody provider. That made NYDIG one of the industry’s biggest crypto custodians holding over $1 billion in digital assets on behalf of its customers.

The firm raised $1 billion last December at a valuation of more than $7 billion, in a round led by WestCap with participation from Morgan Stanley, MassMutual, and others.

Management changes

In an interesting twist of events, NYDIG’s latest SEC filing was followed by the Monday’s announcement of CEO Robert Gutmann and president Yan Zhao leaving the roles to continue working at Stone Ridge.

Per the release, Tejas Shah is the new CEO of NYDIG, while Nate Conrad is the new president. Shah and Conrad will focus on accelerating investments in NYDIG’s Bitcoin mining franchise serving North American miners and furthering institutional bitcoin adoption through the Lightning Network—Bitcoin’s Layer 2 scaling solution.

“When markets crumble, character emerges. A flight to quality from the most risk-aware institutional investors has relentlessly driven bitcoin, and revenue, to NYDIG the last 12 months,” Ross Stevens, founder and executive chairman of NYDIG said in a statement.

He added that “even during the height of the crypto frenzy in H2 2021, our risk management discipline kept us entirely away from DeFi, centralized lending platforms, and the uncollateralized lending market.”

NYDIG further said the firm’s balance sheet is now “the strongest it’s ever been,” with its Bitcoin balance hitting an all-time high in the third quarter, “up almost 100% year-over-year, while revenue is up 130% through the second quarter and set to increase in the third quarter.